All posts tagged: Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour

After year of stand-off, FIDE, Freestyle Chess announce FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship

After year of stand-off, FIDE, Freestyle Chess announce FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship

Published by Webster

After more than a year of confrontation and stand-off, Freestyle Chess and FIDE have finally decided to bury the hatchet and join forces, announcing that they will host the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship in Weissenhaus, Germany, from February 13–15, 2026. The differences between the two parties were public, and despite multiple attempts, ending the dispute and finding a middle ground proved difficult for both. In February 2025, The Indian Express reported that FIDE and Freestyle Chess had been very close to an amicable agreement before talks broke down. Jan Henric Buettner, the German billionaire entrepreneur behind the ambitious Freestyle Grand Slam Tour, revealed to this newspaper how the months-long feud was finally resolved. “With Arkady (Dvorkovich), I had a very good understanding. We nearly had an agreement a year ago. We were actually finalising the wording of a press release. And then, at the very last moment, it somehow fell apart. I don’t know how. I don’t want to speculate, but it was kind of very weird,” he told The Indian Express. “And so …

After losing to streamer, Levon Aronian goes on unbeaten streak to claim South Africa leg of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour | Chess News

After losing to streamer, Levon Aronian goes on unbeaten streak to claim South Africa leg of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour | Chess News

Published by Webster

Levon Aronian started his trip to South Africa’s Grootbos losing to a streamer, but ended up winning the South Africa leg of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour with an undefeated run to the title. Aronian’s victory over world no 1 Magnus Carlsen in the final in South Africa wrapped up the first season of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. Carlsen had already wrapped up the overall Tour title at the South Africa event a few days before he made it to the final at Grootbos. Before the tournament started, Aronian was playing against a streamer who goes by the handle “Witty_Alien” on YouTube where the opponent tried a Martian Gambit versus Aronian. There he beat Aronian in an exhibition event which led to the veteran American grandmaster having some self doubts. “I came here without real expectations because I played at the FIDE World Cup earlier where some games were good but I wasn’t so sure that I’m in a good shape. And here (in Grootbos, South Africa) it started with some simuls. I …

Magnus Carlsen vs Levon Aronian in Freestyle Chess final even as Norwegian wraps up Grand Slam Tour title | Chess News

Magnus Carlsen vs Levon Aronian in Freestyle Chess final even as Norwegian wraps up Grand Slam Tour title | Chess News

Published by Parlour News

Magnus Carlsen will fight against Levon Aronian to claim the South Africa leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour after defeating Javokhir Sindarov in the semi-finals in a clash that went into tiebreaks. Carlsen has already secured the 2025 Grand Slam Tour title earlier in the event. In the final, Carlsen will take on Aronian while Vincent Keymer and Javokhir Sindarov fight for third place. Meanwhile, India’s Arjun Erigaisi will face Fabiano Caruana for the fifth place spot and Hans Niemann will face Parham Maghsoodloo in the match for seventh spot. Now, for a takeaway cheque of $200,000, Carlsen will face off against the veteran Aronian, who also had to defeat Vincent Keymer in tiebreaks. In the semi-final, Carlsen took the lead against Javokhir Sindarov in game one. But the Uzbek grandmaster, who recently won the FIDE World Cup in Goa, came back with victory in what was a must-win game 2 with black pieces, leveling the match and forcing the matter into a blitz tiebreak. Carlsen won the first blitz game and produced …

Meet Leon Luke Mendonca, the bespectacled smiling assassin of the 64 squares who plays violin

Meet Leon Luke Mendonca, the bespectacled smiling assassin of the 64 squares who plays violin

Published by Webster

In just 14 moves, Ian Nepomniachtchi was reduced to frowning at his pieces like they were refusing to obey his commands. Things had curdled pretty fast for the Russian on the board in round 3 of the Grenke Freestyle Chess Open 2025. A few moves later, Nepo was pushed past the point of no return. On move 36, he resigned. Against a player who had over 100 rating points less than him. In the next round, it was Hungarian grandmaster Richard Rapport’s turn to endure punishment, and then heartbreak in the form of defeat. The player who had made two of the world’s top chess players roll over in back-to-back games was a 19-year-old grandmaster from India. Not one of the usual suspects of Gukesh, Praggnanandhaa and Arjun Erigaisi. The boy making heads turn at the Grenke Freestyle event over nine rounds was Leon Luke Mendonca, who is contemporary of the Gukesh-Praggnanandhaa-Arjun Erigaisi vintage, and was playing in his first event in freestyle chess — a variant of the sport that has been called by …

Selfie with opponent before start of game, complaint to arbiter about wrist watch

Selfie with opponent before start of game, complaint to arbiter about wrist watch

Published by Webster

Magnus Carlsen finds himself as the only unbeaten player at the Grenke Freestyle Chess Open 2025 with an unblemished record after five games. Carlsen has had an interesting event so far at the German city of Karlsruhe, which has included being asked for a selfie by an opponent right before the start of a game. Then, before the start of another showdown, Carlsen has had to call on an arbiter to make sure his 53-year-old opponent takes off his wrist watch. There are seven players who are in the chasing pack behind the former world champion, just half a point behind the world no 1: Alexey Sarana, Parham Maghsoodloo, Leon Luke Mendonca, Awonder Liang, Paulius Pultinevicius, Baadur Jobava, and Matthias Bluebaum. On Saturday, Carlsen played his first game of the day against French grandmaster Etienne Bacrot, who is a eight-time French Champion. But before the start of the battle, there was a surprising request for Carlsen: Bacrot wanted a selfie on the board with the five-time world champion. This brought a grin on the face …

Arjun Erigaisi defeats Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in game 1 of 5th place playoff

Arjun Erigaisi defeats Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in game 1 of 5th place playoff

Published by Webster

Arjun Erigaisi defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in 41 moves with black pieces in the playoff for the 5th place at the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour on Sunday. Both players will be back on Monday to play the second game with colours reversed. At the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess event, Arjun is already assured to be the best finishing Indian out of the four players who competed. While reigning world champion Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi finished joint 11th, Praggnanandhaa finished ninth in the standings after defeating Richard Rapport. If Arjun finishes in 5th place at the Paris event, he will take home a cool $50,000 (approximately Rs 43 lakh). How Arjun Erigaisi defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave The game started with position number 103 being drawn and Arjun finding himself in a huddle with other players who were also playing with black pieces on Sunday — Ian Nepomniachtchi, Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura. The three veterans did all the talking in the huddle over the chessboard, while Arjun sat at a distance, …

How Arjun Erigaisi beat Nepo by offering up his all-conquering queen as sacrifice

How Arjun Erigaisi beat Nepo by offering up his all-conquering queen as sacrifice

Published by Webster

It was a move that made the jaws of elite grandmasters drop and Ian Nepomniachtchi’s heart rate spike. With one flick of the wrist, Arjun Erigaisi had thrown a Hail Mary on the board that made his opponent ponder for 17 minutes about a response. And even after that prolonged period of thought, the Russian ended up making a blunder with his reply. 12 moves later, Arjun was victorious, pushing the playoff for the 5th to 8th spot at the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour into a tiebreaker. In the tiebreakers later on, played with 10 minutes on clock for both players, Arjun won the first game with white before defending out of his skin with black pieces to salvage a draw and secure a spot in the fifth-place playoff at the Paris tournament. The move itself — pushing his queen to the d8 square (12. Qd8), thus offering it up as a sacrifice for Nepo’s rook stationed at f8 — sent the Russian’s heart pumping blood at 125 beats per …

Even legends of game can be caught out of depth in variant

Even legends of game can be caught out of depth in variant

Published by Webster

For nearly an hour on Wednesday, Hikaru Nakamura had the overpowering urge to strangle Ian Nepomniachtchi. The American and the Russian grandmaster were not actually paired to face each other in the quarter-finals of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour’s Paris event — Nakamura was jousting with India’s Arjun Erigaisi, while Nepomniachtchi was parrying off attacks from Germany’s Vincent Keymer. The urge to cause bodily harm to another player was born from the fact that Nakamura had blindly copied Nepomniachtchi’s suggestions for a risky gambit in the opening with the black pieces in Position 841. That ploy, against a player of Arjun’s ‘mad-man’ credentials, had almost backfired and led to defeat. It’s an idiosyncrasy of the Freestyle/Fischer Random chess variant — which is particularly highlighted at the Freestyle Chess events — that even early adopters and legends of the game like Magnus Carlsen and Nakamura constantly find themselves out of depth. Almost like they are re-learning how to walk again after spending years in space. It must be pointed out that compared to the Indian …

Freestyle Chess heading to Las Vegas with new changes to format | Chess News

Freestyle Chess heading to Las Vegas with new changes to format | Chess News

Published by Webster

The next event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour will have some radical changes in place, thanks to Magnus Carlsen and his father Henric Carlsen. Jan Henric Buettner, the man behind the Freestyle Chess tour, revealed on the official broadcast of Freestyle Chess Tour on Friday that the next event will see 45-minute games with a 10-second increment per move rather than a 90-minute game with 30-second increment that we saw at Paris in the ongoing event. This move was brought in at former world champion Carlsen’s behest, Buettner said. Buettner said that as the tour tried to attract more sponsors, they felt the need to shorten the games because for a four-hour game, it is very difficult to get an audience if you are not in India”. The idea was also green lighted by the world no 1. “Magnus said basically that they as players have gained so much in terms of quality that they do not need the 90 minutes anymore. He said they can go with 45-minute games. So that is …

Arjun Erigaisi defeats Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in game 1 of 5th place playoff

Arjun Erigaisi qualifies for knockouts of Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour as Gukesh, Pragg, Vidit stumble

Published by Webster

If any Indian can contend against some of the world’s best chess players in the freestyle format, it has to be Arjun Erigaisi. He was the only one from the country to qualify for the knockout rounds of the Paris leg of the Grand Slam Tour. Those who failed to advance included R. Praggnanandhaa, Classical world champion D. Gukesh and Vidit Gujrathi. The fairytale, which began on Monday when Arjun took down World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in just 29 moves and the third highest-rated player in history – USA’s Fabiano Caruana – in 35 moves in the opening two rounds, ended on Tuesday when he finished fourth in the standings after 11 gruelling rounds of rapid classifications games. Arjun, who had pocketed three wins going into the second day, grabbed two more victories to finish with 6.5 points out of a possible 11 behind Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi and local favourite Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Story continues below this ad When the day started, it was all about Gukesh’s redemption as he began with two consecutive wins …