The World Team Championship was established in 1985 and is being held in four year cycles. Due to high volatility of the Swiss system adopted at the Olympiads the WTCh was scheduled to be a one group round robin. Only ten teams qualify: the host team, the continental champions and top teams from recent Olympiad are eligible to participate (with some exceptions like invitations for women teams or wild cards granted by the organizers).

The WTCh is not a very spectacular event and many top players find every excuse not to arrive. This is perhaps one explanation why USSR/Russia hasn't dominated the pool to the same extent as seen at the Olympiads. However, since there is very few information on the topic available at the Web we decided to fill this gap with Olympiad-like, excessive coverage of all the events. This is a unique meeting of top teams and a crown of the Olympic cycle after all.

The World Team Championship was first planned to be held in Lucerne every four years but recently this rule has been dropped. The next WTCh is scheduled to be played in Israel in late 2005. Teams qualified so far: Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Armenia.

Please find most complete history of the World Team Championship and the statistics - all in the well known OlimpBase format: http://wtch.olimpbase.org