The Grandmaster Triathlon was the centrepiece of the festival. The eight-player tournament combined three different time formats (blitz, rapid and classic), counting towards the final score.
A win in a classical game was worth four points, with half a point for a draw. In the rapid segment, a victory was worth two points and a draw one point. The blitz was played as a double round-robin with one point for a win and half a point for a draw.
Le Quang Liem was convincing throughout the tournament, proving to be the strongest player in classical and rapid chess while maintaining his high level in blitz.
He won a total of 35.5 points out of the maximum 56 points across the three categories, three points ahead of runner-up Andrey Esipenko (Russian) and six points clear of third-placed Dommaraju Gukesh (India).
In particular, the Vietnamese grandmaster performed brilliantly in the classic segment, winning four games, drawing one and losing two, achieving a performance efficiency of a player with an Elo rating of 2780.
Le Quang Liem and his medal.
Thanks to the Biel triumph, Le Quang Liem earned an additional 5.7 Elo points to reach 2728 and resume his career-best world ranking of 21st.
This is the first individual title for Quang Liem since he bagged a hat-trick of titles at the Asian tournament, the Summer Chess Classic and the World Open in 2019.
