2025 FCGST, Paris News

Last month's post, 2025 FCGST, Weissenhaus (February 2025; 'Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour'), was about the first leg of the tour that I initially covered in 2025 FCGST (December 2024). The second leg is scheduled for Paris in April. We don't have to wait until April for news about the FCGST which saw a number of recent developments.

2025-02-14: Niemann Given Surprise Paris Freestyle Wildcard, Set To Face Carlsen (chess.com; TarjeiJS) • '[GM Hans Niemann] secured his spot by winning the massive 935-player 2024 Grenke Chess Open with an impressive 8/9 score. That victory originally qualified the 21-year-old for the Grenke Chess Classic, the prestigious invitational that ran alongside the Open, won by Carlsen in 2015, 2019, and 2024. However, the tournament format has been revamped for 2025, replacing the Classic and Open with two major open events scheduled for April 17-21 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Both will be played at classical chess time controls [... the] Grenke Freestyle Chess Open [...; 'The winner qualifies for the New York Freestyle Chess Grand Slam and also earns 25 tour points, with one point for 10th place.' and the] Grenke Chess Open [...] Since the Classic is not taking place, Freestyle Chess CEO Jan Henric Buettner has decided to invite Niemann for the next stage of the Grand Slam, which takes place in Paris, April 8-15.'

2025-03-06: Registration Deadline 7 March: Qualifiers Of The Freestyle Chess Play-In Paris This Weekend (chess.com) • 'Titled Players are ineligible to participate in the Open Qualifiers as they are pre-qualified into the Swiss Stage.'

2025-03-09: Freestyle Chess: Twelve super-GMs to battle in Paris (chessbase.com) • 'The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 moves to Paris from April 7 to 14, bringing together 12 top grandmasters for the second Grand Slam event of the year. Held at the Pavillon Chesnaie du Roy, the tournament features a [rapid] round-robin phase followed by a knockout stage with [long] time controls.'

2025-03-13: Tabatabaei, Nguyen, Mamedov, Pranesh In Hunt For Paris Freestyle Chess Spot (chess.com; Colin_McGourty) • 'GMs Amin Tabatabaei, Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, Rauf Mamedov, and Pranesh M scored 7.5/9 to finish in the top-four and qualify for the Knockout Stage of the 2025 Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Play-In. They'll be joined by the likes of GMs Ding Liren and Nodirbek Abdusattorov in a 16-player battle for the final spot in Paris, where 11 players, including World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju and GM Magnus Carlsen await. The 16-player Knockout takes place on 13-14 March.'

2025-03-15: Vidit gets ticket to Paris leg of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam (chessbase.com; Carlos Alberto Colodro)

Note the two different future events mentioned above:-
* 7-14 (or 8-15) April in Paris
* 17-21 April in Karlsruhe

CCRL Changes Its Structure

The CCRL, the largest repository of master-level chess960 games in the world, has changed its top-level structure for recorded games. Until a few months ago, the games were grouped by start position. Now they are grouped by engine. This change makes it more complicated to research individual openings, as individual engines tend to play the same move in the same position.

For the list of engines and downloadable files, see CCRL - Games (computerchess.org.uk/ccrl).

2025 FCGST, Weissenhaus

In the previous post, 'What's in a Name?' (February 2025), I promised,

The next post will record the result of the Weissenhaus leg of the FCGST ['Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour'], which finished yesterday.

The tournament started with a two-day 10-player round robin that determined the pecking order for the six-day knockout event.

Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour (wikipedia.org)

There were two commenting streams, the 'Pro stream' and the 'Community stream'. Here are links to the 'Community stream' for each of the eight days.

• 2025-02-07: Day 1 Rapid RR • 'ft. Magnus, Hikaru & World Champ Gukesh!' (6:04:04; 557K views)
• 2025-02-08: Day 2 Rapid RR • 'Will Magnus, Hikaru Fight Back As Sindarov Leads?' (4:42:29; 285K views)
• 2025-02-09: Day 3 QF-1 • 'Magnus vs. Nodirbek & Gukesh vs. Fabiano Headline KO' (4:48:07; 354K views)
• 2025-02-10: Day 4 QF-2 • 'Will Alireza, Gukesh March A Comeback In QFs?' (6:27:58; 287K views)
• 2025-02-11: Day 5 SF-1 • 'Magnus vs. Vincent & Fabiano vs. Sindarov!' (4:52:54; 290K views)
• 2025-02-12: Day 6 SF-2 • 'Magnus vs. Vincent & Fabiano vs. Sindarov!' (7:49:51; 427K views)
• 2025-02-13: Day 7 F-1 • 'Fabiano vs. Vincent! Magnus vs. Sindarov For 3rd' (5:44:50; 259K views)
• 2025-02-14: Day 8 F-2 • 'Fabiano vs. Vincent! Magnus vs. Sindarov For 3rd' (6:26:24; 260K views)

The description of the first video in the list ('Day 1 Rapid RR') informed,

Freestyle Grand Slam Weissenhaus is the first leg of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour and is a rapid round-robin and a classical knockout tournament.

Featuring some of the world's most legendary players: Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Gukesh Dommaraju, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Alireza Firouzja, Levon Aronian, Vincent Keymer, and Javokhir Sindarov.

A half-hour into the clip we see the method of choosing the start position.

'Bingo Balls'

'Rapid RR Day 1'

The start times in the clip for selecting the start position of each round are:-

(0:34:40) Rd 1
(1:34:40) Rd 2 - At first, the balls don't release.
(2:33:40) Rd 3
(3:34:40) Rd 4
(4:36:00) Rd 5

At some point we learn, 'Position doesn't go back in the bucket', meaning a position won't be repeated in a subsequent round. For last year's post on the event that kicked off the freestyle brand, see Carlsen Wins First Major Chess960 Event of 2024 (February 2024; esp. 'Nine Things We Learned - Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge 2024'). Congratulations to the 2025 winner Vincent Keymer for what must be one of the most important tournament victories of his career.

'What's in a Name?' - It's Back!

Last month's post A Freestyle Fight (January 2025; '2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour' [FCGST]), demands two follow-ups:-

1. The resolution of the 'fight'
2. The results of the first leg of the FCGST, held in February at Weissenhaus, Germany

First let's have some consequent off-board news that has been lingering since late last year: Wikipedia changed the name of its main Chess960/FRC page from 'Fischer Random Chess' to 'Chess960'; see Talk:Chess960 - Wikipedia (wikipedia.org; 'Requested move 29 October 2024'), for the not-so-consequent discussion. I made a similar choice when I first started to investigate Fischer's idea, a choice that was reinforced a few years later:-

• 2008-08-26: 'Fischerandom Chess' or 'Chess960'?
• 2011-12-10: 'Can I use this name "Fischer Chess"?'

Unlike Wikipedia, I don't have the time to return to the decision every five years. Let's get back to FCGST, which has jumped across all three of my chess blogs. After 'Freestyle Fight' on this blog, the latest chess960 alias popped up on my main blog in World Championship Yahoos 2025 ('1/?'; January 2025). To summarize:-

Those 104 stories were supplemented by two additional pages: 'Magnus Carlsen on Freestyle chess controversy' with 25 stories [...] I'm covering the freestyle saga on my chess960 blog, because 'freestyle' is one of numerous aliases for chess960. [...] The dispute is about FIDE's claim to have the exclusive right to any 'World Chess Championship'.

Any reference to 'World Chess Championship' is automatically a candidate for discussion on my blog of the same name. So far there have been two posts:-

• FIDE Asserts Its Authority (February 2025)
• FCPC Backs Down (ditto) • 'Freestyle Chess Players Club'; i.e. Weissenhaus boss Jan Henric Buettner, former World Champion Magnus Carlsen, et al

End of story? Maybe, maybe not. Here are the Chess.com reports providing background and comments to all of the above. All reports were signed 'TarjeiJS', i.e. Tarjei J. Svensen, Norwegian journalist and ally of GM Carlsen.

• 2025-01-28: Freestyle Chess Head Jan Henric Buettner Fires Back At FIDE: 'We Are Ready For War' (chess.com; TarjeiJS)
• 2025-01-29: Buettner On Freestyle Chess Vision: 'I Needed The Greatest Player Ever' (ditto, as are the following)
• 2025-02-04: Carlsen To Dvorkovich In Heated Freestyle Chess Feud: ‘Will You Resign?’
• 2025-02-07: Magnus Carlsen Rules Out Playing FIDE Events As Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Begins
• 2025-02-10: Freestyle Chess Players With FIDE Pushback, Establish New Title And Association

It's clear that Carlsen has an axe to grind with FIDE and has convinced a wealthy backer to support his cause. History tells us that in any dispute between a top player and FIDE, the court of public opinion favors the player. History also tells us that FIDE wins the off-court struggle.

That's enough of the politics. The next post will record the result of the Weissenhaus leg of the FCGST, which finished yesterday.

A Freestyle Fight

The title of last month's post, 2025 FCGST (December 2024), referred to the '2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour'. The tour will include five events in various venues.

Since then, much has happened. News of the tour has so far been published by both Chess.com and Chessbase.com. I'll concentrate on reports from Chess.com, because of the many comments by Chess.com members. The month started on a high note.

2024-12-20: Chess.com Officially Partners With Freestyle Chess To Support 2025 Grand Slam Tour (chess.com)

The lineup for the first event [Weissenhaus, Germany, on February 7-14] includes GMs Carlsen, Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Levon Aronian, Alireza Firouzja, Vincent Keymer, and Viswanathan Anand. They will be joined by the newly-crowned 18th World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju. The 10th and final spot will go to the winner of the online Freestyle Chess Play-In Weissenhaus taking place on Chess.com between January 4 and 8.

Each Freestyle Chess Play-In will consist of open qualifiers for untitled players, followed by a Swiss and a knockout, all in rapid time controls. Titled players can join the qualifier on the Swiss stage, with the knockout winner earning a spot in the upcoming Grand Slam event.

2025-01-09: Fedoseev Joins Carlsen & Co. In Weissenhaus After Winning Armageddon Thriller (chess.com; Colin_McGourty)

GM Vladimir Fedoseev beat GM Ian Nepomniachtchi in the Semifinals and then GM Javokhir Sindarov in a thrilling Final to clinch the last spot in next month's $750,000 2025 Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam.

A few weeks later, the story became ugly.

2025-01-21: FIDE Statement regarding the "Freestyle Chess" project (fide.com)

With regard to the recent communications from the "Freestyle Chess Players Club" ("FCPC"), FIDE states the following...

2025-01-22: FIDE Slams Freestyle Chess For Creating 'Unavoidable Divisions,' Threatens Legal Action (chess.com; TarjeiJS)

The International Chess Federation (FIDE) has criticized Freestyle Chess for branding its upcoming Grand Slam tour as a "World Championship," claiming the move threatens to divide the chess community and warning of potential legal action.

To veteran World Championship watchers (like me), this dispute is reminiscent of a split in world chess that started in 1993. For details, see my page, FIDE/PCA Chronology. In the saga that stretched more than a decade, finally resolved by the 2006 Kramnik - Topalov : Unification Match, there were no winners.

2025 FCGST

Good thing this blog has never pretended to be a news blog. Last month's post, 2024 Champions Showdown (November 2024), was about an event that took place in October. This month's post is about an event in November:-

• 2024-11-22: Carlsen Wins Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Match Vs. Caruana After Surviving Game 2 (chess.com; NM AnthonyLevin) • 'The event, concluding a few days before the 2024 FIDE World Championship in Singapore, promoted the launch of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, a yearlong event that will feature the Chess960 variant.'

[Insert nitpicking here:] Why write 'Chess960' with an upper case 'C'? No one does that for 'chess', which is much better known. On top of that, as I never get tired of saying, chess960 isn't a variant of chess; it's an evolution. The traditional start position (SP518 RNBQKBNR) is chess960 limited to a single position of the 960 available. It took a larger-than-life Bobby Fischer to figure that out.

The Chess.com article included an overview of the tour's dates and venues, reproduced below. I suppose that 'NY, USA' means 'NYC', but maybe it means Albany, the capital of the state (or maybe Buffalo or Schenectady). We should know for certain in a few months.

A year ago, in Sayonara? (December 2023), I wrote,

I'm going back into hibernation, although I won't rule out an occasional post if I have something to say about a subject. Bye for now!

As it turns out, I managed 12 posts this past year, an average of one per month. What will 2025 bring? Maybe more of the same, maybe less. Who knows? If nothing else, I'll be back in a year to survey the scene.

2024 Champions Showdown

In last month's post, More News on Multi-Millionaire Chess960 Plans (October 2024), I wrote

As for the second part of the 'Multi-Millionaires' post, which promised a Saint Louis Chess Club 9LX event, it ended too late for this current post. More news next month...

GM Caruana won the event, 0.5 points ahead of GM Nakamura, who was 1.5 points ahead of the rest of the field. The full crosstable is shown below.

2024 Champions Showdown: Chess 9LX
(uschesschamps.com)

For a report on the last day of the three-day event, see Fabiano Caruana wins Chess 9LX Showdown in Saint Louis (chessbase.com; Carlos Alberto Colodro). At the end of that report, tags ('Topics') lead to reports on the previous rounds and links lead to final round reports for the same event in previous years.

For last year's final post on the 2023 event, see 2023 Champions Showdown, Videos (September 2023). For the Saint Louis Chess Club's video playlist for the 2024 event, see 2024 Chess 9LX (youtube.com).