Azerbaijan and China are the early leaders on the FIDE World Team Chess Championship which began on Sunday in Jerusalem, Israel. The event is performed below the fast time management of 45+10 and has a pool stage adopted by a knockout stage.

Like the Olympiad, the World Team Championship is held each two years with separate open and girls’s sections that aren’t at all times organized concurrently. Since the primary version in 1985, the format has at all times been a round-robin amongst 10 groups however for this yr, FIDE has modified issues fairly a bit.

There are 12 groups this time, divided into two swimming pools that every play a round-robin of 5 rounds. The prime 4 groups from every pool qualify for a knockout stage. The greatest change, nevertheless, is the time management: this yr the video games are performed with 45 minutes plus a 10-second increment. This, actually, falls into the class of fast chess in line with Appendix A of the FIDE Laws of Chess:

A.1 A ‘Rapid chess’ recreation is one the place both all of the strikes have to be accomplished in a hard and fast time of greater than 10 minutes however lower than 60 minutes for every participant; or the time allotted plus 60 instances any increment is of greater than 10 minutes however lower than 60 minutes for every participant.

Some have argued that the event needs to be referred to as World Team Rapid Chess Championship, whereas FIDE’s CEO Emil Sutovsky prefers to talk of “semi-classic.” One factor is obvious: the video games will rely for fast rankings, not classical.

The venue is the Dan Hotel Jerusalem. In a press launch in early November, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urged FIDE to relocate the event elsewhere. The purpose was that the lodge is positioned in jap Jerusalem, seen by the Palestinians as an unlawful Israeli settlement of Palestinian territory.

Russia, the title holder, is clearly not current in Jerusalem however Ukraine is. Led by GM Vasyl Ivanchuk, their workforce additionally contains GM Igor Kovalenko, who was combating within the military within the Donbas area in the summertime. He is considered one of simply three gamers who has began the event with two wins.

In Pool B, Azerbaijan is the one workforce that has began with two match victories. They defeated the U.S. within the second spherical, a workforce that’s lacking a lot of its strongest gamers. Interestingly, GM Hans Niemann is taking part in board one (alongside GMs Lazaro Bruzon, Alexander Onischuk, Varuzhan Akobian, and Yuniesky Quesada).

Niemann performed GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov in that second spherical, who performed his seventh match of the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour Finals later that night. 

Missing GM Anish Giri, the Netherlands suffered two slender 1.5-2.5 losses on Sunday. The match in opposition to France (a workforce that’s lacking GM Alireza Firouzja, possible associated to the placement of the event) was particularly a tricky loss as GM Max Warmerdam managed to lose a pawn-up(!) queen endgame to GM Laurent Fressinet:

It’s clear that South Africa can be having a tough time even scoring a match level, nevertheless it was good to see their prime board, GM Kenny Solomon, maintain a draw in opposition to the legendary Ivanchuk. Solomon was properly ready for the three.Bb5+ Najdorf:

Pool A Round 2 Standings

Pool B Round 2 Standings

The FIDE World Team Championship takes place November 19-26, 2022, in Jerusalem, Israel. The format is a round-robin for groups with 5 rounds, adopted by a knockout with the highest eight finishers. The time management is 45 minutes for all the recreation plus a 10-second increment beginning on transfer one.