Wesley So

American GM

“FIDE says the new Freestyle Championship is a continuation of the past tournaments in 2019 and 2022. But neither I nor Hikaru, the Champions of those tournaments, received invitations. And it’s not surprising, I never get invitations to Magnus’s tournaments. When that Freestyle Tour launched, he himself chose whom to invite. That’s why you’ll never see Anish Giri there.

And that would be fine, but inviting seven out of eight participants by hand and then calling the tournament a World Championship — this is strange. Even now, they say they are inviting the top seven based on the season’s results, but the participants themselves were initially selected by hand. If this is a World Championship, every spot should be contested through qualification.

And one more thing, everyone says Freestyle is the easiest format for the viewer, that it can attract a new audience this way. I disagree with this. Freestyle is hard to watch. Even for me, I love chess, but I find it difficult to follow the games when there’s a new random position every time. I never remember if I’ve seen that starting position before.

Honestly, we’ll see what happens next. But it’s quite possible the tournament in Weissenhaus will be the last one for Freestyle.”