Written by: Emadeldin Teama

Today on 25 December, the Fide world chess championship for rapid and blitz starts in Warsaw, Poland, at PGE Narodowy Stadium. The current world Classical, rapid and blitz champion GM Magnus Carlsen prepares to defend his title again!

In the last tournament. Carlsen proved that he is the best chess player in the world by winning both the Rapid and blitz tournaments. This time he will be faced by the top players all over the globe. The young polish star Jan duda and the Iranian-French Alireza Firouzja are going to try to take away his title . in addition to that, so many Blitz legends are in this tournament such as Hikaru nakamura who is known for his lighting speed and huge accuracy under little time control and Anish giri the ultimate defender of any position and so many more.

You can actually checkout the list of the players here to so how many players are competing there :

Click Here

How much money did the fide sponsor for the prizes?

The fide is offering great prizes in additional to some titles for the winners of the advanced places in the final ranking. In this event, everyone is a winner. Here is a list of the prizes for the tournament!

World Rapid & Blitz prize distribution:

The total prize for the men section is 350000$ for rapid and another 350000$ for blitz. For the women section, the total amount for the women is 150000$ Rapid and 150000$ Blitz which makes it a total of 1 million dollar prizes!!

here is an image that shows the amount of the prizes for both sections

Can carlsen win this tournament as well?

The reigning champion in all three formats (classical, rapid and blitz), Magnus Carlsen, is heading into the event as a clear favourite, but his old and new rivals are eager to challenge his supremacy. Can Magnus repeat his triumph of 2014 and 2019 and win a double-crown? that is what we are going to see in the next few days!

What does it take to join this event?

In order to join this huge event. It was a well known rule that a player must be above the 2500 rating . However, this year rules has changed abit to make it much more stronger event. The minimum rating to enter such an event is to be above 2550 Fide rating or to be nominated directly from your country’s fide organization to represent your country in such an event. Some others were able to join by winning one of the top tournaments in the world, for example winning a continental tournament such as Africa, asia or European championship.

What do we expect to see in such an event?

We expect to see the best players in the world competing within each others to prove their talent and hard work and get results. A very high quality chess is expected to be seen in spite of the short time control .

There are so many great players joining this tournament that it would be extremely hard to expect who would be the number one winner of the tournament. Although Magnus Carlsen is a clear favorite , I believe this would be the most intense event Carlsen ever played in the last years!

Everyone Lately is upset with Carlsen statement that he would not even fight for the world championship title next time unless the winner of the candidate would be Alireza Firouzja. This statement was considered as an insult to many top players of the world as if there is not any of them who is a worthy opponent and every player would try to defeat Carlsen in every single round to prove to him that he is wrong. We recommend for all the chess fans to watch this epic event and analyze the played games, this would guarantee a huge improvement for any average club player.

Is the fide world rapid and blitz tournament a good thing for chess?

This event is absolutely useful for promoting chess. Lately and due to the Covid situation, many investors started to notice that chess is not seriously affected by the restrictions done due to Covid and they thought about using it commercially the same way other sports are used for marketing and promoting certain brands. This event could grab the attention of millions of people all over the world as the blitz and rapid play is full of excitements which would make this tournament very vital for both the chess players and the investors.

As we noticed, there are so many prizes for many winners of this tournament. Part of it due to the effort of fide to support this event, another part comes from the commercial sponsors. This could prove to be very useful for chess professionals to get paid as well as footballers for example one day!

Conclusion:

We expect a high quality chess, unexpected results for many grandmasters as the heat of the chess battle goes on and great performance from everyone. Every player would want to prove his skills and earn a decent amount of money for a 4 day event. Psychology would play a huge rule in this tournament and players with calm nerves will have an edge over others!

We also expect this event and other ones like it to promote chess and has a general benefits for all professional and semi- professional players. Promoting chess and getting more sponsors will guarantee higher pay for the talented players of this sport and more respect as it gets recognized globally!

We wish the best to all the players and we hope to see dramatic games watching them play in the Christmas vacation!