VietNamNet Bridge - On the world blitz chess ranking in November, Vietnam’s top chessman Le Quang Liem keeps his second position after Hikaru Nakamura of the USA.

Quang Liem’s blitz chess Elo rating is up to 2841 thanks to his world blitz chess championship last year. At that tournament, Liem faced rivals with the average Elo rating of up to 2727 but he still earned 20.5 points in 30 games to pass the players as Alexander Grischuk, Ruslan Ponomariov and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Also in 2013, Quang Liem won the Asian blitz chess championship and ranked first at the Missouri Blitz Chess Tournament (USA).

Currently, Liem’s blitz chess Elo rating is only less than Hikaru Nakamura (2879). Ranking behind Liem are Magnus Carlsen (world’s top player for standard chess), Viswanathan Anand (world championship for standard chess), Levon Aronian and Sergey Karjakin...

Another Vietnamese player - Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, ranked 13th in the world blitz chess ranking, with 2762 Elo rating. Son ranked fifth at the world blitz chess championships.

For rapid chess category, Quang Liem ranked 15th in the world (Elo rating 2756) and second in Asia.

As in the standard content, Liem ranked 46th in the world with Elo rating 2703. The slide comes on the heels of a poor performance at the recent 2013 Spice Cup Open in the United States, where he failed to defend his championship title, finishing in third.

In the Asian ranking, Liem stands in seventh after Anand (India, Elo 2,775), Wang Hao (China, Elo 2,737), Wang Yeu (China, Elo 2,736), Wesley So and Ding Liren (China), and Hari Krishana (India, Elo 2,704).

In the women’s world ranking, Vietnamese-born grandmaster Viet Hoang Thanh Trang moved up seven spaces to 12th with an Elo of 2,495. Her ascent is attributable to a strong second place showing at the 2013 Indonesia Open Chess Championship in October.

Trang was born in Vietnam, but settled in Hungary when she was seven. She joined the Hungarian Chess Federation in 2006.

Nam Nguyen