China Wins World Team Championship
Tuesday, April 28, 2015 at 4:50PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2015 World Team Championships

Considering that the Chinese team won last year's Olympiad in Tromso, it's not all that surprising that they won the World Team Championship this year as well. Their team went an undefeated +6=3 to come in first with 15 match points, well ahead of the runner-up team from Ukraine which went +5-2=2 (12 points) and the third-placed Armenians (+5-3=1, 11 match points). On board 1 they were led by 22-year-old Ding Liren (TPR 2794), who is now 11th in the world (2757.4 - I think both marks are records for Chinese players, but I could be wrong about this), while the top score (7/9) and highest TPR (2825) was turned in by 15-year-old wunderkind Wei Yi. He's now 2717.5 and #34 in the world.

Russia and the U.S. tied for fourth-fifth on match points (10 apiece, based on identical +4-3=2 scores), with Russia coming out ahead on board points. Still, the U.S. team's Aleks Lenderman gets some bragging rights, as he had the largest rating gain of the tournament, picking up 19 Elo points (thanks to a 2788 TPR) to reach a 2636 rating. After a draw with Yu Yangyi, a loss to Zoltan Almasi and a draw with Sergei Movsesian he caught fire, finishing with wins over Samy Shoker, Emil Sutovsky, Vasil Ivanchuk and Lazaro Bruzon.

Some other outstanding TPRs: Levon Aronian (2805 - probably his best performance in quite some time), Yuriy Kryvoruchko (2799) and Yuniesky Quesada Perez (2783). Here are the full team scores for the event:

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