WR Chess won the Team Blitz World Championship title for the second year in a row. Following their victory in the Team Rapid World Championship in 2023, this marks the third success for the team sponsored by Wadim Rosenstein in this still-young FIDE competition. Three years ago, only a Team Rapid World Championship was held at the inaugural event in Düsseldorf. The Team Blitz World Championship was added last year during the tournament in Almaty.

Unlike many other events of this kind, both the Rapid and Blitz Team World Championships are played on six boards, with the requirement that at least one board is occupied by a woman and another by a player rated under 2000 Elo.

This year, the format of the Team Blitz World Championship was changed compared to the previous edition. Unlike the Team Rapid World Championship, the Blitz tournament was not played as a Swiss-system event. Instead, it began with four preliminary groups in a round-robin format. The top four teams from these groups advanced to a knockout stage, where all matches were played over two rounds. 

In all four groups, the favored teams prevailed and advanced to the round of 16 in the knockout stage. There, the group winners also advanced with relative ease. WR Chess, Freedom, and MGD1 each won both of their matches. Uzbekistan, the winner of Group C ahead of Germany and Friends, advanced with one win and one draw against Barys.kz. The top German team scored two convincing victories over Hetman GKS Katowice and faced the defending champion WR Chess in the quarter-finals.

This quarter-final match saw a highly unusual incident. The players from WR Chess arrived late—two and a half minutes after the round had already started—and were forced to play their games (that had a time control of 3 minutes plus a 2-second increment per move) with a significant time disadvantage. The match ended in a 4–2 victory for Germany and Friends.

However, WR Chess filed a protest, arguing that the team had received misleading information about the exact starting time of the quarter-final.

How will the appeals committee decide?

Waiting

After more than half an hour of deliberation, the appeals committee ruled that WR Chess’s protest was justified. However, it would have been preferable if the protest had been filed before the games began. The result was ultimately annulled, and the match was replayed. WR Chess won the replayed match and followed up with another win in the second round.

All other first-round matches of the quarter-finals ended in a draw. In the second round, Hexamind eliminated Rapid World Champion MGD1 with a 4–2 victory. Matchwinner was Anish Giri, who defeated Pentala Harikrishna.

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KazChess secured a 3.5–2.5 victory over Freedom. The team from Kazakhstan defeated all three of Freedom’s top boards, earning a spot in the semi-finals. Uzbekistan advanced as well with a commanding 5–1 win over Ashdod. 

In the semi-finals, WR Chess dominated the first match against Hexamind with a convincing 5.5–0.5 victory. The second semi-final between Uzbekistan and KazChess was much closer, ending in a hard-fought 3–3 draw. In the return match, WR Chess had to dig deep to avoid an upset by Hexamind after Aronian defeated Nepomniachtchi on board one and Divya Deshmukh scored a win against Hou Yifan. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Wadim Rosenstein secured victories that leveled the score at 3–3 — enough to send WR Chess to the final. KazChess won their second match against Uzbekistan 4–2.

In the final, WR Chess secured a comfortable victory over KazChess, winning both matches by a score of 4–2. Alireza Firouzja was the top performer for WR Chess, scoring 7 points from 8 games and being crowned Player of the Day.

Hexamind claimed third place with two 3.5–2.5 victories over Uzbekistan. MGD1 finished fifth after two narrow 3.5–2.5 wins against Freedom. Seventh and eighth place were shared by Ashdod and Germany and Friends.

As a reward for their victory, WR Chess received a trophy and a prize of $75,000.

Kazchess

Hexamind

Freedom

MGD1

The knockout-table

Games

Links

• Tournament page...
• Chess-results.com