World No 1 Magnus Carlsen is currently on a roll. The Norwegian 34-year-old has won his last six tournaments in a row, scoring at the Chessable Masters, the Paris Freestyle Grand Slam, the Grenke Freestyle Open, the Chess.com Classic, Norway Chess in Stavanger and the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz in Zagreb to add several hundred thousand dollars to his bank balance.
However, Carlsen’s next event, starting on Wednesday at Wynn Las Vegas, has the potential to derail his career trajectory. His opponents there in the third leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam include his arch-rival Hans Niemann, whose game with the then world champion at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup at St Louis led to cheating allegations and a $100mn lawsuit which was eventually settled out of court. Niemann was not invited to Las Vegas, but qualified against the odds for the final place in the 16-grandmaster event.
Niemann, now aged 22, ranked world No 19, and the best young grandmaster in the US, still believes he can reach Carlsen’s level. In recent weeks his results in Chess.com’s competitive online Titled Tuesday have matched those of Carlsen and the world No 2 Hikaru Nakamura.
A further test for the Las Vegas event was provided by an announcement that the Freestyle Grand Slam had cancelled its leg planned for Delhi in September, due to a lack of local sponsors. Instead, the $3.75mn Grand Slam will conclude with a final in Cape Town.
India’s classical world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, 19, who has defeated Carlsen twice in recent tournaments, has withdrawn from Las Vegas citing his own poor form in Freestyle.
However, there will be an interesting addition to the competitors in Bibisara Assaubayeva, aged 21, from Kazakhstan, and ranked among the best young women players in the world, who will become the first female ever invited to a Grand Slam.
Freestyle Chess’s principal organiser Jan Henric Buettner will continue as the public face of Freestyle in Las Vegas, although he has been replaced as its CEO by Thomas Harsch. A deeper problem for Freestyle is that it has so far failed to gain traction among amateur chess players, amid complaints that positions from the variant are too hard to relate to traditional strategies.
Nevertheless, players and organisers remain enthusiastic about the creativity of Freestyle. The programme for the week includes Chesstival, a pro-am tournament pairing grandmasters with top NBA stars, plus the main tournament with $750,000 prize money.
Meanwhile, the English Championship is taking place this weekend at Kenilworth, Warwickshire, with the first of seven rounds on Friday and the final round on Monday.
There is an entry of 85 players, although the top three seeds are the clear favourites: Gawain Jones, 37, is the defending champion, Michael Adams, 53, is the world senior champion, while Nikita Vitiugov, 38, is a former Russian champion who changed federations to England in response to the invasion of Ukraine.
One week later, the British Championship starts in Liverpool and continues for a week. The field will be stronger, and the prizes larger, but the same grandmaster trio will again be the favourites.
The championship is being played at a prime location in central Liverpool, where the congress, including junior and senior championships, has attracted a record entry of nearly 1,400 players and still counting.
Puzzle 2632
GM David Paravyan vs GM Alexander Rustemov, Freestyle Friday 2025. White to move and win.
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