FIDE loves a rule-change. And this year it brought in a series of tweaks for the upcoming 2025 World Rapid & Blitz in Doha. They won't, however, prevent a repeat of last year's rule-based furore.

Yet again, instead of spending time with loved ones chess fans around the world will be spending the holiday period glued to screens watching the 2025 FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships.

The tournament is fast, it's furious and it's a lot of fun. You can't blame them.

Last year, there was the added spice of the Magnus Carlsen "jeansgate" controversy, and then Norway's world number-one agreeing with Ian Nepomniachtchi to share the World Blitz title after they seemingly couldn't be bothered to battle it out in sudden death to find a winner.

What a surprise that was. We still can't work out whether having co-champions—something FIDE did not plan on—was good, or bad, for chess.

Sudden death lives

So have FIDE moved to prevent a repeat? It appears not. Sudden death tiebreaks will remain when the event heads to Qatar and calls for armageddon to break potential deadlocks like Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi have been ignored.

It means Doha could be in danger of being remembered as Draw-ha, if competing grandmasters take a lead from Carlsen and Nepo and avoid any risks when trying to resolve a tie. Like last year, there is nothing to stop players drawing every single game on purpose. The loophole is unfixed.

So what's changed?

However, the governing body of chess has still been busy tweaking. In come a series of other interesting changes announced this week.

It’s now a 19-round Swiss tournament in the Open section and 15 rounds in Women’s. This is up from 13 rounds in the Open and 11 in the Women’s section.

Whether this will make the event more or less unpredictable, we don't know. But, in theory, the cream should rise to the top the longer the Swiss goes on.

It needs to. This year, only the top four will make it to the knockout, instead of top eight. It's possible, of course, that five or more players could end up with the same points at the top of the leaderboard which will make the final round difficult to grasp.

FIDE's take

FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich, overseeing the eighth World Rapid & Blitz since he was elected in 2018, gave some insight into the thinking in comments on the FIDE website.

“The World Rapid & Blitz has traditionally been one of FIDE’s most closely followed events globally, playing a key role in promoting chess to a broader audience,” he said.

“We’re planning every detail to make it a world-class event. We are very fortunate to have support from the Qatar Chess Association, which is working hard with FIDE to put on a great chess show at the end of this year, and we’re looking forward to it,” Dvorkovich added.

Let's see what happens if Carlsen and Nepo get to the final again this holiday season. In the meantime, we also have November's FIDE World Cup to look forward to.