Press release by FIDE

FIDE is proud to announce the second edition of the World Rapid Team Championship, which will this time also include a World Blitz Team Championship.

Following the success of the inaugural tournament held in Düsseldorf (Germany) in August 2023, the second event aims to bring more excitement and drama with the inclusion of the Blitz competition.

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FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich said:

We are very excited that this event is going into its second season and that we have also added another competition to the format, making it even more exciting. Alongside the World Corporate Championship we are organizing this year, the World Rapid and Blitz Team events are another example of FIDE’s continued investment in promoting chess to different audiences.

The tournament will be held in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, between August 1 and 6, and is expected to bring together a number of top world professionals and chess lovers, as was the case in the first edition in Düsseldorf in 2023.

Each team must have at least six but no more than nine players. Among them, they have to have at least one woman player as well as a player who has never achieved a 2000 Elo Rating, in either Rapid or Blitz, up to and including the July 2024 FIDE rating list.

In a significant promotional boost for the event, former world champion Magnus Carlsen — who is also the world’s top-rated chess player (and holder of the world titles in Rapid and Blitz) — will be playing in the Championships. World #1 will strengthen the WR Team, which won the inaugural edition, and is ready to defend their title and try to take the first team crown in the Blitz.

The event will be broadcast live online with star commentators and special guests.

Magnus Carlsen | Photo: Anna Shtourman

Prizes

The World Rapid and Blitz Championship features a total prize fund of 350,000 Euros (380,000 US dollars), with 250,000 allocated for the Rapid and 100,000 for the Blitz.

Apart from the financial rewards, every member of the top three placed teams (players and captains) will receive a medal.

Format and time control

The Rapid and Blitz tournaments will be played under different pairing regulations.

• The Rapid tournament will consist of 12 rounds played under the Swiss system, with a time control of 15 minutes and a 10-second increment per move.
• The Blitz tournament will have two stages: in the first stage, teams will be grouped into pools based on their strength. Each pool shall play a round-robin tournament with no more than seven rounds. From this stage, 16 teams will qualify for the second phase: the knockout tournament. The time control for the Blitz will be 3 minutes for the whole game with an increment of 2 seconds per move, starting from move one.

The scoring system in both competitions will be based on match points: a win scores 2 points, a draw scores 1 point, and a loss scores zero points.

The full regulations of the event can be found here.

Registration

Registration will start soon and will be open until July 1, 2024, 12 PM Lausanne time. A maximum of 80 teams can take part (10 teams with the highest average ratings, and the remaining 70 teams will be selected based on the earliest registrations).

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Links

• WR Chess becomes first World Rapid Team champion!
• Interview with Wadim Rosenstein, Organiser of the WR Chess Masters
• All ChessBase reports on the 2023 WR Chess Masters