World Chess Championship Blitz & Rapid Inauguration Ceremony Today in Astana

The chess world is going to witness the first-ever World Chess Championship in Rapid and Blitz formats of the sport in Astana, Kazakhstan. The head of the country of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev will officially declare open the World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Astana today - July 5.

The inauguration ceremony would be held in Astana at the Radisson hotel and would include the drawing of colours for the pairings. Not only is the format exciting, but so is the line-up of players: the strongest in the world.



The participants include: Magnus Carlsen, Boris Gelfand, Sergey Karjakin, Veselin Topalov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Teimour Radjabov, Alexander Grischuk and others. 

The qualifiers for the Rapid and Blitz have finished and the top-three players have qualified from each section: Blitz-Dmitry Andreikin, Le Quang Liem and Nikolay Chadaev; Rapid-Igor Kurnosov, Alexey Dreev and Vladislav Tkachiev.

Murtas Kazhgaleyev and Anuar Ismagambetov in rapid, Pavel Kotsur and Rinat Jumabayev in blitz will represent Kazakhstan at the World Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships. The chief arbiter is Andrzej Filipowicz. The deputy chief arbiter is Sergey Yurovsky. The total prize fund is $400,000. The chess games would start on July 6 and you can watch live at the official website www.worldchess.kz.

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