On January 7, FIDE and Freestyle Chess officially announced the first FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, which will take place from February 13 to 15 in Weissenhaus. In an interview with Sagar Shah of ChessBase India, Freestyle initiator Jan Henric Buettner explained the surprising development in detail.
One spot still vacant
To complete the field, Chess.com is organising a Play-In qualification tournament to determine the final remaining participant. The Play-In will take place on January 14 and 15, starting at 16:00 CET (10:00 ET / 20:30 IST), and offers one ticket to the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship, which has a prize fund of USD 300,000.
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- The tournament is open to all titled players who have not yet qualified for the championship. All participants in the Swiss-system phase must use Proctor.
- The Play-In follows the familiar qualification format and begins with a nine-round Swiss-system tournament with a time control of 10 minutes + 2 seconds. The top four players advance to the knockout stage.
- The knockout stage consists of matches of two games each with a time control of 15+3. In the event of a tie, two games with a time control of 5+2 are played. If still necessary, a bidding Armageddon follows with a base time of five minutes, in which the winner of the bidding process receives the black pieces.
The Play-In features a prize pool of USD 5,000, with USD 1,000 awarded for first place, USD 700 for second place, and USD 550 each for third and fourth place.
The winner of the Play-In secures the final starting place at the first FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship and joins the seven players who have already qualified via the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 or were selected by Freestyle Chess as wildcard players:
- GM Magnus Carlsen
- GM Levon Aronian
- GM Fabiano Caruana
- GM Vincent Keymer
- GM Arjun Erigaisi
- GM Javokhir Sindarov
- GM Hans Niemann
(Source: FIDE.com)
