Le Quang Liem wins Aeroflot, qualifies for Dortmund
Le Quang Liem Wednesday won the Aeroflot Open in Moscow. Like at the Moscow Open, the grandmaster from Vietnam finished on an undefeated 7/9, which this time was enough for clear first and qualification for the Dortmund tournament later this year.Le Quang Liem | Photo © Eldar MukhatemovThe 9th Aeroflot Open took place February 9-17 2010 in Moscow, Russia. It's one of the biggest tournaments (and certainly the strongest) of the calendar, and as always sponsored by airline company Aeroflot and organized by the Russian Chess Federation in cooperation with the Committee on Tourism of the Municipality of Moscow. The festival had the same prize fund as in 2009 amounting a total of 180,000 EUR (which includes the prizes for the World Blitz Qualification Tournament which will be held afterwards).
As always, the players are divided by rating over four open tournaments (A1, A2, B and C). Naturally, the greatest interest is aroused by the A1 tournament, in which a rating above 2550 is required. Already for the fifth time, the Aeroflot Open is held outside the city centre, in hotel "Gamma - Delta" of the tourist complex “Izmailovo", where almost all participants also stay. In our previous report on the Aeroflot tournament we already wrote a paragraph about 18-year-old Le Quang Liem, who became World Youth Champion Under-14 in July 2005. He "continues to improve rapidly", we said last week, and this was even more true than we thought. In September last year he won the 4th Kolkata Open ahead of 13 higher-rated players and two weeks ago he finished shared first at the Moscow Open with an undefeated 7/9. At the Aeroflot Open he again finished on an undefeated 7/9, and this time that meant a sole first place.Ukrainian GM Anton Korobov finished on sole second place with 6.5 points, followed by four players who scored 6 points: Alexander Motylev (Russia), Zhou Jianchao (China), Boris Grachev (Russia) and Le Quang Liem's compatriot Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son from Vietnam.See if you can find how Bacrot quickly decided matters in his game against Bareev in round 6. White to play and win, solution in the game viewer.
Position after 19...Qxd4Aeroflot Open 2010 | Group A1 | Round 9 (Final) Standings
