The World Rapid Chess Championship 2021 was the 2021 edition of the annual World Rapid Chess Championship held by FIDE to determine the world champion in chess played under rapid time controls. Since 2012, FIDE has held the World Rapid and Blitz Championships at a joint tournament. Originally planned to be held in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, new coronavirus restrictions introduced by the Kazakh government prompted FIDE to change the location of the tournament to Warsaw, Poland.
The event took place at the Stadion Narodowy in Warsaw between 26 and 28 December 2021, using a Swiss-system with 13 rounds for the open tournament and 11 rounds for the women's tournament. Players who were eligible to participate in the open tournament must have either been rated at least 2550 Elo in a FIDE rating list during 2021, or were a reigning national champion. The time control for the tournament was 15+10, meaning each player initially started with 15 minutes and gained 10 seconds increment with each move.
176 players took part in the open tournament, and 103 in the women's tournament.
The prize fund for both the open and women's tournament is shown below. In case of a tie (except for first place) all prize money was shared between the players. Players outside the brackets did not receive any prize money. All amounts are in United States dollars.
Open tournament:
Total: $350,000
Women's tournament:
Total: $150,000
The opening ceremony took place on Saturday 25 December. Start times are approximate as all matches in the previous round had to finish before the next round could commence. All times are CET.
For players who finished on the same score, final position was determined by the following tie-breaks, in order:
If two or more players were tied for any position other than first, the above mentioned tiebreak system decided the ranking of the tied players.
If two or more players were tied for first, the top two players who finished the highest on the above mentioned tiebreaks would play a two game mini match with the time control of 3+2 (with colours of the first game drawn) to decide the winner. If the score was tied 1-1, the players would continue to play single 3+2 games until one of the players won one game (the player who finished highest on the above mentioned tiebreaks would have the white pieces for the first game and the colours would alternate from the next game).
The following table lists all participants, with the results from the 13 rounds. They are ranked according to the results, taking into account the tie-breaks.
Notation: "1 (W 116)" indicates a win (1 point) with white pieces (W) against player of rank 116 (Victor Mikhalevski)
Four players (defending world champion Magnus Carlsen, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Fabiano Caruana) were tied for first after 13 rounds. Among these, the two players with the highest Buchholz Cut 1 score (Abdusattorov and Nepomniachtchi) played a title play-off in blitz time controls to decide the winner. Abdusattorov won the match 1.5 - 0.5 to become World Rapid Champion.
The following table lists all participants, with the results from the 13 rounds. They are ranked according to the results, taking into account the tie-breaks.
Notation: "1 (B 83)" indicates a win (1 point) with black pieces (B) against player of rank 83 (Mihaela Sandu). The first tiebreak (labeled BC1) is the Buchholz Cut 1 score, the second tiebreak (labeled BS) is the Buchholz score, and the third tiebreak (labelled AROC1) is the average rating of opponents cut 1.