Liem heads to Russia championship

Grandmaster Le Quang Liem will take part in the 2013 Aeroflot Open held February 12-17 at the InfoProstranstvo exhibition centre in Moscow, Russia.

Grandmaster Le Quang Liem will take part in the 2013 Aeroflot Open held February 12-17 at the InfoProstranstvo exhibition centre in Moscow, Russia.

Grandmaster Le Quang Liem

Liem will leave for Moscow on Saturday (Feb 9) and compete in rapid and blitz events as the classic time control competition is not being held this year. The winner of the “classic” chess competition last year was Polish Grandmaster Mateusz Bartel. Liem won the title in 2010 and 2011. Ranked 42nd in the world, he is not seeded here.

The tournament opens this year with the qualifiers for the rapid chess event. This will be held on February 12-13. The 32 top finishers in the qualifiers will go on to the knock-out round, which will be held two days later.

The playing format is Swiss system, nine rounds, with time control of 15 minutes plus a 10-second increment.

Eight winners will qualify for the finals where they will meet with eight invited stars on February 16-17.

The blitz chess event will start on February 14 with nine double rounds of the Swiss system and a time control of three minutes plus two-second increment.

The organisers have invited eight special stars and a number of prominent young Russian players including World Blitz Champion Alexander Grischuk, World Rapid Champion, Peter Svidler, Dmitry Andreikin and Sergey Karjakin.

The winner of the rapid event will receive US$72,000 while the blitz champion will get $10,000.