Russia Wins World Team Championship
Friday, March 15, 2019 at 10:29PM
Dennis Monokroussos in 2019 World Team Championship

This is old news, as they had already clinched with a round to spare, but for completeness' sake we'll note that their last-round win over India made it official, while pushing India off the medal platform. England crushed Sweden 3.5-.5 to take second, China defeated Kazakhstan 2.5-1.5 to take third, the U.S. defeated Iran 3-1 to come in fifth, behind England. (Azerbaijan defeated Egypt in the last match.) Here are the final standings, with 2-1-0 scoring:

1. Russia 16
2. England 13
3. China 12
4. India 11 (on tiebreaks, with 22 board points)
5. U.S. 11 (on tiebreaks - 20.5 board points)
6. Iran 8 (18 b.p.)
7. Azerbaijan (16.5 b.p.)
8. Kazakhstan 4 (14.5 b.p.)
9. Sweden 4 (10.5 b.p.)
10. Egypt 3

There was a concurrent women's event, won by the Chinese who swept the field, going 18-0 (9-0 on 1-.5-0 scoring). Russia was second with 14 points, and had only one viewer board point than the Chinese, to whom they lost 2.5-1.5 in round 5. Had they won that match and everything else remained the same, they would have won the event. IF. The Chinese were never in danger of losing the match, and the most the Russians could reasonably have hoped for, given the way things went, was a draw. Moving on, Georgia and Ukraine tied for 3rd-4th with 12 match points apiece, but Georgia scored 2.5 more board points than the Ukranians. (Their match was drawn, incidentally.) Kazakhstan was fifth (10 points), India sixth (9), U.S. seventh (7), Armenia and Hungary 8th-9th (4 points apiece, but Armenia had 15 board points to Hungary's 11.5), and the Egyptians lost all their matches, scoring only four board points in the entire event.

Event website here.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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