With some of the best players in the world in action, Freestyle Chess has dominated the conversation so far in 2025, having achieved events in Weissenhaus and Paris in four months with the Grenke Chess Freestyle Open currently underway.
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“Yeah, I think it is definitely the future of sport. Not the closest immediate future but for the next generation, or perhaps a century later, at some point in the future. But that will probably not happen over the next 10 years.”
In an exclusive interaction with First post A little more than a month before making impressive debut during the Freestyle Grand Chelem tour in Paris, Arjun Erigaisi said that he did not expect the fischer random format to exceed conventional failures at any time in the near future. The commentary of the Grand Master Indian contrasts with what the n ° 1 of the world n ° 1 Magnus Carlsen and the co -founder of Freestyle chess Jan Henric Buettner claim in recent months.
Carlsen went to publicly express his aversion to the classic format – which led to the star of Norwegian chess who voluntarily released his world championship in 2022 instead of defending in order to become a world champion six times.
And Carlsen’s support for freestyle chess at the price of the classic format also came at a time when the world n ° 1 was found with Fide, the world managing body based in Lausanne which has existed for more than a century.
The quarrel that intensified with the sadly famous “ jeansgate scandal ” in December reached a summit of all time when Fide firmly refused the failures of Freestyle the authorization to lead “ World Championships ”, declaring that only the organ director of sport had the power to organize tournaments that could produce world champions.
While Buettner and Carlsen reluctantly admitted the defeat on the front of the “ World Championship ”, they certainly cannot complain about the way in which the inaugural tour of the Grand Slam of Freestyle chess has been proven so far.
How freestyle dominates chess conversation in 2025
We have almost finished with the fourth month of the year and the Freestyle failures have already organized two events – the inaugural event which takes place in Weissenhaus German in February, two months before the Paris event.
The third event should take place in a few months, the caravan moving to the United States, where she will place camp in Las Vegas in July. However, this did not prevent the Freestyle failures from continuing to make the headlines at present.
Four days after the conclusion of the Grand Chelem in Paris, where Carlsen became the winner after defeating the world No. 2 Hikaru Nakamura in a final of “El Chessico”, another Freestyle chess event began. Germany is currently organizing its second freestyle event of the year, with the Grenke Chess Freestyle Open which takes place in Karlsruhe.
And the loaded calendar did not prevent some of the best names in the world, notably Carlsen, Erigaisi and Fabiano Caruana, to participate in the event. Even the controversial American GM Hans Niemann, who was at the center of the infamous cheating scandal in 2022 which led to a federal trial of $ 100 million, made its freestyle debut during this event after staging a mysterious stop of the Grand Chelem in Paris just before the start of the event.
Fide, on the contrary, was hardly in the conversation between the staging of world championship matches in December and April, won by D Gukesh and Ju Wenjun, respectively. And the only non-Frieestyle events that have locked themselves to attract the kind of attention that the Lucrative Tour of the Grand Slam has so far, the failures of Tata Steel (January and February) and the failures of Prague (March), of which one or the other is a fide event.
Fide will inevitably return to conversation when he directs the World Cups in the “women” and “open” categories later this year, the latter takes place in India in November.
There is also the Grand Swiss which should take place in September, while the fast championships and Blitz will be organized in December, exactly a year after Carlsen decided to appear in a pair of jeans, violating the dress code and controversial sharing the title Blitz with Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Have a finger on the pulse on the current generation
However, the way in which freestyle failures dominated the conversation with regard to the sport of chess in the first half, as well as the fact that the tour extends over the whole year, will certainly not make the bosses of the director organ.
Add to this the fact that the Tour of the Grand Slam will reduce the temporal checks from the Las Vegas event, the KOs to present 45 -minute games with increments of 10 seconds, against 90 minutes and 30 seconds which were in place in the first two events.
The decision, which came following a suggestion from Carlsen’s father, Henrik, revealed by Buettner, certainly underlines the fact that freestyle failures have a finger on the current generation pulse and their short attention, and knows how to capitalize.
Compare this with Fide, who had welcomed some world championships in “Fischer Random” format, respectively in 2019 and 2022, but failed to make the most of the potential of the format, canceling the 2024 edition of the event.
Fide could have repelled the threat of freestyle chess, assuming that it is another version of the Professional Chess Association, which was a short -term rival organization created by the legendary Garry Kasparov in the 1990s.
The challenge of the Freestyle chess, however, may not be like all that Fide has been confronted during its 100 years of existence.
