World Blitz Chess Championship

[1] The first blitz chess tournament to be recognized by FIDE as a "world championship" took place on 6 September 2006 in Rishon Lezion, Israel.

[4] In 2009, the championship returned to Moscow, where the format was once again switched to a 22-player double round-robin with revised time controls of 3 minutes per player plus a 2-second increment.

Despite losing both his final games, Armenian Grandmaster Levon Aronian was able to clinch the title with 24½/38, half a point ahead of Teimour Radjabov.

[7] On May 31, 2012, FIDE announced the inaugural World Rapid & Blitz Championships, set to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan, from July 1 to 11.

The top three finishers in the standings are awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals respectively; tiebreaks are determined by the average rating of opponents.

[12] On 8 April 1970, following the USSR vs. Rest of the World 'Match of the Century' hosted in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, a blitz tournament was held in Herceg Novi, featuring many of the same participants from the match.

Fischer scored a staggering 8½/10 against the five Soviet grandmasters in attendance, dropping only one game in the entire tournament and frequently gaining huge time advantages.

"I don’t know what Petrosian, Korchnoi, Bronstein, and Smyslov counted on before the start of the tournament, but I expected them to be the most probable rivals for the top prizes.

"[24]Following the Candidates' matches for the 1988 cycle, a World Blitz Championship was hosted in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, on 19 February 1988.

The field was headlined by long-time rivals Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, with the former considered the favorite to win the tournament.

Notable participants included: Former world champion Anatoly Karpov fell out of contention for the championship in just the second round, after dropping his first two games against fellow Soviet grandmaster Alexander Chernin.

Joining him in the finals was Rafael Vaganian, who survived a controversial semifinal against Kiril Georgiev; the Armenian nearly punched his clock after making an illegal move in Game 2, an accusation that was eventually refuted after match officials resorted to a video review and found that Vaganian's hand had stopped just short of touching the clock.