Vietnamese grandmaster Le Quang Liem performed brilliantly as captain, leading the Webster University team to overall victory at the 2016 Final Four of College Chess that took place in New York on April 2-3. 

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Quang Liem (third from left) named the most valuable player of the Final with three wins.

 

The annual event featured competition among the top four US schools from the 2015 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, including Webster University, Texas Tech University, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Columbia University.

With an average elo rating of 2734, Webster University effortlessly overwhelmed the remaining opponents who had respective elo ratings of 2652, 2628 and 2342.

Webster beat Columbia with a score of 3.5-0.5 before overcoming Texas Rio Grande and Texas Tech by the same score of 2.5-1.5 in order to secure the aggregate victory with 8.5 points. The following places were Texas Rio Grande Valley (seven points), Texas Tech (5.5 points) and Columbia (2.5 points).

This is the fourth year in a row Webster University has emerged as overall victor of the tournament. The team also holds a record for scoring 12 straight wins after four editions of the event.

Quang Liem proved he deserved the captain role, recording three straight wins over Arthur Shen of Columbia University, Anto Kovalov of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and Zherebukh of Texas Tech University.

Liem was also named the most valuable player of the Final with three wins.

Nhan Dan