World Chess Weekly: FIDE Freestyle Chess World Champs Kick Off In Weissenhaus
It's been a week in which two of the richest events in chess went to war, while a third big player, Norway Chess, announced the latest name to add the roster for its own super-tournament.
That name was GM Alireza Firouzja, who joins a formidable lineup of GMs Magnus Carlsen, Vincent Keymer, Gukesh D, and Praggnanandhaa R for the Oslo commitment in May 25 to June 5.
It was revealed, while the organisers of the Esports World Cup chess tournament incurred the wrath of the Grand Chess Tour, that chess has been included in the Esports Nations Cup scheduled for this November. That's a second big Saudi adventure for the game.
But those updates for the future were just the starter getting ready for the main course on Friday when the new three-day FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship explodes into life.
What's Coming Up
This event was born out of yet another titanic row between chess organisers when early last year FIDE, the world governing body, fell out with Freestyle Chess Operations GmbH over the naming of a new world championship.
It was quite the public row but, eventually, Freestyle Chess backed off FIDE's turf and dropped the world championship name they wanted to co-opt. The two sides then publicly made peace after the end of last year's Freestyle Chess Tour concluded in December.
Carlsen, of course, won the tour overall netting him $805,000 in prize money and making him the best freestyler in the world, according to FIDE's president Arkady Dvorkovich. Well, not for long it seems.
With FIDE and Freestyle supposedly making friends they agreed to partner up for the new event that Freestyle wanted to put in on the first place, just with FIDE's name on it.
So here we are two months on with Carlsen hoping to prove himself again and seven other grandmasters, who qualified via FIDE and Freestyle's hastily drawn up criteria, hoping to stop him.
The event features a glittering an eight-player field made up of the cream of 2025 GMs. They are Carlsen and Keymer again, Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Arjun Erigaisi, World Cup winner Javokhir Sindarov, Hans Niemann, and the Tata Steel Chess champion Nodirbek Abdusattorov.
Its prize money is $300,000 in total, with $100,000 going the winner. While a nice amount to win, it's not the richest tournament of the year, that's for sure.
Controversially, two big name players are missing. GMs Wesley So, the inaugural FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship winner in 2019, and Hikaru Nakamura, the reigning champion from 2022, won't be there. Both have expressed their annoyance at their absence, for different reasons.
It has suffered teething problems and for that reason we're still not entirely convinced the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship will take off or, in the long run, be considered a serious world title.
But we will be watching nonetheless—and with the talent on show, it will be exciting.
Round 1 starts on Friday, February 13 at 3pm CET before the winner is crowned on Sunday. You can watch it with full commentary on FIDE's official YouTube channel here.