Dubov Clutch Win Gives Al-Ain World Rapid Team Championship Gold

GM Daniil Dubov's only win of the 2024 World Rapid & Blitz Team Championships saw his team Al-Ain ACMG UAE take gold in a nail-biting finish. World Champion Ding Liren's Decade China Team took silver, with Pang Bo scoring 11/11 on board six, while GM Hou Yifan's 102-move win gave WR Chess bronze by the narrowest of margins, after GM Magnus Carlsen sat out the last round, avoiding a clash with GM Hans Niemann. 

The event now ends with the one-day World Blitz Team Championship, that starts Monday, August 5, at 2 a.m. ET / 08:00 CEST / 11:30 a.m. IST.

• Dubov's 1st Win Gives Al-Ain Gold
• Pang Bo's 11/11 Helps Decade China Team To Silver
• Carlsen Avoids Niemann But WR Chess Sneak Home With Bronze

After a final round that was much more tense than anyone expected, the top five teams finished neatly a point apart from Al-Ain's 21 points to Team MGD1's 17. 

FIDE World Rapid Team Championship Final Standings (Top 15)

Full games and standings

Dubov's 1st Win Gives Al-Ain Gold

Al-Ain went into the final day with a one-point lead, and with strong opponents running out the first clash against Team MGD1 seemed to be the last big hurdle the team would face to win gold. It certainly proved tough, as GM Arjun Erigaisi, who shrugged off his loss to Carlsen to post a 9.5/12 score and a 2836 performance, took down Dubov.

GM Dmitry Andreikin, the top performer for Al Ain with an unbeaten 9/10, rescued a 3-3 draw. That kept the lead, since the Chinese team was also held to a draw. 

A comfortable win in round 10 was followed by a match against GMHans.com that could have gone any way. Al-Ain won 3.5-2.5, but GM Brandon Jacobson missed a win against GM Volodar Murzin, GM Andrew Hong missed a save against GM Dmitry Andreikin, and GM Vladislav Artemiev had been worse against GM Amin Tabatabaei until 31.Rc4?? offered Black a way to win on the spot.

Can you see the winning move? 

That scare looked sure to be the end of the drama as far as gold medals were concerned. Al-Ain went into the final round knowing a win would guarantee gold, and the opponent was 14th-seeded Theme International Trading from Singapore.

Would it be a walkover? Not even close!

GM Parham Maghsoodloo had been taking huge risks during the event, but it kept paying off... until the final round, when he came up against an inspired GM Rinat Jumabayev, who would finish on a 10.5/12 score. Maghsoodloo got a piece trapped and never managed to untangle it as he went on to suffer his first defeat.

Andreikin has already won for Al-Ain, but Maghsoodloo has got into some trouble! https://t.co/SMpuBoQuKI pic.twitter.com/Ajk8ActVOz

— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2024

That canceled out a win for Andreikin and left the gold-medal hopes of the team resting on Dubov, who had yet to win a game and said his loss against Carlsen had been his best game of the tournament by far. "At least I was responsible for the team spirit—I was always telling them, look, it goes well unless I win!" he joked afterward. Finally, however, he had no choice.

He managed to get 24-year-old Singaporean number-one GM Tin Jingyao on the ropes. Finishing things off was far from easy, but Dubov was confident given his opponent's low time on the clock (24 seconds when we join the game) and the fact that "there’s no schematic way to hold this with Black." Dubov took three minutes of his remaining five to play 47.Qa8!.

A very relieved Maghsoodloo was the first player to congratulate Dubov. 

Experience the final moments and emotions as Al-Ain ACMG UAE become the 2024 FIDE World Rapid Team Champions! 🤩 pic.twitter.com/8NptnJrthG

— International Chess Federation (@FIDE_chess) August 4, 2024

Dubov commented:

It’s nice to win an important game. I had this weird feeling many times I was part of the winning team being a key player, and I was always saying it was a team effort and every person matters and stuff, but this was potentially my first time as the worst player of the team, and I was like, yeah, it’s a team effort, but basically without me these people would have won easily... The final round made it different, in this sense it’s nice! 

This was potentially my first time as the worst player of the team.

—Daniil Dubov

There's not long to celebrate, however, since the teams return on Monday to play Blitz, with the matches starting 3.5 hours earlier than on the first three days. 

Pang Bo's 11/11 Helps Decade China Team To Silver

The Chinese team almost sneaked gold after winning its last three matches 5-1, 5.5-0.5, and 6-0, but the reason it stayed unbeaten, including in the first match of the final day, was that the "recreational player" was a force of nature and all but guaranteed a headstart each round.

A perfect 11/11 for Chinese Man of Mystery Pang Bo! pic.twitter.com/5UqbLXEyFc

— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2024

China had fully exploited the obvious loophole in the regulations, which was the assumption that a player who had never been rated above 2,000 was a player of under 2,000 strength. Pang explained he was a strong player who had just never played in a FIDE-rated tournament, which isn't so common in China. He'd found his way onto the team from a university connection to team captain GM Ni Hua. 

Pang Bo says he's 26 year old, and it's about 20 years from the first time he started playing chess!

He says nobody recorded all the games he played in his childhood, then he went to university and got a job... Nobody recorded my playing style and nobody knows who I played. pic.twitter.com/zzVwsk3mJC

— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2024

Of course, one player doesn't make a team, and the top-three boards for China played all 12 rounds and performed well. World Champion Ding Liren lost one game to Carlsen but won his first and last three to score 8.5/12, the same as GM Yu Yangyi, who remained unbeaten.

The star was GM Wei Yi, who has been going from strength to strength lately and with a 10/12, 2822 performance, has moved up to the number-two spot on the Rapid live ratings.

Of course, bare stats don't always tell the whole story. For instance, Ding's last-round position was very drawish until a one-move game-ending blunder, while Wei's 31...Nxf2? against GM Timur Gareyev was losing, if his opponent had found the refutation with 30 seconds on the clock.

China didn't quite repeated the gold medal performance—in the 2014 Tromso Chess Olympiad—that the "decade" in their name refers to, but the team still has a chance in the Blitz. 

Carlsen Avoids Niemann But WR Chess Sneak Home With Bronze

WR Chess Team owner Wadim Rosenstein scored 6/12 in 2023 as his team won the first-ever FIDE World Rapid Team Championship, but since then his team's rivals have understood how to fully make use of the "recreational board." Facing opponents who were often clearly stronger than their ratings, he went on to do an anti-Pang Bo—losing 11 games in a row after a round-one win. 

That was a huge handicap for the team to deal with, and the damage had been done on the first two days with losses to key rivals, but on the final day the team managed to achieve the maximum four wins, even if three of them were by the narrowest 3.5-2.5 margin. In the end the final match, which was vital to win to take bronze, would be the most tense of them all.

A noteworthy feature of the match was the absence of Carlsen, who had done Carlsen things to post the top performance of 2895, despite the loss to GM Richard Rapport.

Why was he missing from the final round? Well, one reason could be that he didn't particularly relish a first over-the-board meeting with Niemann since their infamous game in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, though it's notable that they have played online, for instance in a recent Titled Tuesday. Niemann had no doubts.

If you aren’t willing to handle things on the chess board, don’t even bother playing. Chess is the greatest combination of art and war. Cowardice leads to inevitable defeat.

— Hans Niemann (@HansMokeNiemann) August 4, 2024

There was no inevitable defeat to follow, though it was a nerve-racking match. Nepomniachtchi played the driest game possible to neutralize Niemann, while there were wins for two players who hadn't been firing on all cylinders for WR Chess, GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov and GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The latter's spectacular victory over GM Amin Tabatabaei is our Game of the Day and has been analyzed by GM Rafael Leitao below.

Those wins were canceled out by the loss on the bottom board, however, and a shock turnaround as Jacobson's counterattack overwhelmed GM Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu. Chessy won its final match 4.5-1.5 despite a loss for Rapport and was positioned to take bronze medals unless GM Hou Yifan could win her game.

Hou Yifan is trying to squeeze out the win needed to give WR Chess bronze medals! https://t.co/DRnP9eZG3j pic.twitter.com/wGHNqHQr8o

— chess24 (@chess24com) August 4, 2024

The women's number-one had, like Dubov, had a disappointing event, losing her first three games to female rivals, but she would also end up the team hero. The endgame revolves around the f4-square.

Hou's win meant WR Chess had finished on the podium after a tough event and can now fight for gold in the Blitz, though the suspicion is that Pang Bo is probably quite good at that too! 

How to watch?

The 2024 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships run August 2-5 in Astana, Kazakhstan, with 40 teams of six players competing. Each team must feature at least one female player and one "recreational player," never rated 2000+. The Rapid is a 12-round Swiss with a time control of 15 minutes for all moves, plus a 10-second increment per move. The Blitz (3+2) begins with teams playing a round-robin in pools, before the top 16 play a knockout, where each clash features two mini-matches.

Previous coverage:

• Day 2: Carlsen Beats Ding As Maghsoodloo Powers Al-Ain Into Sole Lead
• Day 1: Rapport Beats Carlsen In 23 Moves As World Rapid Team Favorites Crash To Defeat