2023 FIDE World Cup: Quang Liem ousted after loss to Ruslan Ponomariov
VOV.VN - Leading Vietnamese Grand Master Le Quang Liem could not make history in Baku, Azerbaijan, when he was beaten by former World Chess champion Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine) in the third round of the 2023 FIDE World Cup.
After the two previous standard chess draws, Le Quang Liem (Elo 2,740) and Ruslan Ponomariov (Elo 2,650) had to enter a tie-break series on August 7 evening (local time) to determine the winner in the next round.
In the first game, Liem held the black piece and forced the Ukrainian opponent to shake hands in the endgame. Despite having the advantage of holding the white piece in the second game, the Vietnamese grandmaster failed to create an overwhelming battle against the former FIDE chess champion.
Finally, after 55 moves, the two players shook hands again to agree to a draw and enter two fast chess games with less time.
Despite holding the white piece in the third game, Liem could make no surprise to Ponomariov who is an expert on fast chess, and accepted defeat after 57 moves.
The last game saw Liem holding the black piece come under pressure to earn a victory in order to bring the tie-break series into blitz chess games. But all attempts failed at the end and he again accepted the fifth draw after six games lasting for three days.
Being lost to Ponomariov, Liem said farewell to the 2023 FIDE World Cup. As such, he did not catch up with his own best performance in this competition four years ago when he reached the fourth round.
