PRESS RELEASE
GM Le Quang Liem of Vietnam and WGM Dinara Saduakassova of Kazakhstan won the open and women’s divisions, respectively, of the Asian Continental Chess Championship organized by the Chinese Chess Association under the auspices of the Asian Chess Federation and FIDE, 6-16 June 2019 in Xing Tai, China.
(Champion GM Le Quang Liem of Vietnam receiving his award from Asian Chess Federation Secretary General Hisham Al Taher.)
Liem finished alone with 7 points out of 9 rounds followed by four players tied at 6.5 each, namely Indian GMs Murali Karthikeyan, S. P. Sethuraman and S. L. Narayanan and Rinat Jumabayev of Kazakhstan. GMs Alireza Firouzja of Iran and Abhijeet Gupta of India followed with 6 points each to qualify to the World Cup after tie break.
Liem was gold medalist in the Asian Individual Martial Arts Games 2017. On his way to the 2019 Asian Continental title, Liem was undefeated and beat GMs Chanda Sandipan, Babu Lalith , S.P. Sethurman and IM Vignesh of India and GM Alireza Firouzja of Iran.
(Women’s champion WGM Dinara Saduakassova of Kazakhstan receiving her award from Xingtai Vice Mayor Deng Suxue.)
Women’s top seed Dinara Saduakassova played true to her ranking, finishing first alone with 7.5 points to qualify to the Women’s World Cup. A half point behind, WGM Irene Sukandar was in second place with 7 points. Three players followed with 6 points each, namely WFM Turmunkh Munkhzul of Mongolia, IM Pham Le Thao Nguyen of Vietnam and WGM R. Vaishali of India.
The Asian blitz championship was won by GM Nihal Sarin of India with 8 points out of 9 rounds followed by Le Quang Liem of Vietnam and S. L. Narayanan of India in a tie with 7 points each.
In the women’s division, WGM Zhai Mo of China won the blitz championship with 7.5 points followed by WGM Vo Thi Kim Phung of Vietnam with 6.5 and WIM Giu Tianlu of China with 6 for third place after tie break.
(Organizers and guests of honor at the closing ceremony.)
Visit chess-results.com for final standings and to download games.