On 10 December, in the Polish town of Julinek, the World Rapid Checkers Championships for Women and Men took place, where our checker player Jelena Chesnokova demonstrated an outstanding game, becoming the Women’s World Champion by scoring 10 points in seven rounds. The runner-up was Darya Tkachenko of the Netherlands, the world vice-champion with classical time control, and the third place went to Natalia Sadowska of Poland, the overall winner of this year’s World Cup.
Guntis Valneris had the best result of the Latvian checkers players in the Men’s World Championship, scoring 13 points to take second to sixth place. However, additional criteria ranked our Grand Master fifth. Our checkers players Raimonds Vipulis and Gunārs Gribuška fought well and with 12 points won the ninth and twelfth place respectively. The men’s world champion was Dutch grandmaster Jan Groenendijk, who won this year’s World Cup in Riga. The Dutch Grandmaster Martijn van Isejdoorn came second and the bronze medal went to Ukrainian Grandmaster Artem Ivanov.
