World Rapid & Blitz Championship 2024 - Games and Results

[PostBOTe]

The World Rapid & Blitz Championship takes place on Wall Street in New York 26th to 30th December 2024. Carlsen, Caruana, MVL, Wei Yi, Nepomniachtchi, Aronian, Firouzja, Nakamura, Abdusattorov, Duda, Wesley So etc. In the women's event Ju Wenjun, Lei Tingjie, Tan Zhongyi, Kosteniuk etc. Magnus Carlsen was defaulted in round 9 of the rapid when he didn't change his clothes after being informed they broke the regulations. He stated this was likely his final FIDE event, he would not play the blitz. This seemed very final from Carlsen but then on the rest day a blurred photo emerged of him talking to Viswanthan Anand (I'm guessing there's maybe a story that someone made sure there was a photo) and after some flex in the regulations Carlsen will play the blitz in which he is one of the favourites. Two points occur to me, firstly this isn't over in the sense that FIDE and Carlsen have points of tension over the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam and the Esports World Cup that aren't going to go away, but secondly I highly doubt Carlsen would be playing the blitz without FIDE having Anand for him to talk to, and being able to do this kind of thing is entirely what should qualify a person to be FIDE President somewhere down the line. The rapid title was taken by 18 year old and 59th seed Volodar Murzin. Whilst the victory can't be described as anything other than a surprise he has been a force in rapid and blitz chess for many years and scored a very respectable 8/15 in this event in 2019. The key moment in his victory was where he hustled Praggnanandhaa to defeat via an objectively lost position in round 12, his only Alexander Grischuk drew quickly in the final round leaving Murzin the task, to which he was equal, of drawing with Karen H. Grigoryan for the title. Humpy Koneru won the women's rapid title for the second time, she was the 10th seed. In spite of being India's number one women's player she can be seen as a bit of an outsider due to her fractious relationship with the Indian Chess Federation. She is always an interesting player to follow as she has a solid positional style which she scores well with. There is a break on the 29th and the Blitz will take place in just one day on the final day of the year.

Source: https://theweekinchess.com/chessnews/ev ... nship-2024