Grenke Freestyle Chess Open

The Grenke Freestyle Chess Open was an open Chess960 tournament. It took place from 17 April to 21 April 2025 in Karlsruhe, Germany. It was held concurrently with the Grenke Chess Open as part of the annual Grenke Chess Festival, supplanting the former round-robin Grenke Chess Classic. It was a part of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, a series of Chess960 tournaments being held throughout 2025.

Magnus Carlsen won the tournament with a perfect score, winning all nine of his games. Seven players tied for second place, with Parham Maghsoodloo finishing second with the best tiebreak score. The winner was set to qualify to the Las Vegas Freestyle Chess Grand Slam. Since Carlsen had already qualified from a previous event, the spot was awarded to Maghsoodloo.

Background

In 2024, the traditional Grenke Chess Festival returned after a five-year hiatus. The invitational "Classic" tournament was won by Magnus Carlsen, while the Open, which was held concurrently, was won by Hans Niemann, who thereby qualified for the 2025 Classic.

On February 13, 2025, the organizers of the Festival and the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, a series of Chess960 tournaments being held throughout 2025, announced that a Chess960 open would be held in place of the Grenke Chess Classic. The new open is part of the Grand Slam Tour, with the top ten finishers scoring tour points, and the winner qualifying for the upcoming Las Vegas Grand Slam.

As part of the cooperation, Niemann, who had previously qualified for the now-cancelled Classic, was given a wild card invite to the Paris Grand Slam to compensate. He controversially withdrew from that tournament at the last minute without explanation, leading to doubts about his potential participation in Grenke. He ultimately did arrive to play in the Freestyle Open.

Format

Qualification

As an open tournament, any interested chess player can participate. Players are distributed into three sections according to their classical FIDE Elo rating number and their German DWZ rating number.
* ''Freestyle Open A'': FIDE Elo or DWZ > 1950
* ''Freestyle Open B'': FIDE Elo and DWZ < 2000
* ''Freestyle Open C'': FIDE Elo < 1600 and DWZ < 1400

As of 10 April 2025, 466 players have registered with 251 of them playing in the ''Freestyle Open A'' section.

Tournament

In each of the three sections, a 9-round Swiss-system tournament will be held. For each round, a random position from the 960 possible starting positions of Chess960 is drawn, which all the games in that round will use, excluding the standard chess starting position. A position that is drawn in one round is be excluded for all subsequent rounds. All games use a time control of 90 minutes with an increment of 30 seconds per move.

Before rounds 2-5, any player may switch from the Grenke Chess Open to the Freestyle Open, with points from the former tournament carried over.

Prize money and grand slam points for the Freestyle Open A section will be awarded as follows:

Results

Final classification

Notes:
* Only players with a score of at least 6 points are listed.
* For tie-breaks, the Buchholz system was used.
* The first letter in the brackets denotes if the player had the white or the black pieces in that round. The number after that denotes the final rank of the opponent.
* If a player switched from the Grenke Chess Open to the Freestyle Open during the tournament, points carried over are denoted as "(open)".

Since Carlsen had already qualified to the Las Vegas tournament, it was initially announced that a tiebreaker would be played between the seven players who tied for second place to determine the qualifier. The following day it was confirmed that Maghsoodloo was awarded the qualification spot.

Tour standings after the tournament

Note: Only the top five positions are included.

References

{{Freestyle Chess

Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour
2025 in chess
2025 in German sport
April 2025 sports events in Germany