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Magnus Carlsen on the chessboard: Classic is too boring

Photo: Marcus Brandt/dpa

Miss Angola performed, superstar Magnus Carlsen played along and grandmasters explained everything to the hundreds of thousands of viewers on Twitch and YouTube: German multimillionaire Jan Henric Buettner invested around two million euros in his chess tournament on Weißenhäuser Strand on the Baltic Sea, called the “Freestyle Chess GOAT Challenge.” « .

A whole series is now to be created from this tournament in the Chess960 variant.

The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour should be a series of five tournaments per year on five continents.

This is what Buettner and his business partner and chess superstar Magnus Carlsen say.

Carlsen and Buettner are gathering the top players around them for this tournament series.

For this purpose, the so-called Freestyle Chess Players Club was founded, to which a total of 25 players should belong, including the top 10 in the world rankings.

These include world champion Ding Liren and streaming star Hikaru Nakamura.

The members of the club are entitled to take part in the tournaments of the Grand Slam Tour.

“My personal goal for the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam is to make it as commercially successful as iconic sporting events such as the ATP in tennis, the PGA in golf and Formula 1 in motorsports already are today,” Buettner wrote to the members of the newly founded clubs.

He wants to create a “league of chess icons”.

India, New York, Australia

“Our next event is already scheduled for India from November 10th to 17th, 2024,” said Buettner.

In 2025, the game will be played again at his luxury resort in Weissenhaus from February 7th to 14th.

Further Grand Slams are currently planned for summer, autumn and winter 2025 in New York, Colombia and Cape Town, South Africa, and a tournament is scheduled to take place in Australia in 2026.

The prize money should increase from the last $200,000 to up to one million dollars.

Ten players from the newly founded club should take part in each tournament.

It is said that the best players from the previous tournament are qualified for the next tournament.

The remaining places would be filled with players “who would be selected based on their exceptional achievements and/or their individual importance for the respective regional markets.”

The tournaments feature Chess960, which the organizers call Freestyle Chess.

At the beginning of the game, the pieces are not in the classic formation on the home row; their positions are drawn beforehand.

960 different basic positions are possible, making the opening knowledge from classic chess useless.

This should lead to more exciting games that end in a draw less often than in classic chess.

Magnus Carlsen wanted such a tournament from Buettner; the former world champion is bored with classical chess, which is why he gave up his title.

Are the professionals leaving?

From Carlsen and Buettner's point of view, the success of the first tournament was so great that they are now trying the tournament series.

The fact that the two of them even founded their own club should make the world association Fide sit up and take notice.

The Freestyle Chess Players Club could possibly compete with the world association and its tournaments in classical chess.

Because it's not just Carlsen who is turning away from classical chess.

Hikaru Nakamura, famous for his chess streams on Twitch, recently told SPIEGEL in an interview that he had hardly any ambitions in classical chess anymore.

Shooting star Nodirbek Abdusattorov told SPIEGEL that he expected that most professionals would switch from classical chess to Schach960 within the next ten years.

The top German player Vincent Keymer also had positive comments about the tournament in Weissenhaus.

He is now sponsored by Buettner, the millionaire founded the Weissenhaus Chess Academy to promote top German talent.

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