Carlsen, Gukesh, Nakamura to Headline Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour – First Leg
Freestyle Grand Slam Weissenhaus—The first leg of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour will take place from February 7 to 14, 2025, in Germany. As the name suggests, the event will take place at the Weissenhaus Private Nature Luxury Resort in Wangels, Germany.
This leg will feature 10 of the best chess players in the world, including World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju, World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, Former World Championship Viswanathan Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, and more! This tour of Freestyle Chess, also known as Chess960/Fischer Random is going to the first of its kind in the chess world where the top players, in a random position, will clash in a classical time control.
Players
The tournament will feature 9 players who have been invited to play while 1 player is going make it through the qualifier route. The invited players are:
- Magnus Carlsen (NOR)
- Fabiano Caruana (USA)
- Hikaru Nakamura (USA)
- Gukesh D (IND)
- Nodirbek Abdusattorov (UZB)
- Alireza Firouzja (FRA)
- Viswanathan Anand (IND)
- Levon Aronian (USA)
- Vincent Keymer (GER)
- TBD (Qualifier)
Format
The event will feature an exciting round-robin phase, with players playing with a Fast Rapid time control of 10m+10s. Eight players will qualify for a Single-Elimination Knockout Stage. The KO phase will consist of two-game matches in 90m+30s time control. Additionally, players won’t be allowed to offer draws before move 40!
In case of a tie, two 10+10 rapid games are going to be played. In case the tie persists, 2 blitz will be played. An armageddon with bidding system (5 minutes base time) will decide the winner in case the players remain tied after 2 blitz games.
Prize Fund
The first leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour features a prize fund $750,000!
$660,000 will go to the participants of the first leg while the remaining 12% to be distributed among the non-playing members of the Freestyle Chess Players Club.
