World Cities Chess Team Champion in Al Ain, UAE

World Cities Chess Team Champion

This event is held at two-year intervals, with teams representing cities (maximum one city per country). National federations are eligible to play with their national team members representing a city. The FIDE World Cities Championship is a sequel to the Chess Olympiad and Continental Cities Championships.

The Al Ain Chess Club of the United Arab Emirates Chess Federation has committed to organize the World Cities Championship for the Sheikh Zayed Cup for five times until 2020. The prize fund for the 2012 edition is $150,000.

24 teams were at the start of the tournament. Each was ranked by the average rating of their four strongest players as per the 1st December FIDE rating list. If two or more teams have the same average they are ranked according to the rating of the fifth player and then alphabetically. The teams were divided into groups of four teams each, and each group played a single round robin tournament. The top two from each group advanced to the Round-of-16, together with the four best 3rd placed teams.

At the opening ceremony, which also included...

... a local music and dance performance

The start of the event, with FIDE officials applauding the game Grandelius vs Saleh

The setup in the playing hall in Al Ain

Here are the results of the preliminary rounds, with the qualifying teams shown in bold:

Pairings for the knockout phase (Round of 16)

You could feel the tension as the knockout phase started with the Round-of-16 in Al Ain: Athens, Tashkent, Saratov, Hoogeveen, Baku, Wu Xi, Lund and Novi Sad advance to the Quarterfinals.

The biggest upset was scored by Wu Xi as the Chinese team held the highly favored Lviv to a 2-2 draw. The tie was broken by the Berlin system which gives more weight to points on the top boards. Wu Xi had won two games on boards one and two, and lost the games on boards three and four. The match between Lund and Riga ended 2-2 as well, with Lund advancing because of a win on board two and a loss on board four. Novi Sad advanced despite a 2-2 draw against Ptuj of Slovenia due to a board 1 victory by Serb Ivan Ivanisevic. A summary of the eight matches is to be found in the official bulletin here. Here are the full results:

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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