Sixteen-year-old GM Ediz Gurel took down GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave while 11-year-old IM Faustino Oro beat GM David Navara as the 2025 World Rapid & Blitz Team Championships began in London. GM Arjun Erigaisi‘s Team MGD1 tops the standings with the only perfect score after favorite WR Chess, led by GM Alireza Firouzja, was held to a 3-3 draw by GM Viswanathan Anand‘s Freedom.
Day two starts Thursday, June 12, at 9 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST / 6:30 p.m. IST.
World Rapid And Blitz Team Championship Returns For 3rd Edition
The FIDE World Rapid Team Championship was first held as a three-day event in August 2023 in Dusseldorf, Germany, returned in Astana, Kazakhstan in 2024 as a four-day tournament with Blitz added, and is now back for a third edition, taking place in the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith, London. This time, the length has grown to five days, with the Blitz held over two days.
The event is open to any team of six players (selected from a maximum of nine), with no restrictions on the nationality of the competitors. The host country, England, perhaps unsurprisingly, dominates the event with 102 players, but the top teams feature a formidable selection of the world’s best players.
Note that the graphic above was based on the expected lineups, but in the end, GM Ian Nepomniachtchi was unable to travel as he failed to receive his passport back in time.
Yaroslav Ananyev 🏴 will join the WR Chess Team and take the U2000 board, stepping in for Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Unfortunately, Ian won’t be able to play in the Team Championship. His visa was approved – but his passport wasn’t returned in time. It’s a tough break, and sadly, not…
— WR_Chess_Masters (@wr_chess) June 10, 2025
Each team fields six players per round and must include at least one female player and—the most unusual part of the whole event—one “recreational player,” which is defined as a player who has never crossed a 2000 rating. That saw Wadim Rosenstein, the sponsor of WR Chess and the event as a whole in Dusseldorf in 2023, become an official FIDE world champion.
not quite the way I imagined https://t.co/6StZ7rF5KM
— Ian Nepomniachtchi (@lachesisq) August 28, 2023
The obvious trick on that board is to find the strongest possible player either never to have had a rating or to be seriously underrated, as a Chinese team memorably did with the unrated, 2400-strength Pang Bo…
This is just too wholesome 😊 Board 6 of China Decade Team Pang Bo is on an impressive 16/16 streak, gets very excited and celebrates another win with his captain Ni Hua pic.twitter.com/6IiSpjlBgK
— PhotoChess (@photochess) August 5, 2024
…while another approach is to pick a prodigy who will likely soon be much higher rated, such as Freedom’s nine-year-old Mani Sabartho.
We also get to see some notable players, such as FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, who on day one in London played one game—a loss against Aimonchok Zhunusbekova from Kyrgyzstan, who found a nice finish.
The most notable absentee in 2025 is world number-one Magnus Carlsen, who led WR Chess to the World Blitz Team Championship in 2024, though the Rapid didn’t go quite so smoothly!
Rapport stuns Carlsen (and Nepomniachtchi)!
🇭🇺 Richard Rapport beats 🇳🇴 Magnus Carlsen in a crucial win, helping ‘Chessy’ defeat ‘WR Chess Team’ and become the sole leaders after round 4! 🔥
♟️ FIDE World Rapid Team Championship pic.twitter.com/W9Pv78p1oT
— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) August 2, 2024
Carlsen is taking a honeymoon before his next event in Croatia in July.
The format for the Rapid is simple, with a 12-round Swiss where teams on equal points, as far as possible, are paired against each other in subsequent rounds. Teams earn two match points for a win and one for a draw. Each player has 15 minutes for all their moves, with a 10-second bonus added after each move.
The Blitz, which has a more complicated pools and knockout format, starts Saturday.
FIDE World Rapid Team Championship Standings After Day 1 (Top 10)
| Rank | Seed | Team | Matches | + | = | – | Points | TB |
| 1 | 6 | Team MGD1 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 68 |
| 2 | 1 | WR Chess Team | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 65 |
| 3 | 5 | Freedom | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 63 |
| 4 | 3 | Malcolm’s Mates | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 7 | 53.5 |
| 5 | 2 | KazChess | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 63 |
| 6 | 9 | Hexamind Chess Team | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 62.5 |
| 7 | 4 | Uzbekistan | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 60.5 |
| 8 | 14 | Duobeniajan Costa Calida ESJ | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 53.5 |
| 9 | 8 | Ashdod Elit Chess Club | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 52 |
| 10 | 7 | Germany and Friends | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 6 | 44.5 |
Arjun’s Team MGD 1 Early Leader After Freedom Holds WR Chess To Draw
The tournament’s Swiss system means mismatches in the first couple of rounds, though by the day’s fourth and final round, there were already big clashes of some of the favorites. WR Chess was halted by Freedom, with GM Sam Sevian scoring a big win over GM Alireza Firouzja, who had taken down GMs Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Nihal Sarin in the preceding rounds.
Sevian was pushing all game, though Firouzja put up tremendous resistance before ultimately throwing in the towel.
Sam Sevian beats Alireza Firouzja to earn Freedom a 3-3 draw against top seeds WR Chess! https://t.co/FNdg5Sz5G4 pic.twitter.com/forR5x1xuL
— chess24 (@chess24com) June 11, 2025
Nakamura, who scored 2/3 for WR Chess, sat out that match. You can check out his recap below:
Another intense match saw the casually-named Malcolm’s Mates take down the Men In Black of Hexamind Chess Team, despite being lower-rated on all boards but the last.
The most notable win there was GM Gawain Maroroa Jones, who had lost his first three games, defeating GM Levon Aronian, who had won his first three. It all came down to a one-move blunder.
The leaders, meanwhile, are the mainly Indian Team MGD1.
In the final round of the day, they shrugged off Arjun losing to GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov on top board to defeat Uzbekistan 3.5-2.5, with no small help from bottom-board Atharvaa Tayade, who was one of the players to make it 4/4 for the day.
The other was 20-year-old IM Ganzorig Amartuvshin, who took down GMs Alexei Shirov and Richard Rapport for the Mongolia A team.
Oro, Gurel, And Other Prodigies Shine
Among the prodigies to look out for in London are two 10-year-olds, the world’s youngest ever IM (elect) Roman Shogdzhiev and London-native WFM Bodhana Sivanandan, who has her own special chair “to like see the board and so I can reach the other side properly!”
Just one year older is Argentina’s great hope, Oro, who lost his first game of the day to Rapport but bounced back with three wins, including against Navara, a former top-15 player who showed his strength on the same day by taking down Abdusattorov. Oro’s win is our Game of the Day, with GM Rafael Leitao saying in his introduction:
I had the pleasure of working with Faustino Oro in some training sessions at the beginning of the year and I was able to confirm what is no longer a secret to anyone: with his extraordinary talent, the GM title is a matter of little time and he will be a constant presence in elite tournaments in the future.
Another big win came for 16-year-old Gurel, a Turkish star who’s rising fast. He took down WR Chess’ Vachier-Lagrave in a game full of fighting chess and three queens on the board for a few moves. In fact, it was a queen sacrifice that clinched victory for the youngster, who proved there was no fortress!
There are still two days and eight rounds to go in the Rapid, so anything can happen!
How to watch?
The 2025 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships run June 11-15 in London, UK, with over 50 teams of six players competing. Each team must feature at least one female player and one “recreational player,” never rated 2000+. The Rapid is a 12-round Swiss with a time control of 15 minutes for all moves, plus a 10-second increment per move. The Blitz (3+2) begins with teams playing a round-robin in pools, before the top 16 play a knockout, where each clash features two mini-matches.
