The 2024 World Blitz Teams Championship was full on, both for teams, and organisers. The qualifying section consisted of 5 pools of 8 teams (40 in total), with the schedule only allowing 20 minutes between games. The action was both fast an exciting, but at the end of the 7 rounds, almost all the top seeded teams made it through to the knock out stage.
After a break 16 teams played a KO 'Duel' where they faced each other twice, and a team had to win both games, or win and draw, to advance (total game points did not count). In the case of a draw (one match win each or both drawn) a single match was played (and 3-3 meant another match etc). Fortunately there were only replays required for 2 rounds.
At the end of a long day, WR Chess Team (top seeds) were the champions. This made up for their disappointing 3rd in the Rapid section and earned them 40000 euro.
For me it was hard work (especially at the start), but as I was working in the playing hall for the day, I did get to see more of the action. One of the more interesting things I noticed was the increase in noise from clocks being hit as games reached their conclusions. At the start of the round it was very quiet but by 5 minutes in, it was like a clogging convention.
With that event, the 2024 World Rapid and Blitz comes to an end. It was a very hard 4 days of work for me (and the entire arbiting team) so I'm of the the UK for a couple of weeks of sightseeing and rest.
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