Le Tuan Minh won 10 games and drew one out of 11 in the tournament. His defeated opponents included Grandmasters such as Viktor Bologan, Carlsen, Javokhir Sindarov, Parham Maghsoodloo, Alexander Grischuk, Axel Bachmann, and Jeffery Xiong. He only dropped points in one game against Arjun Erigaisi.

Le Tuan Minh's rook sacrifice against Carlsen. Photo: Screenshot

With 10.5 out of a possible 11 points, Tuan Minh won this week's tournament. Behind him was a group of five players tied with 9 points, including Maghsoodloo and Dmitry Andreikin.

Carlsen finished seventh with 8.5 points. In addition to his loss to Tuan Minh in round five, he was also defeated by Maghsoodloo in the penultimate round and drew with Alexey Sarana.

In the game against Carlsen, Tuan Minh, playing black, sacrificed his rook on move 29 to launch an attack on the king. The world number one accepted the sacrifice, capturing the rook with his queen. However, the Vietnamese number three player then used his queen, two knights, and pawns to attack the king, threatening checkmate. Carlsen moved his queen back to defend, but it was too late. The Norwegian player was forced to lose his queen to avoid checkmate and resigned on move 43.

The game between Le Tuan Minh (black) and Carlsen (white).

This is the 9th time Tuan Minh has won a Titled Tuesday tournament since 20/10/2020. The record for the tournament belongs to world number two Hikaru Nakamura, with 90 titles. Carlsen is second with 37 titles. However, this year, with the world number one participating in more tournaments, he has won 12 Titled Tuesday titles, five more than Nakamura.

Le Tuan Minh, 29, is Vietnam's number three chess player with a standard Elo rating of 2,598, behind Le Quang Liem and Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son. He is currently ranked 166th in the world but is highly regarded in online blitz chess. Tuan Minh spends a considerable amount of time competing and streaming online in English.

Titled Tuesday is an online blitz chess tournament held twice a week, on Tuesdays, attracting hundreds of players per tournament, provided they hold the title of grandmaster or higher. The tournament Tuan Minh just won had 433 players, including over 100 Grandmasters.

Xuan Binh