The Women’s World Chess Team Championship will take place from 2nd-12th March at the Duma Hotel in Astana, Kazakhstan.
The organizers of the coming event are the Chess Federation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the FIDE World Chess Federation, with the support of Astana’s Agency for Sports and Physical Education and the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
The best teams of the world will participate in the Championship. Among them, the three teams that were ranked as the best at the World Chess Olympiad, five continental champions, the country-organizer and one team elected by the FIDE President.
Astana will gather around 50 best chess players from ten countries: China, Russia, Ukraine, USA, India, France, Turkey, Georgia, Romania 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.
The Chinese team won all the championships in the past. Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue are not coming to Astana and it is going to be difficult for the team to prove their dominance without its strongest 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 refused to play for the team under the leadership of the trainer Sergei Rublevsky, citing ‘psychological incompatibility’.
Women’s World Champion Anna Ushenina will play for Ukraine and it will be her first official event since she won the title.
The top-seed of the tournament will be the Georgian team. They will play in Astana with the same line-up as in Mardin. In the last WWCTC, Georgia managed to win bronze medal.
Is Sopiko Guramishvili going to be there?
If not, I do not care about it.