New York Times praises Vietnam’s young chess stars

The New York Times has hailed the recent performances of Vietnam’s two top chess players, Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son.

“Now, the two players… have joined the ranks of the world’s elite with a series of impressive finishes,” Dylan Loeb McClain says in a story dated July 31, asking “could the emergence of world-class chess players be a sign of a country’s economic progress?”

Liem, ranked No. 55 in the world, “tied for first at the Moscow Open in February and followed that up by taking a clear first at the Aeroflot Open.”

“That qualified him for the category-20 Sparkassen Chess-Meeting tournament in Dortmund, Germany, one of the world’s elite events.” There the 19-year-old finished second behind Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine.

“But he was the only player to beat Ponomariov.”

Son, ranked No. 157 in the world, tied for third at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow and finished first along with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France and Fabiano Caruana of Italy in the top section of the Biel International Chess Festival in Switzerland which included many of the world’s best young players.