Why Paris? “We love the city, and we enjoy to showcase it,” said Jan Henric Buettner at the opening press conference on Monday morning. With splendid weather expected throughout the week, Paris is the place to be for chess in the coming days, as it was many times in the past.

One example is the legendary Immopar Rapid tournament in the 1990s and it was the organizer himself, Dan Antoine Blanc Shapira, who pointed out at the press conference that it’s been 35 years since his super strong events were held here. Carlsen agreed that they were some sort of a precursor of what the Freestyle organizers are trying to achieve: a breath of fresh air through the chess world with top players fighting for top prizes.

Following the standard format of all Grand Slam events, the Paris Freestyle Chess Grand Slam started on Monday with the first of two days of rapid chess (10 minutes and a 10-second increment on the clock). It is an all-play all, with six rounds today and five more rounds tomorrow. That’s two more than in Weissenhaus, because we have two more players: 12 instead of 10. Based on the final standings, the pairings will be made for the knockout phase that starts on Wednesday.

Before the first round began, players observed a minute of silence for former top grandmaster and FIDE President between 1978 and 1982, Fridrik Olafsson, who passed away on Friday.

The first round of rapid was a sign of things to come, with just one out of six games (Gukesh vs. Vachier-Lagrave) ending in a draw. The drawing percentage on this first day was as low as 16.7%, something you won’t see in a classical chess tournament at the highest level. It shows how difficult Chess960 is, and the many “accidents” that are happening are part of the excitement for the fans.

After finishing “only” in third place in Weissenhaus, Carlsen was already looking forward to Paris and expressed his strong intention to do better in the French capital. A good first day will surely get him to the top half, but it remains to be seen what that means for the pairings.

The world number one started his day with a win against Vidit Gujrathi, failed to hold the theoretically drawn RN vs R endgame. The Indian GM blundered into mate and instead of resigning, he first tried a draw claim with the arbiter based on a possible 50 moves of no captures (why not, you can always try!) but that wasn’t the case – the last capture had only been 28 moves before.

Speaking of Vidit, the 30-year-old grandmaster from Nashik married only just last week. He had entered the tournament by winning the Chess.com qualifier about a month ago, and so his honeymoon became a combative one (on the board, that is!) which is now celebrated in the city of love, as he did bring his lovely wife to Paris.

Vidit continued his unfortunate loss at the start with a good win against one of the guests at his wedding, Gukesh Dommaraju. The 18-year-old grandmaster from Chennai, who is once again accompanied by his father here in Paris, understandably missed a difficult way to draw the game, after which his opponent found a lovely way to win:

As it turned out, Gukesh was still winless in the whole 2025 Tour up to that point, after a rather unfortunate Weissenhaus event and a suboptimal start here in Paris. The classical world chess champion broke the spell in the third round though, with a quick win against another compatriot. This was a slightly surprising turn of events perhaps as Arjun Erigaisi had just beaten Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana back to back!

In these first three rounds, it was Abdusattorov who impressed the most with a perfect 3/3 score. The Uzbek grandmaster only heard on Saturday evening that he would be substituting for Hans Niemann, who withdrew from the event last minute citing “personal reasons.”

Abdusattorov happened to be in Dubai, and a seven-hour direct flight on Sunday still allowed him to arrive comfortably early for the tournament. He brought former Uzbek number one player Rustam Kasimdzhanov with him.

Starting with two black games didn’t stop Abdusattorov from beating Weissenhaus winner Vincent Keymer and runner-up Caruana, before taking down Richard Rapport next (a substitute as well, replacing Alireza Firouzja). It was not without some luck:

“At first, I was really surprised because it was really a last-moment replacement,” Abdusattorov commented at the end of the day. “I didn’t have much time, so I immediately took the opportunity and I needed to solve the logistical issues also. But I think it also has some plus because I’m playing without any pressure; I didn’t think about this tournament at all!”

He had good chances to move to 4/4 but spoiled a promising endgame to a draw his game with the Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi. Carlsen closed in with a win against Gukesh, another always-enticing clash between the world number one and the world champion. Meanwhile, after three straight losses, Caruana scored his first win against Rapport.

The fifth round saw a similar scenario at the top of the standings, with Abdusattorov drawing and Carlsen winning. The Norwegian star thus caught the Uzbek player in first place, this time by beating his long-time rival, particularly online: Hikaru Nakamura. It was a matter of getting a slight edge out of the opening and grinding down the opponent many moves later.

Abdusattorov and Carlsen maintained their lead as both won their game in the sixth and final round of the day. They scored 5/6 and virtually secured a place in the top half with five more rounds to go.

It’s high time to start mentioning Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who was the “best of the rest” with an excellent, undefeated 4.5/6 score. The French GM beat Rapport in the sixth round with the white pieces.

On Tuesday at 1 p.m. local time, round seven will start. After 11 rounds, we will know which 10 players will play in the knockout phase, and which four lost their chance of winning this second leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam. They will still play minimatches against each other for 9th-12th place.