Late on November 16th according to the match schedule in India, grandmaster Le Quang Liem agreed to stop at the 2025 World Cup of world chess.
This year, Vietnamese chess has 3 players who are allowed to participate in the 2025 World Cup, including Le Quang Liem, Bang Gia Huy (male) and Pham Le Thao Nguyen (female). Snooker Pham Le Thao Nguyen stopped at the beginning of the 2025 Women's World Cup in July. Bang Gia Huy was in India this time but lost in round 1. Only grandmaster Le Quang Liem made it to round 5 of the tournament.
Returning to the situation on November 16, Le Quang Liem and opponent Alexander Donchenko (Germany) played a tug-of-war in the tie-breaks before the final result was determined. The two players drew in the first two standard chess matches, so they had to play tie-breaks with quick chess and lightning chess matches to find a victory.
In the first quick tie-breaks, Le Quang Liem took the lead, took the lead, but unexpectedly lost the match. In the return match, the Vietnamese grandmaster regained the victory over Alexander Donchenko. After that, the two players continued to compete in 2 quick chess matches of the 10-minute plus 10-second format each country and the result was still the same. At this time, the score of the match was 3-3.
Le Quang Liem and Alexander Donchenko enter the lightning chess competition (5 minutes plus 3 seconds for each move) to determine the final result. In the first match, the two players ended the competition after 31 trips with a draw. In the return match that took place right after that, Le Quang Liem tried to overcome his opponent by proactively attacking, but Alexander Donchenko neutralized the dominance of the Vietnamese grandmaster. After 48 departures, the match ended with a victory for Alexander Donchenko.
Thus, Alexander Donchenko won the final match with a score of 4.5 - 3.5 against Le Quang Liem. Losing the match, Le Quang Liem missed the quarter-final match and received a prize of 25,000 USD. Thus, Vietnamese chess still has no representative in the quarter-finals of the World Cup attended by FIDE.
