World Rapid Chess Championship

The World Rapid Chess Championship is a match or tournament held to determine the World Champion in chess played under rapid time controls. Prior to 2012, the FIDE gave such recognition to a limited number of tournaments, with non-FIDE recognized tournaments annually naming a world rapid champion of their own. Since 2012, FIDE has held an annual joint rapid and blitz chess tournament and billed it as the Word Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships. The current world rapid champion is Ukrainian grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk.

The concept of rapid chess (then called "active chess") made its debut at a 1987 FIDE Congress meeting in Seville, Spain. During the World Active Chess Championship the following year, time controls were set at 30 minutes per player per game. In 1993, following his split from FIDE, world champion Garry Kasparov organized a slightly quicker version of active chess, dubbing it "rapid chess". The Professional Chess Association, Kasparov's answer to FIDE, subsequently organized two Grand Prix cycles of rapid chess before folding in 1996. Under rapid chess time controls, each player was allowed 25 minutes with an additional 10 seconds after each move. The FIDE would re-use these time controls and the "rapid chess" moniker for the 2003 FIDE World Rapid Chess Championship, held in Cap d'Agde. During the World Cup 2013, these time controls were also used for the rapid tiebreak stages.

In 2012, FIDE inaugurated the World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championships. The current time controls for the rapid championship are set at 15 minutes per player, with a 10-second increment.

Prior to 2012, FIDE sporadically sanctioned a world rapid chess championship. The first official high-profile rapid match took place in 1987, when then-world champion Garry Kasparov defeated Nigel Short in the "London Docklands Speed Chess Challenge" at the London Hippodrome. Kasparov won the match with 4 wins, two losses, and no draws in six games.

In 1988, FIDE organized the inaugural World Active Chess Championship, a 61-player rapid chess tournament in Mazatlan, Mexico hosted by the Mazatlan Hoteliers Association. Notable participants included:

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