Hikaru Nakamura's WR Chess wins World Blitz Team Championship in controversial fashion: 'This whole appeal thing was a mess'

World No.2 Hikaru Nakamura’s WR Chess won the FIDE World Blitz Team Championship on Sunday for a second time in a row. However, their victory didn’t come without a controversy as Vincent Keymer’s Germany and Friends defeated WR Chess 4-2 in the quarter-finals, with Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alireza Firouzja and Nakamura all losing, but the result was later annulled after an appeal.

WR Chess’s appeal was regarding some of their players coming late to the matches, as the organisers forgot to announce the start time. In fact, some of the players from the WR Chess team were almost two minutes late for the three-minute blitz games.

“They always put the start time in this captains’ admin group that we have, and this time the last communication was that 15:17 is when the line-ups are due, which was written at 15:15, and after that nothing, so we were waiting for the start time to be in the group. Nothing happened, we went, but you can’t put the last communication 15:17, line-ups are due, and then start 15:22 without informing us. It’s a fairly obvious case, in my opinion,” said WR Chess team captain Jan Gustafsson, while explaining the whole situation.

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WR Chess’ victory leads to controversy

Russian Grandmaster Nepomniachtchi, who represented WR Chess, was relieved that the match was replayed, but he wasn’t impressed with how the decision was made.

“This whole appeal thing was a mess, to be honest, and I wasn’t sure if the appeal would be successful or not. Eventually they allowed us to replay the match, but I don’t think there was a good decision.”

Germany and Friends’ player Bohdan Lobkin believed the decision would have been different if his team had been the one making the appeal.

After Germany and Friends accepted the annulment, WR Chess won 4.5-1.5 and 4-2. They then defeated Hexamind Chess Team in the semi-finals and KazChess in the final to win the FIDE World Blitz Team Championship 2025.

Arjun Erigaisi’s Team MGD1, who won the World Rapid Team Championship, lost to Hexamind in the quarter-finals. After a 3-3 draw, Hexamind clinched a 4-2 victory in the next round.