Quang Liem crowns chess victory at Spice Cup

October 26, 2011 | 13:42

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Vietnamese grandmaster Le Quang Liem, the world number 25 with an Elo rating of 2717, crowned the championship title at the Spice Cup in the US after he beat Cuban Leinier Dominguez in the decisive game yesterday.

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Before staging the tenth and last match with the Cuban rival, Liem rated third with 14 points was just a point away from leader Dominguez. At the tournament, winner of a game is awarded 3 points and a draw with 1 point.

With advantage of holding white chesspiece to make the first move in the last game, Liem defeated Leinier after 29 moves to pocket a total of 17 points after ten matches.

Holding 15 points each, Leinier Dominguez ranked second above the German man Georg Meier thanks to his better auxiliary indexes.

Ray Robson of the US finished fourth with 11 points, followed by Sebastian Feller of France with 9 points and Yuri Shulman of the US with 7 points.

The tournament held in Texas from October 15 to 25 drew the participation of six competitors attending the A Group to play dual round robin format, with Liem at the highest Elo rating.

In the first leg, Liem had lost to Leinier Dominguez.

In the B Group, grandmaster Anatoly Bykhovsky won the title with 6.5 points, and GM Ben Finegold is the winner in the C Group.

The fifth annual Spice Cup is the highest rated international invitational tournament in the US history to date, and also features competition in B Group and C Group for players of lower categories.

FIDE, the world chess governing body, classifies tournaments based on the ratings of participants. With each category ranging of 25 rating points wide, category 1 starts for players with ratings from 2251 to 2275, category 2 for players from 2276 to 2300 and category 22, the top, has the elite players rated from 2776 to 2800.

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