Can Arjun Erigaisi beat Magnus Carlsen to become Freestyle World Champion?

After ending 2024 with twin bronze medals at the FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championship in Doha, Arjun has had a difficult start to 2025. He came close to winning both the Rapid and Blitz titles at the Tata Steel Chess event in Kolkata, but then had a disappointing three weeks in Wijk aan Zee at the year’s first classical tournament where he managed to win just one game out of 13 rounds.

India’s Arjun Erigaisi claimed a bronze medal at the World Rapid Championship. (PHOTO: Anna Shtourman via FIDE)

Now, in a format that enables the chaos he loves to unleash on the board, Arjun might just have his first — and best — shot at a world champion’s crown.

A rebranded Chess960 World Championship

After an ugly argument with FIDE and running a year-long freestyle tour last year, the organizers of Freestyle Chess finally buried the hatchet and came to an agreement with the global governing body of chess over a new world championship.

The idea of a world championship in the Chess960 format (as the freestyle format is also known) is not new.

There used to be a Fischer Random World Championship event organised by FIDE, which lasted just two editions, with Wesley So winning the title in 2019 and Hikaru Nakamura claiming the crown in 2022 before FIDE abandoned the idea. Now, the event returns as the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship in a rejigged and rebranded format.

Arjun qualified for the event from last year’s Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, along with Carlsen, Aronian, Caruana, Keymer and Sindarov, while Freestyle Chess nominated American grandmaster Niemann and Abdusattorov qualified through a pathway put in place by FIDE for the final spot.

Incidentally, among the eight players in the race to become the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Champion, Caruana and Sindarov are the only two players to also have a shot at becoming a classical world champion in this cycle. Of the remaining six, five did not qualify for the Candidates while Carlsen has walked away from the classical World Championship cycle.

For the five-time world champion from Norway, the event in Weissenhaus will provide a chance to add a new world championship crown to his tally.

The Freestyle World Championship will start with a rapid round-robin stage on Friday, while knockout matches will be held on Saturday. The finale will be held on Sunday, February 15, where the winner will walk away with a cool $100,000 (approximately Rs 90.5 lakh).