​Vietnam women enter chess Olympiad top 20

Vietnam, who have a much superior Elo rating of 2,259 to Uzbekistan’s 2,041, scored their biggest win in the tournament so far.

On the top board, Vo Thi Kim Phung with black defeated Nilufar Yakubbaeva in 39 moves after the Uzbek player made a mistake.

The next two games saw Hoang Thi Bao Tram and Bach Ngoc Thuy Duong play white to beat Umida Omonova and Marjona Malikova.

The only draw came in the game between Nguyen Thi Mai Hung and Maftuna Bobomurodova.

Duong remains unbeaten in the tournament with four wins and a draw. The 19-year-old trails only Oliwia Kiolbasa of Poland and Jana Schneider of Germany who have won all five of their games.

After five rounds, only India, Georgia and Romania have won all their games. Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan remain unbeaten and have nine points each.

The Uzbekistan win took Vietnam to eight points and 17th place in the points table.

On Wednesday Vietnam play Hungary (Elo 2,342), whose top player is Hanoi-born Hoang Thanh Trang.

Trang, 42, has Vietnamese parents, who moved to Hungary when she was 10. She was Vietnam’s top woman player until 2006, when she decided to turn out for Hungary.

She is the only player ever to win both the Asian and European team championships.

The Olympiad is being played from July 29 to Aug. 9 with 1,736 players from 186 countries and territories.

The Vietnamese men’s team are not playing in the tournament.