The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour begins on February 7 at the Weissenhaus Resort in Wangels (Germany), and organisers will be hoping to get past the recent controversy. In a sensational move, Freestyle Chess failed to receive official recognition for a world championship tournament from FIDE, which sent social media into a state of meltdown. What followed was an open letter from Freestyle Chess, interviews from Magnus Carlsen and FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky. The open letter from Freestyle Chess and Magnus Carlsen publicly called out FIDE. Meanwhile, the Norwegian and Freestyle Chess, which he also co-owns, demanded for the resignation of FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich. During an interview with Take Take Take application, which he once again co-owns, Carlsen revealed that even the younger players have admitted to him that they want to participate in Freestyle Chess events, but their federations have expressed confusion.
The confusion was regarding the world championship issue and FIDE had issued a waiver to players which stated that they weren’t allowed to participate in a non-recognised world championship. To ease the controversy, Freestyle Chess removed the mention of the world championship from their rules and regulation, and official website. D Gukesh, who qualifies as the reigning World Champion, has also reached the venue and will be in action on Friday.
D Gukesh drops verdict on FIDE vs Freestyle Chess controversy
Speaking to ChessBase India, the India No. 1 was asked about his opinion on the recent FIDE vs Freestyle Chess controversy. The grandmaster initially replied, “I’m just here. I am happy to play any format, any time control. I am just trying to do my best in every game. For me, it is just that I am trying to give my best in chess and nothing else really matters. So, I just hope there is more clarity in the chess world and everything goes well, but none of it really matters, I just want to play chess.”
Then in a later part of the interview, he was once again asked about classical and Chess960 tournaments. This time Gukesh had a more straightforward answer and he made his feelings known. Freestyle tournaments are based on Chess960.
“I think 960 is nice as an experiment, but I don’t see it taking over classical chess. The Classical World Chess Championship cycle will be much more important than 960, so I am glad to experiment with the 960”, he replied.
The first leg in Germany also sees a star-studded line-up consisting of Gukesh, World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Alireza Firouzja, Levon Aronian, Vincent Keymer, Vladimir Fedoseev and Javokhir Sindarov. India chess legend Viswanathan Anand was also set to participate in the event as a wildcard, but withdrew after the controversy began and Carlsen’s criticism of his position as FIDE deputy president.
