“Freestyle Chess World Championship” is written above the rules for the upcoming freestyle tour. This will not have been greeted with enthusiasm by the FIDE board.

The World Rapid and Blitz Championship starting on December 26 almost began with a scandal. As became known shortly before Christmas, Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and possibly other top players were on the verge of canceling their participation in the title fights in New York at short notice. According to Nakamura, FIDE had threatened to exclude players who take part in freestyle from FIDE tournaments. The two chess superstars wanted to counter this by withdrawing on their own initiative - and thus significantly devalue the competition on Wall Street.

Anyone who hasn't read between the lines or listened carefully over the past few weeks must have found Saturday night's Freestyle announcement cryptic. Freestyle addressed a conflict that only insiders knew existed. Under the headline “Freestyle Chess and FIDE agree on peaceful coexistence”, it was stated that the 25 members of the “Freestyle Chess Players Club” (FCPC) and FIDE boss Arkady Dvorkovich had agreed that players could play wherever they wanted without having to fear FIDE sanctions. The FCPC and FIDE want to negotiate world championship titles and their recognition “in a spirit of cooperation and respect” in the future.

Minutes later, reigning 960 World Champion Hikaru Nakamura released a video in which he offered context from the perspective of a top professional. FIDE perceives freestyle chess as a threat, fears that the top pros are playing freestyle instead of participating in FIDE competitions - and has responded by threatening the players, Nakamura explained. The US grandmaster emphasized that, in his view, FIDE is not in a position to successfully resolve such a conflict. To do so, it would have to make its competitions more attractive for the players by setting up consistently relevant prize funds. However, it almost only does this in the Candidates Tournament and World Championship Match.

The next day, Arkady Dvorkovich spoke out on Twitter. The FIDE President made it clear that his decision to give the players their freedom was the result of his communication with the players. Nothing else is stated in the Freestyle message, but there is the addition that Freestyle boss Jan Henric Buettner and chess.com boss Daniel Rensch had facilitated. Dvorkovich complains that the communication was not coordinated with him. The 19 lines contained “considerable inaccuracies”. The FIDE President left open what these might be. He announced that FIDE would comment on this issue again soon.

If Dvorkovich assures the players of their freedom of choice, someone must have questioned it beforehand. Against the background of Dvorkovich's intervention, it is obvious that FIDE's top management is not acting in a unified manner when it comes to freestyle and is possibly divided. In this context, an interview given by FIDE Managing Director Emil Sutovsky immediately after the World Championship is interesting.

“I believe that if top players were given the choice between classical and freestyle chess, most of them would prefer traditional chess,” Sutovsky told the Straits Times after the 2024 World Championship match. Now he and his organization have apparently called his bluff - and are finding that things are different than they thought.

Thanks largely to freestyle and the eSport World Cup, there will be more money than ever to be made from chess in 2025 for the elite of the game. When Magnus Carlsen and Daniel Rensch, among others, outlined what will happen in 2025 in this video, there was an awkward moment when the presenter said the freestyle world championship will be an “official” one - and no one wanted to comment on that.

Immediately after winning the title, world champion Gukesh confirmed his participation in freestyle in February 2025. Nakamura has announced that he will play as many freestyle tournaments as he can in 2025 and, depending on his success in freestyle, “a minimum of FIDE tournaments”. The 960 fans Levon Aronian and Magnus Carlsen can hardly wait to play 960 with classical thinking time again anyway. Both recently emphasized this once again. Vincent Keymer, after all, has two priorities for 2025, as he told New in Chess: freestyle and qualifying for the 2026 Candidates Tournament.

The conflict, which has apparently been fermenting for some time, is likely to have been sparked by the fact that Freestyle 2025 wants to/will crown the Freestyle World Champion at the end of the first Grand Slam Tour with six tournaments. It is not only since 2024 that the world federation has reacted allergically if someone wants to award world championship titles without FIDE's blessing.

“FIDE is the only global organization recognized by the IOC to hold the World Chess Championships of all categories and age groups,” the world federation announced eleven years ago, when the Amateur Chess Organization (ACO) (which has since gone bankrupt and continues to operate) entered the stage with its Amateur World Championships. According to the ACO, FIDE never took legal action against this.

In April 2022, chess.com got into trouble with FIDE (in addition to mockery and derision from Lichess) when the company announced a “chess.com World Championship” for the first time. Two days after the announcement, this “World Championship” was buried and renamed the “Global Championship”. The competition, which was endowed with one million dollars, remained a one-off event.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung already diagnosed the potential of “the digital quasi-monopolist” to put FIDE under pressure. A year later, in an interview with a Russian magazine, Sutovsky did not rule out a conflict between FIDE and chess.com and its escalation (see report below). But in the Carlsen-Niemann affair, the world federation was still holding back so as not to alienate chess.com ambassador Carlsen, who might still take part in the 2024 Candidates Tournament.

FIDE Managing Director Emil Sutovsky saw a conflict with chess.com coming. In the Carlsen-Niemann affair, the world federation was still acting softly towards chess.com ambassador Magnus Carlsen in the hope that Carlsen would return to the World Championship cycle.

Meanwhile, the federation was trying to get a foot in the door in Ostholstein. As reported, there was an offer to host the 2024 World Championship match and the 960 World Championship in Weissenhaus at the same time. FIDE had quietly removed the 960 World Championship, which was originally scheduled for February 2024, from its tournament calendar due to the lack of an organizer. It has still not been re-advertised. An inquiry by this site to FIDE about the status of its 960 World Championship remained unanswered.

After the initial advances towards Weissenhaus, now the confrontation. Probably buoyed up by the World Championship success in Singapore and the upcoming FIDE Wall Street World Championship in New York, the World Federation has for the first time attempted to drive a stake into a private organizer by presenting players with an either/or choice.

A privately organized 960 World Championship would not be new. Hans-Walter Schmitt first organized this title in Mainz back in 2001. Peter Leko became the first world champion. The difference to today is that the game was not yet part of the FIDE canon and therefore there was no fear of disputes over “official” titles. Chess960 has been in the FIDE Handbook since 2019. In the final of the first FIDE 960 World Championship in 2019, Wesley So wiped Magnus Carlsen off the board with 13.5:2.5.

The number of world championship titles awarded by FIDE is steadily growing to more than 150, and the future of this one is uncertain.

The current conflict, however it may end, sheds light on the truly existential issues that will occupy the two organizations, which “coexist peacefully in a spirit of cooperation and respect”, much more in the short and medium term than the world championship title and whether or not it has an association seal on it. While FIDE struggles with its significance and the participation of top stars in FIDE tournaments, Freestyle is faced with the task of creating the first profitable tournament series in the history of chess.

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