Chessable Masters QF: Le Shocks Aronian With Queen Sac Checkmate
GM Le Quang Liem continues to surprise at the Chessable Masters. The Vietnamese grandmaster beat GM Levon Aronian 3-1 in the first semifinal match and played a spectacular game that included a queen sacrifice to force checkmate.
In the other semifinal, GM Wesley So beat GM Vladislav Artemiev 2.5-1.5 with three draws and one win.
The games of the Chessable Masters knockout can be found here as part of our live events platform. Daily commentary is provided on GM Hikaru Nakamura's Twitch channel starting at 8:00 a.m. Pacific / 17:00 Central Europe.
After convincingly eliminating GM Alireza Firouzja, Le was hungry for more on the first day of the semifinals. He put Aronian, the winner of the last leg in the Tour, in a must-win situation for the second day. And how!
Le showed amazing tactics, like in their first game:
Le also drew his black game and managed to win both games as White. Game four was quite lovely:
After a topsy-turvy match in the quarterfinal with GM Jorden van Foreest, So did much better and was in full control vs. Artemiev on the first day. The American player won game three, which saw a difficult middlegame with opposite-colored bishops:
All Games Day 6
The Chessable Masters runs July 31-August 8, 2021 on chess24. The preliminary phase was a 16-player rapid (15|10) round-robin. The top eight players advanced to a six-day knockout that consists of two days of four-game rapid matches, which advance to blitz (5|3) and armageddon (White has five minutes, Black four with no increment) tiebreaks only if a knockout match is tied after the second day. The prize fund is $100,000, including a $30,000 first prize.
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