World Staff Championship Begins In Jerusalem, Performed With Fast Time Management

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

Just like the Olympiad, the World Staff Championship is held each two years with separate open and ladies’s sections that aren’t at all times organized concurrently. Because the first version in 1985, the format has at all times been a round-robin amongst 10 groups however for this 12 months, 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 highest 4 groups from every pool qualify for a knockout stage. The most important change, nonetheless, is the time management: this 12 months the video games are performed with 45 minutes plus a 10-second increment. This, the truth is, falls into the class of fast chess in keeping with Appendix A of the FIDE Legal guidelines of Chess:

A.1 A ‘Fast chess’ sport 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 occasions 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 Staff Fast 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 Lodge Jerusalem. In a press launch in early November, the Palestinian Marketing campaign for the Educational and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urged FIDE to relocate the event elsewhere. The rationale 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 consists of GM Igor Kovalenko, who was preventing within the military within the Donbas area in the summertime. He’s one in every 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 lots of its strongest gamers. Apparently, 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. 

Lacking GM Anish Giri, the Netherlands suffered two slim 1.5-2.5 losses on Sunday. The match in opposition to France (a workforce that’s lacking GM Alireza Firouzja, probably 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 is clear that South Africa might be having a tough time even scoring a match level, but it surely was good to see their high board, GM Kenny Solomon, maintain a draw in opposition to the legendary Ivanchuk. Solomon was properly ready for the three.Bb5+ Najdorf:

Pool A Spherical 2 Standings

Pool B Spherical 2 Standings

The FIDE World Staff 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 your entire sport plus a 10-second increment beginning on transfer one.