A month to go

It’s only a month left before the start of Round 1 of the FIDE World Team Championship and the FIDE Women’s World Team Championship that will be held in Khanty-Mansiysk on June’16-27. This will be the first major chess tournaments in Ugra that will take place in summer, previously all events were held in autumn and spring.

10 teams will compete in each Championship. They are the previous event’s World Chess Team Champion, the three highest-placed teams in the FIDE Olympiad prior to the event, the four Continental Champions, a team from the organizing federation and a team nominated by FIDE President.

China, USA, Ukraine, Russia, Egypt, India, Norway, Turkey and Poland will take part in the World Team Championship. One more team will get wildcard from FIDE President and be announced later.

Teams of Georgia, China, Poland, Ukraine, Egypt, Russia, India, USA and Vietnam will compete at the Women’s World Team Championship. Recently a wildcard team for women’s tournament was announced. It will be Azerbaijan.

Russian national teams will be represented by Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alexandra Kosteniuk, Peter Svidler, Nikita Vitiugov, Ernesto Inarkiev, Kateryna Lagno, Valentina Gunina and Aleksandra Goryachkina. Besides, the line-up will include two chess players from Ugra – Dmitry Jakovenko from Nizhnevartovsk and Olga Girya from Langepas.

Unfortunately, the previously announced Muzychuk sisters who were supposed to be the leaders of Ukraine’s team will not participate in the event. 15th Women’s World Champion Mariya Muzychuk and her sister, Women’s World Rapid Champion (2016) and Women’s World Blitz Champion (2014, 2016) Anna Muzychuk were replaces in the application sent by Ukrainian Chess Federation by Nataliya Buksa and Julija Osmak.

Among other participants of the tournaments are FIDE World Champion (2002-2004) Ruslan Ponomarev (Ukraine), European Rapid Chess Champion (2014) Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland), 14th Women’s World Champion Anna Ushenina (Ukraine), Asian Women Chess Champion (2011) Harika Dronavalli (India), European Blitz Champion (2013) Anton Kolobov (Ukraine), Women’s Grand-Prix 2016/17 winner Ju Wenjun (China) and other outstanding grandmasters.

Talking about the average rating of the teams it is to be noted that China is the leader in both men’s and women’s standings. Russia’s average Elo is a bit lower in both ratings. The third leader is Ukraine in the World Team Championship and Georgia in the Women’s World Team Championship.

To check the line-ups of the participating teams and learn more about the tournaments please follow the official web-page of the events: http://chess.ugramegasport.ru/

It is to be reminded that World Team Championship is a tournament for national teams, which is conducted by FIDE since 1985. The first four events were held in Lucerne, Switzerland. All in all World Team Championship was held 10 times, the teams of USSR and Russia got 6 gold medals out of 10. The first Women’s World Team Championship was conducted 10 years ago, in 2007, in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The event was held 5 times, i.e. every two years. Team of Russia have no gold medals won in this event.