World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships 2021

The FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships are an annual event held by FIDE (the world governing body for chess) to determine the World Champion for rapid chess and the World Champion for blitz chess. Therefore the chess world has three world champions – a ‘Classical’ (much slower), ‘Rapid’ and ‘Blitz’ champion. Well – technically six world champions as there is a male and female champion for each category.

The ‘Classical’ title is by far the most prestigious and dates back officially to 1886 when Wilhelm Steinitz defeated Johannes Zukertort to be recognized as the World Champion. The ‘Classical’ title is decided in a match every two years between the champion and the challenger who has to make their way through a grueling path for the right to challenge the champion.

In contrast the Rapid and Blitz championships are a relatively new introduction – FIDE only started holding the annual event in 2012. They take place in December and the 2021 event was held in Warsaw, Poland. Both the rapid and blitz events take place back to back.

Time control comparison

Classical – 2 hours for 40 moves, then 1 hour for 20 moves, then an extra 30 minutes plus a 30 second increment per move from move 61

Rapid – 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move

Blitz – 3 minutes plus 2 seconds per move

The World Rapid Championship 2021

176 players took part in a 13 round swiss event with a time control of 15 minutes plus 10 seconds a move. The top three seeds at the start of the event were World champion Magnus Carlsen (who held all three world championships at the start of the event), Hikaru Nakamura and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The tournament was won by Nodirbek Abdusattorov, a 17 year old Grandmaster from Uzbekistan. This was a sensational result for the teenager who is known as a rapid specialist but is ‘only’ ranked 113th in the world in classical chess.

Abdusattorov certainly rode his luck at times surviving lost positions in each of the last three rounds and eventually winning the tiebreak blitz playoff versus Ian Nepomniachtchi. However he can hardly be grudged his victory as he defeated many strong players along the way including Caruana, Aronian, Gelfand and world champion Magnus Carlsen.

There was a little bit of controversy with the tiebreak rules. After 13 rounds four players were tied on 9.5 points – Abdusattorov, Nepomniachtchi, Carlsen and Caruana. The organisers used ‘Buchholz’ to rank the four players and then the top two players played the blitz tiebreak to determine the champion. This decision was heavily criticized by most of the top players who felt all tied players should be involved in the tiebreak.

Perhaps the key game in the tournament was the round 10 clash between Carlsen and Abdusattorov. Playing with the black pieces Carlsen got a comfortable endgame position and tried to squeeze out one of his famous endgame wins. Abdusattorov defended well and Carlsen pushed things a bit far and ended up having to defend a tricky queen endgame which despite being objectively drawn was very difficult in practice. Abdusattorov showed no fear in taking down the champion when his chance arose.

The World Blitz Championship 2021

179 players took part in the two day, 21 round swiss event with a much faster 3+2 time control. Carlsen had won the last three editions of the event and was therefore a hot favourite going into the competition. Indeed he had been very active on lichess.org in the buildup playing blitz and bullet under his handle “drnykterstein”. However, despite getting off to a perfect 4/4 start things just didn’t work out for the champion and he ended up losing six games. To put this into perspective he had only lost three games in total in the previous three blitz championships.

The winner of the event was the elite French Grandmaster Maxime Vachier-LaGrave who scored 15 / 21 alongside two other players; Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Alireza Firouzja. This time it was Firouzja who lost out on the controversial tiebreaks and a playoff was held between Duda and La-Grave with the French Grandmaster coming out on top.

It really is fascinating to follow the blitz games between elite Grandmasters and marvel at the quality of moves on display. Of course there are plenty of blunders but the general level is extremely high and to some extent you are witnessing pure intuition – these are literally the first moves that pop into the Grandmasters mind as they are forced to play most moves “by hand”.

Selected Games

Carlsen - Giri, Blitz Round 15

LaGrave v Duda, Blitz Playoff game 2 (the decisive game)

Carlsen - Gelfand, Blitz round 8

Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi, Blitz Round 20 (World Championship Redux)

Firouzja - Shevchenko, Rapid Round 9 (rook endgame extract)

Svane - Giri (Blunder)!

Gukesh - Absudattorv, Rapid Round 12 (Swindle)!

LaGrave - Amin, Blitz Round 9 (Endgame Turaround)

Aronian - Martirosyan, Blitz Round 18 (Q v R - fake fortress)

Carlsen - Aronian, Rapid Round 12 (R v B grind)

Absudattorov - Carlsen, Rapid Round 10 (Queen endgame)