The World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship begins

Chess

The World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championship opens today in Berlin. The current championship turned out to be very bright in terms of the composition of participants. A number of elite grandmasters will perform there, including the leader of world chess, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen.

The fact that Berlin is hosting one of the key tournaments of the International Chess Federation (FIDE) can be considered a small breakthrough. Until now, Western Europe has been relatively cool towards this type of event, but nevertheless, this is, after all, an important market for FIDE and Agon, which owns the commercial rights to its main competitions. The head of Agon, Ilya Merenzon, emphasized that he hopes that thanks to the Berlin championship, both the chess audience and interest in chess on the part of potential investors will grow. And Berlin, with its “rich past and very modern present,” is, in his opinion, a very suitable platform for promoting the game.

The composition of the tournament participants is also very suitable for it. He is the most representative in the history of the world championships in rapid and blitz chess. Suffice it to say that the ten participating grandmasters have a rating in this genre that exceeds 2800, indicating an extraordinary level of skill. Among these grandmasters are such stars as Indian Viswanathan Anand, Armenian Levon Aronian, Azerbaijani Teymur Radjabov, Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Ukrainian Vasily Ivanchuk. The Russians are also among the favorites. At the top of the seeding are Alexander Grischuk, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Sergey Karyakin. It is Karjakin, who has already won the world championship in rapid and blitz chess once - in 2012 in Astana, who should be considered the most “hot” contender for the awards. He just took the World Cup to Baku at the beginning of this week, and there Karjakin repeatedly, in tiebreaks after “classical” games, had to play in the format in which the German competitions will be held.

However, the main attraction of the championship is still Magnus Carlsen. The Norwegian is both a “classical” world champion and a world champion in rapid chess and blitz. In Berlin he will defend the titles he won last year in Dubai. And Carlsen’s blitz rating, by the way, looks huge even against the background of the rating of his famous opponents - 2914.

Alexey Dospehov

Grandmasters took Berlin