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2025 RKWC recap

#1

Hi everyone, here's a short recap of the 2025 RK World Championship cycle.

The 2025 RKWC ran from July to December and had 44 players.

In the leadup to the final on Christmas Eve, @Natso had an incredible undefeated run, beating the other finalist @CyberShredder twice on the way and only drawing one match in the Candidates to @seth_777. Meanwhile, after losing to @Natso in the double elimination stage, @CyberShredder had to face 2019 RKWC finalist @sachmaty8 in the lower bracket before going 2 out of 3 in the Candidates.

Going into the finals, @CyberShredder was clearly more experienced, with this being his 4th RKWC final after 2021, 2022 and 2023. Despite this being his first time on the big stage in RKWC, @Natso had also played his share of variant finals - he won the 2024 Atomic WC and narrowly lost the 2025 rematch just 4 days before the match with @CyberShredder.

Because he won the Candidates with 2.5 points out of 3, @Natso started with a 2-point lead in the final and he made good use of it, winning the match with a convincing 10.5 - 5.5. Congratulations to @Natso, who's now become a world champion in 2 different variants - an extremely rare and impressive achievement!

If you want more details of the games from the finals, here is a study of the games:

https://lichess.org/study/1mfvUs9b

There was no stream for the final this year, but the winner @Natso made an insightful recap video with 3x World Champion @RoyalManiac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFk2D_xdhME

The 2025 bracket can be found here: https://challonge.com/rkwc2025 Here are the standings according to challonge: https://challonge.com/rkwc2025/standings The announcement was posted here (https://lichess.org/forum/team-racing-kings-wc/2025-rkwc-announcement--registrations), the match times were posted here (https://lichess.org/forum/team-racing-kings-wc/2025-rkwc-pairings--match-time-announcements) and (some of) the results were posted here (https://lichess.org/forum/team-racing-kings-wc/2025-rkwc-match-results).

Finally, we'd like to thank everyone for playing; the event wouldn't be possible without you and we hope you all enjoyed it! Also, many thanks to the other TDs @FS-Schach and @Natso, as well as @seth_777 - who updated results on challonge - and @RoyalManiac, who hosted the rules and information on his website.

Hi everyone, here's a short recap of the 2025 RK World Championship cycle. The 2025 RKWC ran from July to December and had 44 players. In the leadup to the final on Christmas Eve, @Natso had an incredible undefeated run, beating the other finalist @CyberShredder twice on the way and only drawing one match in the Candidates to @seth_777. Meanwhile, after losing to @Natso in the double elimination stage, @CyberShredder had to face 2019 RKWC finalist @sachmaty8 in the lower bracket before going 2 out of 3 in the Candidates. Going into the finals, @CyberShredder was clearly more experienced, with this being his 4th RKWC final after 2021, 2022 and 2023. Despite this being his first time on the big stage in RKWC, @Natso had also played his share of variant finals - he won the 2024 Atomic WC and narrowly lost the 2025 rematch just 4 days before the match with @CyberShredder. Because he won the Candidates with 2.5 points out of 3, @Natso started with a 2-point lead in the final and he made good use of it, winning the match with a convincing 10.5 - 5.5. Congratulations to @Natso, who's now become a world champion in 2 different variants - an extremely rare and impressive achievement! If you want more details of the games from the finals, here is a study of the games: https://lichess.org/study/1mfvUs9b There was no stream for the final this year, but the winner @Natso made an insightful recap video with 3x World Champion @RoyalManiac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFk2D_xdhME The 2025 bracket can be found here: https://challonge.com/rkwc2025 Here are the standings according to challonge: https://challonge.com/rkwc2025/standings The announcement was posted here (https://lichess.org/forum/team-racing-kings-wc/2025-rkwc-announcement--registrations), the match times were posted here (https://lichess.org/forum/team-racing-kings-wc/2025-rkwc-pairings--match-time-announcements) and (some of) the results were posted here (https://lichess.org/forum/team-racing-kings-wc/2025-rkwc-match-results). Finally, we'd like to thank everyone for playing; the event wouldn't be possible without you and we hope you all enjoyed it! Also, many thanks to the other TDs @FS-Schach and @Natso, as well as @seth_777 - who updated results on challonge - and @RoyalManiac, who hosted the rules and information on his website.

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