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NEW DELHI: Viswanathan Anand was expected to headline the opening leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in Weissenhaus, Germany, earlier this year.
But just days before the event, the five-time world chess champion pulled out.
While his withdrawal wasn’t as dramatic as Hans Niemann’s last-minute exit from the Paris leg, Anand’s absence was a substantial blow to Freestyle Chess’ ambitions.
In Anand’s case, they lost not just a seasoned competitor, but a FIDE vice-president and a global chess icon from a country of 1.4 billion people.
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His participation was initially seen as a step towards thawing the simmering tensions between FIDE and Freestyle Chess over the right to use the term “World Championship.”
At the heart of the dispute was Freestyle Chess’s decision to call its eventual winner of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam a “World Champion” — a title FIDE insists it alone can confer.
The governing body took issue with the invitation-only format of Freestyle events, asserting that only competitions with open, transparent qualification systems should be allowed to use that title.
Anand’s presence at the Weissenhaus event was thus seen as a possible turning point in the cold war between the two chess camps, suggesting both parties were inching towards a common ground.
But then came the “jeans controversy”.
During the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships last December, World No. 1 and Freestyle co-founder Magnus Carlsen defied dress code norms by showing up in jeans.
With FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich unavailable, the responsibility to take a call fell on Anand, who upheld the rulebook.
FIDE slapped Carlsen with a USD 200 fine and issued a warning: change your attire or be disqualified.
Carlsen, unimpressed, fired back: “Anand was not ready for this job.”
Soon after, Anand withdrew from the Freestyle event in Germany.
“We asked Vishy, ‘What if Magnus apologised?’” Freestyle co-founder Jan Henric Buettner told TimesofIndia.com in February. “But in the end, he said he felt more comfortable not participating.”
Behind the scenes, Buettner and Dvorkovich had been in regular dialogue, attempting to broker peace.
But just as progress seemed within reach, Buettner dropped a bombshell: an open letter accusing FIDE of backtracking on prior negotiations.
The letter alleged that FIDE had rejected a tentative agreement after Freestyle refused to acknowledge FIDE’s monopoly over the “World Champion” title.
FIDE responded with a public statement confirming the talks but denying any formal pact.
The body clarified that it had offered a waiver to ensure Freestyle players remained eligible for official events, provided Freestyle dropped the championship label and signed off by February 4.
A week later, the world’s top Grandmasters took matters into their own hands.
In a private meeting in Weissenhaus, members of the exclusive Freestyle Chess Players Club (open only to those rated above 2725) voted unanimously: the winner of the 2025 Freestyle Grand Slam Tour, which concludes in December in South Africa, will be crowned “Freestyle Chess Champion”.
“We got the players in one room and asked how they felt about the FIDE standoff,” Buettner told TimesofIndia.com ahead of the Paris leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.
“At first, most of them didn’t really care. So we said, let’s wait till year-end. The players can then decide. World champion, universe champion, global champion, freestyle champion — they can call it whatever they prefer.”
According to Buettner, the final call was a collective one by the players: “It’s the players’ tournament. During technical meetings and whenever questions arise, we let the players decide by majority vote.”
For now, it seems the FIDE vs Freestyle Chess row has cooled. Whether it stays that way or erupts again may depend less on officials and more on the grandmasters in the room.
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