The best teams of the world will participate in the coming championship, among which three teams which were ranked the best at the World Chess Olympiad, five continental champions, the country-organizer and one team elected by the FIDE President according to the rules.
Astana will gather around 50 best chess players out of ten countries: China, Russia, Ukraine, USA, India, France, Turkey, Georgia, Rumania and Kazakhstan. Every team consists of five players and the team-winner will be determined in a round-robin event after 9 games. Time control is 90 minutes per 40 moves and thirty minutes until the end of the game plus 30 seconds increment per move.
Participating teams
The WWTC has been organized since 2007 and Chinese team won all the championships in the past. Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue will not come to Astana and it’s going to be not easy for the team to prove their dominance without the strongest Chinese players.
The Russian team, which won the Chess Olympiad last September and took three silver medals in previous Women’s World team championships, will also play without two top players, Nadezhda and Tatiana Kosintseva.
The sisters didn’t stay in the team because they refused to play for the team under the leadership of the trainer Sergei Rublevsky, citing ‘psychological incompatibility’. Two former leaders of the team were replaced by Alisa Galliamova and Olga Girya, nevertheless the Russian team, placed on the second rank in the starting list, remains one of the favourites in the tournament.
Women World Champion Anna Ushenina will play for Ukraine and it will be the first official event attended by Anna since she won the title. Ukrainian team, the bronze medalist of two WWTC in 2007 and 2009 and Olympiad in 2012, will undoubtedly fight for medals in that championship.
The top-seed of the tournament Georgian team will play in Astana with the same line-up as in Mardin. In the last WWCTC Georgia managed to win the bronze medals.
The updated specialized websites astana2013.fide.comand www.worldchess.kz will start working, during the championship, which will include all sections and columns completely highlighting the details of the world tournament. There will be a systematic renewal of images and video reporting. At the end of every tournament day the round reports of grandmasters will be placed there as well.
The organizers of the coming event are Chess Federation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and FIDE World Chess Federation, with the support of akimat of Astana, Agency for sports and physical education and the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Date and place: Astana. 2-12 March in Duman hotel.
Media representatives shall be accredited before 1March by sending the name of the journalists to the following email: worldchess@bk.ru
Natalya Shpar – head of press service Women’s World Chess Team Championship. Tel: +7 (7172) 791 518; +7 701 710 89 22
Anastasiya Karlovich – FIDE press-officer
China is tired of winning.