It was a highly anticipated first day of chess at the Weissenhaus on Germany’s Baltic coast, which kicked off the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam. For a bit more than a week, the chess world is focused on that new form of our beloved game that is quickly gaining popularity: Chess960, also called Fischer Random and, of course, Freestyle.

”We are launching a new era in chess history today,” said Freestyle Chess CEO Jan Henric Buettner at the opening. It certainly feels that way as this year the Weissenhaus event does not stand on its own, but is part of a tour of five tournaments in total played between February and December. All will have a $750,000 prize fund, with $200,000 going to each winner. The next events will be in Paris (April), New York (July), New Delhi (September) and Cape Town (December), with 12 players in all four tournaments instead of 10 as in Weissenhaus.

The eventual winner, to be crowned in South Africa at the end of 2025, will be the player who has gained the most Grand Slam points. For that, the Formula 1 system is used, with 25 points going to the winner of an individual Grand Slam, second place will receive 18, third 15, fourth 12, fifth 10, sixth 8, seventh 6, eighth 4, ninth 2, and tenth 1 point.

The larger part of these tournaments will consist of Freestyle chess played at a classical time control in a knockout format, but before we’re getting there, a 10-player single round robin at a rapid time control (10 minutes and a 10-second increment) determines which eight players will move to the knockout. At Weissenhaus, this round-robin takes place on Friday and Saturday.

Who gets to play whom in which round, and with which color? That was determined by the drawing of lots, which took place during dinner on Thursday evening. Buettner’s wife Holly took the honors and held 10 playing cards, with the faces of all the players, from which different guests picked a card to determine the lot numbers. Funnily enough, Nakamura’s wife Atousa picked her husband, so Hikaru can blame his better half that he’s playing black five times.

Before the dinner, we had witnessed an extraordinary interesting technical meeting, with chief arbiter Gerhard Bertagnolli going through the regulations with the players. It lasted more than an hour and involved multiple discussions among the players, often ending up in actual voting, to further improve certain details in the regulations. For instance, Armageddon games will now have a one-second increment after move 60 – two seconds was too long, according to the players, while Carlsen noted that a technically impossible 1.5 seconds “would have been ideal.”

Also, it was voted that the winner of the rapid tournament is not automatically going to play number eight in the quarterfinals but can choose his opponent from the players finishing on fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth place. The runner-up may then pick one from the remaining three, and so on.

Especially in this day and age, it was nice to see democracy working successfully. As Buettner noted during the opening press conference, Freestyle is “a tournament of players for players,” and he his clearly allowing them to shape the event, part of a larger Tour and even even larger business plan, to their liking.

“Make chess more accessible, win more people for chess,” was how Thomas Harsch, COO of Freestyle Chess, put it. And that’s what’s clearly happening in this year at Weissenhaus, as a large number of popular YouTubers, podcasters, and influencers have been invited to cover the event. We have Levy Rozman, Alexandra and Andrea Botez, Anna Cramling, Chessbase India, Take Take Take alongside Chess.com on-site producing daily materials, while the official broadcast is done with two separate streams: club-level players can enjoy the “professional” channel with the legendary GM Judit Polgar alongside GMs Peter Leko and Niclas Huschenbeth, while the larger audience of beginning players can go to the “community channel” served by GMs David Howell and Daniel Naroditsky, IMs Levy Rozman and Tania Sachdev and host James “Dash” Patterson, who has a lot of experience in the world of esports.

To make the whole thing even more interesting, the players are all wearing Polar wrist bands so that the broadcast can keep track of their heart rates. Also, like last year, there is the “confession booth,” which allows players to provide comments during the game, obviously in a sound-proof booth.

What’s also kept from last year’s edition is that the players playing the white pieces and those playing black separate themselves in two groups and discuss the opening position in two different areas for about ten minutes. The media are allowed to get close and film this, which is a bit of a spectacle on its own. For the first round, Gukesh Dommaraju, Alireza Firouzja and Magnus Carlsen decided to sit down at their board alone to get ready for their game.

Carlsen, this year in all white (all players once again were given different colored-jackets), sat down and was fully focused, starting at the starting position without moving pieces and with his head in his hands – now with a shiny wedding right on his right hand. It is the first over-the-board tournament that he is playing as a married man. His wife Ella, dressed in stylish white as well today, accompanied him to the playing hall. A year ago, Weissenhaus was the first tournament location where the two lovers could be seen together in public.

That first round of the rapid tournament started with a bang: last year’s winner Carlsen against the reigning FIDE World Champion in Chess960, Hikaru Nakamura. It was an interesting fight in which both kings started on the b8 square and never had to castle. When the players got lower on time, it was Carlsen who was the most resourceful.

Sindarov, who had beaten local hero Vincent Keymer in the first round, won a difficult game against Levon Aronian next. Fabiano Caruana also started with 2/2, first beating Vladimir Fedoseev as Black and then taking down Carlsen, a small revenge for his lost final last year perhaps!? It was a tricky opening position because as early as move seven, Carlsen made a big mistake and never really recovered.

Sindarov’s win against Fedoseev gave the Uzbek grandmaster the sole lead with a perfect 3/3. He then slowed down with a draw against Gukesh. Caruana, who had drawn with Nodirbek Abdusattorov in round three, defeated Alireza Firouzja to stay half point behind the leader. Firouzja was bitterly disappointed after Caruana defended against his sacrificial play with the excellent 21.Rh1, a move the French-Iranian grandmaster must have underestimated.

In the studio afterward, Caruana said about his prep for the event: “My preparation was playing absolutely horribly in my last event!” He was referring to the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, where he didn’t do well. He is once again in Weissenhaus together with the Spanish grandmaster Miguel Santos Ruiz, and they did play some Freestyle rapid games to warm up. On Firouzja’s attack, he commented: “It was terrifying but I didn’t ’t see a way forward for him after 21.Rh1.”

Sindarov finished his brilliant day by beating Carlsen, who suffered no fewer than three losses on this third and has not secured himself yet of the next stage. It was an excellent game by Sindarov, who surprises very positively so far as a last-minute replacement for Viswanathan Anand, who was originally going to participate in this event. Both Caruana and Sindarov are certain of entering the knockout.