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The World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships 2012 was a chess event consisting of two 16 player tournaments to decide the world champions in speed chess. The event ran from 1 to 11 July 2012 in Astana, Kazakhstan. The world rapid chess champion was determined by a round robin in which all participants played each other once in a 15 minute time control with a ten second increment. The world blitz chess champion was then determined by a double round robin where each participant played each other twice in a 3 minute time control with a two second increment. A women's version of the event was held earlier in the year.

The rapid tournament was won by Sergey Karjakin with a score of 10.5/15. The blitz tournament was won by Alexander Grischuk with a score of 20/30. Magnus Carlsen, at that time the highest rated player finished second in both events.

Background
Prior to the mid-2000s, FIDE had occasionally recognised a world champion in forms of speed chess as a parallel to the classical world chess champion. In 2006, the World Blitz Championship was established and continued through to 2010. It had been intended to hold a further edition in 2011 but this was ultimately cancelled when no bids were placed to host the event. The 2012 event was re-dubbed as the world

Format
Both tournaments had 16 players. The top 10 players in the world by rating were eligible to participate in both tournaments. Three players then qualified to each tournament via semi-final events held before the main tournaments. The Kazakhstan Chess Federation was then able to make two nominations to each event due to its position as organiser and the final place was a nominee of the FIDE President.

The rapid tournament was held as a round robin, with each participant playing all others once in a 15 minute game with a 10 second increment. The blitz tournament was a double round robin, with each participant playing all others twice in 3 minute games with a 2 second increment. The winner of the tournament was then determined by points scored across all games with ties to be determined by comparing (1) The results of individual games between tied players (2) the number of wins of tied players (3) the Sonneborn-Berger score of tied players and (4) an 'Armageddon' tie break game. The rules provided that if two or more players were tied for first place, there would be a tie-break game between the two best performing players against these metrics to decide the winner of the event.

Qualifiers
10 players were eligible to participate in both events by rating according to the January 2012 rating list:

Magnus Carlsen (2835) Teimour Radjabov (2784) Sergey Karjakin (2779) Alexander Morozevich (2769) Vassily Ivanchuk (2764) Alexander Grischuk (2761) Veselin Topalov (2752) Peter Svidler (2741) Boris Gelfand (2727) Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2726)

In addition, FIDE nominated Victor Bologan (2732) to participate in both events.

The semi-finalists who were able to participate in the rapid event were Igor Kurnosov (2605), Aleksey Dreev (2677) and Vladislav Tkachiev (2644). The Kazakstan Chess Federation nominees were Murtas Kazhgaleyev (2595) and Anuar Ismagambetov (2478)

The semi-finalists who qualified to participate in the blitz event were Dmitry Andreikin (2700), Lê Quang Liêm (2693) and Nikolai Chadaev (2605). The Kazakstan Chess Federation nominees were Rinat Jumabayev (2556) and Pavel Kotsur (2548).

Results
Note: Numbers in the crosstable in a white background indicate the result playing the respective opponent with the white pieces (black pieces if on a black background).