The Kazan Sports Palace is hosting the event which will see 37 teams compete.

This year's Championship is only the second edition of the tournament after it made its debut in Bern in Switzerland last year.

Hosts Russia got their campaign underway with a convincing win over fellow Europeans Spain.

The Russian team, lead by skip Aleksandr Krushelnitckii, scored a scintillating five points in the sixth end en route to an impressive 8-2 opening win.

Canada dominated the United States 9-2.

Five points in the second end were enough for the Canadians to take an unassailable lead which the Americans could not recover from.

"We were really solid," said Canada's Michael Lizmore.

"We had a couple of itchy moments in the first end, but after that we settled in and caught some breaks in the second end there to catch a five and once we put the five on the board we were a little more comfortable."

Estonia defeated Croatia 7-3 whilst Latvia narrowly defeated Austria 4-3 in the remaining matches of the opening day's match.

Latvia and Austria both drew blanks in the first two ends of the game before the Latvians broke the deadlock with two points in the third.

Both teams traded single points until the seventh end where Austria stole a single score to level the scores at 3-3 going into the final end.

With the last stone Latvia managed to sneak a single point and with that the 4-3 victory.

Defending champions Norway are due to begin their bid to retain their title tomorrow when they take on Romania at 4pm local time. 

Last year's runners up Sweden, meanwhile, are scheduled to play Ireland in the morning session.