2008: Becomes A Top 20 Player
In January, at the 15th Asian Team Chess Championship in Visakhapatnam, the national team won gold with Wang scoring on board one 4.5/7 points (+3 −1 =3) with a 2534 performance. In February, he scored 7.0/10 (+4 −0 =6) at the Gibraltar Chess Festival Open finishing 20th with a 2653 performance. In March, Wang finished shared first at the Reykjavík Open, together with compatriot Wang Hao (who won on tiebreak) and Hannes Stefansson.
In his super-tournament debut in April–May 2008 at the 1st FIDE Grand Prix in Baku, he came joint first place with Vugar Gashimov and Magnus Carlsen, scoring 8.0/13 (+3 −0 =10) with a performance rating of 2806. Wang called it a "nightmare start" when his planned flight departure from Beijing on the 18th was delayed because of bad weather and did not arrive in Azerbaijan until the early morning of the 21st, thereby missing the opening ceremony as well as having to face the top seed (Magnus Carlsen) with black later on the same day.
In July–August 2008, at the 2nd FIDE Grand Prix in Sochi, he came joint third with Gata Kamsky with 7.5/13 (+2 −0 =11; elo performance 2765) behind winner Levon Aronian and second placed Teimour Radjabov. He was featured on the cover of New in Chess magazine's July 2008 issue. On August 20–30, 2008 in Amsterdam, Wang won the NH Chess Tournament—"Rising Stars" (Wang, Cheparinov, Caruana, L'Ami, Stellwagen) vs. "Experience" (Agdestein, Bareev, Ljubojević, Korchnoi, Jussupow)—with 8.5/10 points (+7 −0 =3; rating performance 2892) remaining undefeated. As the Rising Star winner of the tournament he won an invitation to the March 2009 Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament in Nice, and immediately after having won all of his first six games, he was invited by Jeroen van den Berg to Group A of the January 2009 Corus Chess Tournament.
In September 2008, he competed at the 5th Russia–China Match in Ningbo where he scored 3.0/5 (+1 −0 =4) with a performance rating of 2767 for the men's team (with Li Chao, Wang Hao, Ni Hua, Bu Xiangzhi). China won the match 26–24. He played at the 1st World Mind Sports Games in Beijing, China during October 3–8, 2008. Also that month, in Halkidiki, Greece, he played for Economist SGSEU-1 Saratov at the 24th European Club Cup and scored 3.0/5 (+1 −0 =4).
In November 2008, he played on board one for the Chinese Open team at the 38th Chess Olympiad in Dresden, Germany (6.5/10 (+3 −0 =7) and performance rating 2773). The team came 7th overall. On December 13–29, 2008, at the 3rd FIDE Grand Prix in Elista, Russia – moved from Dohar, Qatar – he came joint fifth-ninth with 6.5/12 (+2 −2 =9).
Read more about this topic: Wang Yue
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