Magnus Carlsen launches Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, India to host event in 2024 – Firstpost
India will be the first stop on Magnus Carlsen’s ‘tour format’ for this special chess tournament.
Magnus Carlsen opens a new chapter in the history of chess. Just weeks after the first Freestyle Chess GOAT Challenge in Germany proved to be a great success, Carlsen and his partner, German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, are set to expand the competition into a completely new “tour format” . India will be the first stop on Carlsen’s “tour format” for this special chess tournament. The duo also invited the world’s best chess players to join their new Freestyle Chess Players Club (FCPC).
Known as the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, the new chess tournament is expected to begin later this year in November in India and would feature a huge prize pool of $500,000 (around INR 4 crore) for the Indian side. Ideally, five different continents should host a series of tournaments each year.
The next leg of the tour will take the players to Weissenhaus in Germany from February 7 to 14, 2025, after the first leg in India, according to a press release issued by Carlsen and Buettner. “We are currently planning four to five such tournaments per year. Our next event is already planned in India from November 10 to 17, 2024,” Buettner confirmed.
Besides Australia in 2026, organizers plan to hold the remaining tournaments in New York, Cartagena (Colombia) and Cape Town. The first-ever Freestyle Chess GOAT Challenge took place last month in northern Germany, and Carlsen, a five-time classical chess world champion, emerged victorious.
Buettner spoke about the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam and expressed his desire to make it a commercially successful tournament in the years to come. “My personal goal for the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam is simply to make it as commercially successful as iconic sporting events like the ATP for tennis, the PGA for golf and Formula 1 for motorsport,” Buettner wrote in his welcome letter to the 25 FCPC. members.
Alongside the world’s best players behind Magnus Carlsen, including Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Nodirbek Abusattorov, Ding Liren, Alireza Firouzja, Wesley So, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wei Yi, the new members include Indian grandmasters Arjun Erigaisi and Viswanathan Anand.
