Champion
HUN-A (HUN)
Hungary A |
The all-conquering Hungary A team - Péter Petrecz ITM, Zoltán Németh ITM, Tamás Gombkötő, László Szobonya and János Püspöki ITM have retained the World Team Tantrix Championship, winning the Final with four games to spare. They beat the no. 4 seeds in the QFs, the no. 3 seeds in the SFs and the no. 2 seeds in the Final, so they certainly did it the hard way! Runners-up NZL A have now finished in a different one of the top three positions every year. No. 3 seeds GBR A finished 3rd, the first time a UK has finished in the top three - they also got closer to HUN A than any other team in the KO phase, though quarter-finalists AUS B actually beat HUN A in a half-length (i.e. 15 game) match in the group phase. The top unseeded team was HUN B in 4th place.
29 teams from 11 countries and 2 regional groupings of 3 and 5 countries entered this year's event. 19 teams (all 13 A teams and the six highest-rated 6 B/C teams) qualified for the group phase automatically and 5 more joined them by winning a preliminary round match. 8 teams from 4 countries (GBR, HUN, AUS & NZL) reached the KO phase. This is also the first major tournament where the top three seeds have finished in 1st-3rd in the right order, perhaps suggesting that a 30 games is just about enough to even out the luck factor in a match.
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