Having achieved quite impressive results at the World Youth Championship earlier this month in Georgia, Vietnamese youth chess continues to "make waves" at the 2023 Southeast Asian Open Age Group Championship taking place in Bangkok, Thailand. Just sending a strong force of nearly 200 players to participate in all 3 events of standard chess, rapid chess and blitz chess in all 14 age groups for men and women has made friends in the region admire, especially when even the Thai delegation with home field advantage could only send a few dozen high-class young players to participate.
Chess player Bach Ngoc Thuy Duong achieved second place in the female Grandmaster category with 2 gold medals in standard chess. Photo: CHAU MINH
Despite the large number of players, the quality was also very stable. In just the first 6 days of competition with 9 standard chess games, the Vietnamese players won all the highest rankings - including silver and bronze medals - in 13/14 events with a total of 30 individual and team gold medals. The most notable was probably the player Bach Ngoc Thuy Duong winning both individual and team gold medals in the U20 women's age group and achieving the second Women's Grandmaster (WGM) standard. With just one more standard, this 20-year-old girl will be officially awarded the title of Women's Grandmaster (WGM) by FIDE.
In addition to Bach Ngoc Thuy Duong, U18 male champion Nguyen Quoc Hy was also officially awarded the title of International Master (IM), Nguyen My Hanh An won the U18 female champion and became an International Women's Master (WIM), Dinh Nho Kiet won the gold medal in the U16 male age group with an International Master (IM) standard...
Although he did not achieve the highest personal achievement, 12-year-old player Dau Khuong Duy continues to leave a strong impression on experts. Earlier this month, this boy from Hanoi won the gold medal in the world rapid chess tournament for men under 12 with a near-perfect score of 10.5 after 11 games. If you know that Duy won the rapid chess championship and the runner-up in the Asian U16 standard chess tournament last year and at this Southeast Asian tournament, he "skipped the level" to play in the U18 group and won the silver medal in standard chess, it can be said that a new "child prodigy" has appeared in Vietnamese chess.
The tournament will continue with blitz and rapid chess events on June 25 and 26, and is expected to continue with an almost absolute advantage for the Vietnamese youth chess team.
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