Le Quang Liem advances to 23rd in world ranking

This is the first time after nearly six years that Liem has made such a breakthrough in terms of his FIDE world rating. His previous career-best milestone was recorded in September 2011 as he stood in 25th position with 2,717 Elo points.

The impressive promotion was thanks to his additional 12.6 Elo points accumulated through three international tournaments in recent times, one in the US and two in China.

The Vietnamese player, 26, finished as runner-up in the 45th Annual World Open in Philadelphia, which earned him 1.4 Elo points. He then accumulated 9.1 Elo points after placing second at the 8th Hainan Danzhou Super Grandmaster Chess Tournament in China. The remaining 2.1 Elo points were won following Liem’s two wins and two draws while playing for the Qingdao team at the 2017 Chinese Team Championships.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s No.2 player, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, remains in 154th place with an Elo rating of 2,629.

Defending national champion Tran Tuan Minh, who is playing for Hanoi, lost two Elo points as a result of his poor performance at a chess tournament dedicated to Lev Polugaevsky in Russia, dropping to 458th position in the FIDE rankings. He finished at 11th position in the final with six points./.

The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in competitor-versus-competitor games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-born American physics professor.