The Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge was an 8-player

over-the-board This glossary of chess explains commonly used terms in chess, in alphabetical order. Some of these terms have their own pages, like ''#fork, fork'' and ''#pin, pin''. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of ter ...

classical

Chess960 Chess960, also known as Fischer Random Chess, is a chess variant that randomizes the starting position of the pieces on the back rank. It was introduced by former world chess champion Bobby Fischer in 1996 to reduce the emphasis on opening prepa ...

tournament that took place at

Gut Weißenhaus (also ) is a Castle, schloss in Wangels in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is next to the Baltic Sea and about 100 km away from Hamburg. The 75 hectare estate, including several restored historic buildings and a village, is owned by Jan He ...

in Wangels,

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

from February 9–16, 2024. It was the first major Chess960 tournament that used classical chess

time control A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. For turn-based games such as chess, shogi or go, time cont ...

s. The tournament was organized and sponsored by

Jan Henric Buettner Jan Henric Buettner (born 10 September 1964) is a German entrepreneur. Biography Born in Hamburg, Buettner studied business management there and did an internship at a precursor of Vodafone, then started his career as a trainee at Axel Springer A ...

, owner of the Weißenhaus resort, and co-organized by five-time

World Chess Champion The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Gukesh Dommaraju, who defeated the previous champion Ding Liren in the World Chess Championship 2024, 2024 World Chess Championship. ...

Magnus Carlsen Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster. Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion, five-time World Rapid Chess Championship, World Rapid Chess Champio ...

. Carlsen reportedly handpicked the seven other competitors –

Ding Liren Ding Liren ( zh, c=丁立人; born 24October 1992) is a Chinese chess grandmaster who was the 17th World Chess Champion from 2023–24. He is also a three-time Chinese Chess Champion, was a member of the Chinese chess teams that won the Chess ...

Fabiano Caruana Fabiano Luigi Caruana (born July 30, 1992) is an Italian and American chess grandmaster who is the reigning four-time United States Chess Champion. With a peak rating of 2844, Caruana is the third-highest-rated player in history. Born in Mia ...

Alireza Firouzja Alireza Firouzja (, ; born 18 June 2003) is an Iranian and French Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster. Firouzja is the youngest player to have surpassed a FIDE Elo rating system, rating of 2800, beating the previous record set by Magnus Carls ...

Gukesh D Gukesh Dommaraju (born 29 May 2006) is an Indian chess grandmaster and the reigning World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, Gukesh is the youngest undisputed world champion, the youngest player to have surpassed a FIDE rating of 2750, doing so ...

Nodirbek Abdusattorov Nodirbek Abdusattorov (; born 18 September 2004) is an Uzbek chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he qualified for the grandmaster title at the age of 13 years, 1 month, and 11 days. FIDE awarded him the title in April 2018. He is Uzbekistan's h ...

Vincent Keymer Vincent Keymer (born 15 November 2004) is a German chess grandmaster. He was the No.1 in the FIDE World Chess Ratings for Juniors in January 2024. Chess career Vincent Keymer was born in Mainz, Germany, a city that has a long history of hostin ...

and

Levon Aronian Levon Grigori Aronian (; born 6 October 1982) is an Armenian chess grandmaster who has represented the United States since 2021. A chess prodigy, he earned the title of grandmaster in 2000, at the age of 17. He is a former world rapid and blit ...

. Chess960 World Champion

Hikaru Nakamura Christopher Hikaru NakamuraCandidates Tournament The Candidates Tournament (or in some periods Candidates Matches) is a chess tournament organized by FIDE, chess's international governing body, since 1950, as the final contest to determine the challenger for the World Chess Championship. The win ...

. Carlsen won the event. In March 2024, Buettner and Carlsen announced that the tournament would expand into a yearly series of events with increased prize funds. The

second edition The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...

of the event took place from February 7–14, 2025, as the first leg of the

Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour is a series of Chess960 tournaments in 2025 organized by Freestyle Chess Operations. It will consist of five "Grand Slam" tournaments following a format similar to the Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge, held i ...

Format

The event started with a round-robin

rapid Rapid(s) or RAPID may refer to: Hydrological features * Rapids, sections of a river with turbulent water flow * Rapid Creek (Iowa River tributary), Iowa, United States * Rapid Creek (South Dakota), United States, namesake of Rapid City Sport ...

tournament to determine the pairings for the main classical event. The time control for the round-robin is 25 minutes plus 10 seconds increment per move. It took place over the first two days of the tournament, February 9–10. The main event is a

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination knockout, or sudden-death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of a match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final match-up, ...

. * The time control is 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes for the rest of the game, and a 30-second increment per move after move 40. * The matches consist of two classical games. In the event of a tie, rapid and blitz tiebreaks are played in the following order until the tie is broken – two 15+10 rapid games, two 5+2 blitz games and if a tie persists, one armageddon game. Before each round, the starting position for the round is drawn using 958 balls (the normal chess position, and the same position with queens and kings swapped, are excluded). The players get 10 minutes to discuss the position before the start of a round.

Name

Freestyle Chess is another name for

, otherwise known as Fischer random chess, a variant of chess where there are 960 different possible starting positions. In previous Freestyle Chess tournaments, notably the

World Chess960 Championship The World Chess960 Championship is a match or tournament held to determine a world champion in Chess960 (also known as Fischer random chess), a popular chess variant in which the positions of pieces on the players' home ranks are randomized wit ...

s, largely rapid chess time controls had been used instead of classical chess, despite randomised starting positions requiring more time for thought due to the lack of opening theory. This led Magnus Carlsen to pitch his idea for a classical Freestyle Chess tournament. Carlsen's status as arguably the greatest chess player of all time, or the "G.O.A.T.", and him handpicking his opponents or "challengers" inspired the name "Freestyle Chess G.O.A.T. Challenge".

Prize fund

The total prize fund for the event was $200,000.

Results

Rapid event

The first four rounds of the rapid round-robin event were played on day 1. World Chess Champion Ding Liren blundered a piece and lost against Fabiano Caruana in round 1, and went on to lose his next three games as well. Gukesh recovered from a round 1 loss to Alireza Firouzja to win his next three games, including a round 2 win over Magnus Carlsen and a round 4 win over Ding. The only undefeated players were Vincent Keymer and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the former scoring 3.5/4 to emerge the sole leader. Ding's loss streak continued on day 2 as he lost his round 5 encounter with Carlsen, the first meeting between the two world champions since Ding's title victory in 2023. Ding lost again in round 6 before finishing in last place with a total score of 0.5/7. Abdusattorov remained undefeated, beating Gukesh in round 6 and Carlsen in round 7 to win the rapid event with a score of 5.5/7, half a point ahead of Keymer.

Main event

5th-8th Place

Freestyle Chess ratings

Freestyle Chess

elo ratings The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor. The Elo system w ...

for the players were revealed at the end of the event.

Future

Tournament co-organizer Jan Henric Buettner announced that Freestyle Chess will likely launch a tour in 2025. The top five players from the 2024 event qualified for the 2025 tour: the semifinalists Carlsen, Caruana, Aronian and Abdusattorov, as well as the winner of the 5th-8th place bracket, Firouzja. Fischer Random World Champion

Hikaru Nakamura Christopher Hikaru NakamuraLeft Lane Capital Left Lane Capital is a global venture capital firm that invests in internet and technology companies with a consumer orientation. The firm is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, with an office in London. History Left Lane Capital was founded b ...

. In November 2024, Carlsen and Caruana played a two-game exhibition match in

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

to promote the upcoming

, which will comprise five "Grand Slam" tournaments starting in February 2025. Carlsen won the match by the score of 1.5-0.5.

References

External links

* {{Freestyle Chess Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2024 in chess 2024 in German sport Magnus Carlsen