On January 7, FIDE and Freestyle Chess announced the first FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, taking place at Weissenhaus, Germany, from February 13-15. Now, Chess.com is hosting the qualifier that determines the remaining player who will compete at the event.
The Play-In takes place on January 14-15 at 10 am ET/16:00 CET and will be the golden ticket to the $300,000 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, featuring the chess variant Chess960/Fischer Random.
The Play-In is open to all verified titled players who are not already qualified for the event. All players in the Swiss are required to use Proctor.
The Play-In will follow a format similar to previous qualification events, with a nine-round Swiss playing with a 10+2 time control. The top four players in the Swiss advance to the Knockout.
The four players will compete in a single-elimination knockout, with matches consisting of two games with a 15+3 time control. Tiebreaks are two games of 5+2, followed by bidding Armageddon with a base time of 5 minutes. The bid winner gets the black pieces.
The winner of the qualifier will get the last ticket to Germany, joining the seven players who have qualified through the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, and selected as the wildcard by Freestyle Chess: GMs Magnus Carlsen, Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Vincent Keymer, Arjun Erigaisi, Javokhir Sindarov, and Hans Niemann.
The Play-In will have a $5,000 prize fund: first: $1,000; second: $700; third and fourth: $550; fifth through eighth: $250; ninth through 16th: $150.
