The four year long World Team Championship cycle will soon reach its sixth buoy as the 2005 event scheduled in Beer Sheva, Israel will start in just a week and a half. World's top 10 teams will arrive, including Hamilton-Russel Cup holders Ukraine, multipy medal winners Russia and newly crowned European Champions Holland. As in past years the event will be the four board round robin. Sum of game points will be decisive about final standings.

The Championship official home page is now available at http://www.wccisrael.com. It provides wide variety of interesting information and is certainly worth of visiting.

Also, please find OlimpBase's WTCh complete history here (to our knowledge this is the only document on WTCh hitsory available worldwide).
Here is Beer Sheva home page maintained by OlimpBase.

The Beer Sheva Championship attracted many World's top players to make the event highly competitive. Unfortunately we are missing India, Bulgaria, Hungary and other nations that gave the world some brilliant players so we shall see neither the magic play of newly crowned World Champion Topalov nor the tusks of the Madras Tiger Anand there. Below is the full listing of WTCh qualifiers. Please note: Egypt, African Team Champions were eligible to play but did not apply.

team	ELOav	how they qualified	squad
1. Russia	2715	2. Olympiad	Svidler, Grischuk, Dreev, Morozevich, Motylev, Bareev
2. Ukraine	2698	1. Olympiad	Ivanchuk, Ponomariov, Volokityn, Moiseenko, Eljanov, Karjakin
3. Israel	2674	hosts	Gelfand, Sutovsky, Smirin, Avrukh, Erenburg, Roiz
4. Armenia	2673	3. Olympiad	Aronian, Akopian, Asrian, Vaganian, Lputian, Anastasian
5. USA	2616	4. Olympiad	Goldin, Onischuk, Gulko, Kaidanov, Novikov, Ibragimov
6. China	2615	1. Asian TCh	Bu, Liang, Zhang Z., Zhang P., Ni
7. Georgia	2610	invited team	Azmaiparashvili, Jobava, Giorgadze, Pantsulaia, Mchedlishvili, Gagunashvili
8. Cuba	2603	1. Panamerican TCh	Dominguez, Bruzon, Delgado, Nogueiras,Arencibia, Quezada
9. China (w)	2458	invited team	Hou, Zhao, Wang, Gong, Huang, Shen
Netherlands	-	1. Europeaan TCh	withdrew

by Thomas @ 31 Oct 2005 09:23 am

Will anyone be invited to replace Holland?

by APPLE @ 01 Nov 2005 04:35 am

The Wang of Chinese Women team is Wang Yu(A) (2396)not Wang Yue(2585). <br /> <br />Wang Yu(A) is Asian Women Champion of 2004. Wang Yue is a male GM. <br /> <br />Note:There is another chess player called Wang Yu(but the Yu(s) of corresponding Chinese character are different,although with same pronounciation).and She is only U15.

by Webmaster @ 01 Nov 2005 11:16 am

Ad 2: Thank you for the remarks, we will be accurate spelling Chinese names now. <br /> <br />Ad 1: to our knowledge only 9 teams will take part.

by pijl @ 01 Nov 2005 11:40 am

The Netherlands were probably not invited as Champions of Europe but as guests: http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=2707