Four players to fight for one spot at the Freestyle Chess World Championship
The Swiss stage of the 2026 FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship Play-In was played online, on the chess.com platform, on Wednesday. Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Pranav Venkatesh, Grigoriy Oparin, and Amin Tabatabaei scored 7 points out of 9 to finish in the top four and qualify for Thursday’s knockout stage. Only one of them will reach the World Championship, set to take place on 13-15 February in Weissenhaus.
Seven of the eight places for the World Championship were already decided through the initial edition of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. The Play-In event, held on 14-15 January, is being used to determine the final participant. The qualifier consists of two phases: the first phase was a nine-round Swiss tournament.
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All games in the Swiss were played with a time control of 10 minutes for the game plus 2 seconds per move. A new starting position was used in every round.
After four rounds, four players had won all their games: Saleh Salem, Arseniy Nesterov, Oparin and Pranav. In round five, Oparin and Pranav both won again and stayed on a perfect score, i.e. tied for first place.
Round six brought a direct encounter between the two leaders. Oparin defeated Pranav with the black pieces after converting an endgame with rook, bishop and pawn against rook and three pawns. Following that, Oparin drew his next two games, which was enough to get the sole lead going into the final round. Even though he lost his last game to Abdusattorov, his earlier results were enough to keep him in the top four.
Pranav took a different route. He did not draw a single game in the entire Swiss. After losing to Oparin, he also lost to Arseniy Nesterov in round seven. He then recovered with two consecutive wins in the final rounds, defeating Denis Lazavik and Bogdan-Daniel Deac. These victories secured his qualification.
Abdusattorov and Tabatabaei were equally consistent. Both players lost once, won six games and drew two. Both won in the final round to confirm a top-four finish. Tabatabaei’s tournament included a rather lucky incident in his final-round against Nesterov. Playing black, Tabatabaei found himself in a lost position by move 18. Nesterov, who had played remarkably throughout the event, intended to play the correct (and winning) 19.0-0-0 but instead played 19.Kc1, which dropped a piece.
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After this mishap typical of online Freestyle Chess games (a.k.a. chess960 or Fischer Random) Tabatabaei grabbed the free piece with 19…Bxe2 and saw his opponent resign after playing 20.Kb1. A painful loss for Nesterov, surely.
The four qualifiers now move on to the knockout stage, which will be played as a single elimination event with a time control of 15 minutes for the game plus 3-second increments. Each match will consist of two games. A new starting position will be drawn for every game, and positions may not be repeated during the knockout. The winner will earn the final place at the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship.
Final standings
