Armenian chess team wins 8th World Team Championship in Ningbo

On July 27 Armenia gave a warm welcome to its men national chess team, which with not a single defeat became the world chess champion at the 8th World Team Championship held on July 15-26 in the Chinese city of Ningbo.

The chess team included the top-ranking chess players of Armenia: Levon Aronyan, Vladimir Akopyan, Gabriel Sarkisyan, Sergey Movsisyan and Robert Ovannisyan.

Apart from Armenia, the tournament was played by the men's chess teams from China, Ukraine, Russia, India, USA, Azerbaijan, Israel and Hungary.

According to Samvel Avakyan, a chess commentator, Armenia managed to show worthy performance. "This is a victory of our entire nation. We deserved to be treated as the followers of Tigran Petrosyan, the 9th World Chess Champion," he said. "We have the right to proudly announce that. These people are true heroes. I myself played at championships of Armenia and the Soviet Union, and I know that our today's victory is an outcome of painstaking work. Our players have been training for 7-8 hours a day. Otherwise, victories are impossible."

The commentator believes that at present there are three chess players in the world who are "by 1.5 head-sizes above their rivals": the Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, the current World Champion Viswanathan Anand and the many times World Champion Levon Aronyan. They are the only chess players in the world whose rating is above 2800 points according to the Elo system.

The highest rating in this system in history – 2851 points – belongs to the Soviet and Russian chess player Garry Kasparov.