FIDE, Freestyle and Carlsen: The ultimate chess drama

CHENNAI: Five-time world Chess champion Magnus Carlsen may not compete in any tournament organised by FIDE ( Federation International des Echecs), the governing body of chess. His relationship with FIDE has been topsy-turvy for a while now, but it has reached a whole new level.

In the World Rapid and Blitz Championship held at New York, defending champion Magnus was first fined and then disqualified for his refusal to comply with the FIDE's dress code after turning up in jeans.

"I am pretty tired of FIDE, so I want no more of this. I don't want anything to do with them,” he said after his disqualification.

But the dress code incident was just a tip of the iceberg to a case study that potentially has the gravity to change the landscape of the sport.

The Freestyle Debate

Freestyle Chess is like a revolutionary idea to modernise the sport where the starting positions of key pieces, including kings, queens, bishops, rooks and knights are randomised to make the games more creative instead of the traditional memorised openings or strategies.

This was co-founded by Magnus and German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, however this idea was propagated by the great Bobby Fischer in the 90s.

Seeing this as a threat to its authority, rumours surfaced about FIDE exercising control over players’ decision to participate in Freestyle events. Magnus and Hikaru Nakamura were among the top players who openly talked about the threats made by FIDE.

World No 3 Hikaru released a video on his YouTube channel titled: “Why Magnus and Hikaru almost skipped the World Rapid and Blitz,” where he talked about the players possibly being put in situations potentially to choose between playing the Candidates cycle or Freestyle championship.

Even Magnus said after his disqualification that “FIDE were going after players to make them not sign with Freestyle.”

However, FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky, clarified regarding this claim and said on X, “The only thing we insisted on was - no Series or Tour can be called World Championship unless FIDE approves it. FIDE is the governing body of chess, and any World Championship should either be conducted or approved by FIDE.”

FIDE vs Freestyle Chess

On December 21, Freestyle Chess released a statement regarding friendly coexistence between the two in terms of players competing in both Freestyle Chess Grand Slams and FIDE events and said they reached an agreement. They also quoted Arkady Dvorkovich, the FIDE President.

“Arkady Dvorkovich directly addressed Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, stating: Players will not be affected in any way. They can decide on their own and FIDE will not take any negative action,” he was quoted in that statement.

Two days later, FIDE responded with a comment from Dvorkovich where he said, “While my quote has been presented accurately, I shall clarify that my decision as FIDE President was based on direct communication with the players. However, the full press release was not agreed upon with me, and it includes significant inaccuracies that misrepresent the situation.”

This series of events might remind the fans of what happened in 1993 when Garry Kasparov pushed for an initiative like this and broke away from FIDE to form the Professional Chess Association (PCA).

That schism led to chaos in the chess world with two championships existing simultaneously over a decade before the issue was resolved in a reunification match in 2006.

This has all the possibility to go further where the whole way of chess being organised and governed can change. All of it is left to how FIDE is going to respond and what Magnus and other elite players have in mind to push it through.