Home Chess News Magnus Carlsen & Kateryna Lagno win World Blitz Championship

Magnus Carlsen & Kateryna Lagno win World Blitz Championship

December 31, 2018

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Magnus Carlsen & Kateryna Lagno win World Blitz Championship

Magnus Carlsen won the World Blitz Chess Championship with an impressive score of 17 points from 21 games. He took the lead from 10 and retained it until the end to go home with USD 60,000.

Duda Jan-Krzysztof who chased Magnus all the way from round 12 ended with 16.5 points in 2nd place to go home with USD 50,000.

Nakamura Hikaru was third with 14.5 points went home with USD 40,000.

Winner of the Blitz Championship. Middle Magnus Carlsen, left Duda Jan-Krzysztof and Nakamura Hikaru. Photo credit Lennart Ootes.

Kateryna Lagno of Russia won the Ladies section with a score of 13.5 points from 17 games. She also went through without a single loss and won USD 40,000.

Winner of the Blitz Championship. From left silver Sarasadat Khademaisharieh , winner Kateryna Lagno & Tingjie Lei . Photo credit Lennart Ootes.

Sarasadat Khademaisharieh of Iran was second with 13 points and she went home with USD 30,000.

Tingjie Lei of China was third with 12.5 points and earned USD 20,000.

Prize winners of both the Rapid and the Blitz section with the officials. Photo credit Lennart Ootes.

Players from Africa

Adly Ahmed was a star performer as he ended with 13 points and in position 20. Adly defeated some big names on his way and included Nakamura Hikaru and Sergey Karjakin!

GM Amin Bassem of Egypt (2603) ended in position 47 with a respectable 12 points out of 21 games.

GM Amin Bassem of Egypt (photo credit Lennart Ootes).

IM Mohamed Tissir of Morocco ended in position 153 with 9 points out of 15 games.

Ahmed Hassan Abdillahi (1570) of Djibouti who played in the Rapid Championship did not take part in the Blitz Championship.

Adly Ahmed v Sergey Karjakin

Nakamura Hikaru v Adly Ahmed

Unsung heroes

An event with about 330 players would require a huge number of unsung heroes working in the background to keep the event running as per plan. These would include the arbiters and the helpers.

Arbiters and helpers pose for a photo. Photo credit Lennart Ootes. — Arbiters, helpers & FIDE officials pose for a photo. FIDE Vice President Anastasia Sorokina sitting in the middle. Photo credit Lennart Ootes.

The other heroes are those who kept us well entertained of what was going on in St Petersburg with their photographs.

Our star photographers from the event - standing from left Anastasiya Karlovych, Lennart Ootes, Eteri Kublashvili & Boris Dolmatovsky. Photo credit Maria Emelianova. — Our star photographers from the event – standing from left Anastasiya Karlovych, Lennart Ootes, Eteri Kublashvili & Boris Dolmatovsky. Photo credit Maria Emelianova.

Maria Emelianova of www.chess.com in action. Photo credit Lennart Ootes.

Special thanks

This event was a massive success despite the incredibly short time to set it up. FIDE and the Russian Chess Federation can be proud of their achievement as this event had most of the world’s best players taking part.

The main sponsor was King Salman of Saudi Arabia. Other sponsors included Gazprom,Russian Railways, Sberbank, & PhosAgro