WR Chess Team Becomes World Blitz Champion

With Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi as the team leaders.

The World Blitz Team Championship took place in Astana on 5 August. First, the teams were divided into five pools of eight teams to play according to a round-robin system with 7 rounds. The top three teams from each pool and the highest scoring team in 4th place from all pools advanced to the knock-out final (Top 16). The playoffs featured two matches and a tie-break, if necessary.
 
After several rounds of very exciting competition, the WR Chess Team (Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Vincent Keymer, Hou Yifan, Alexandra Kosteniuk, and Vadim Rosenstein) and Team MGD1 (Arjun Erigaisi, S. L. Narayanan, Raunak Sadhwani, V. Pranav, B. Adhiban, Shrinath Narayanan, Dronavalli Harika, and Mihir Shah) made it into the final.
 
The WR Chess Team snatched the first match victory with a score of 3.5:2.5, while the second match was a hard-fought draw. Thus, after winning the final match, the WR Chess Team led by Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi became the World Blitz Champion. 
 
Third place was shared by the teams that lost in the semi-finals. They are the Rapid World Championship winners Al-Ain ACMG UAE (Daniil Dubov, Vladislav Artemiev, Dmitry Andreikin, Parham Maghsoodloo, Volodar Murzin, Kateryna Lagno, Zhu Jiner, Ibragim Galymzhanuly, and Wafia Darwish Al Maamari) and Chessy (Richard Rapport, Alexey Sarana, Haik Martirosyan, Santosh Vidit, Jorden Van Foreest, Yagiz Erdogmus, Anna Muzychuk, Humpy Koneru, and Mukhtar Ainakul).
 
Tournament on Chess-Results
 
Official website