Buettner alleges FIDE driven by monetary interests, calls for peace
The Freestyle Grand Slam Chess Tour is scheduled to hold its first event of the year in Germany next month
Bengaluru: In the ongoing power struggle between Magnus Carlsen-backed Freestyle Chess and world chess governing body, Fide, Freestyle Chess promoter and German entrepreneur Jan Buettner has in an open letter alleged that Fide’s objections to it are fuelled by monetary interests and that the body doesn’t hold exclusive authority over the word, “world”.
A primary bone of contention has been the usage of the term ‘World Championship’ for Freestyle events. Fide has stayed firm on its stance of holding exclusive rights over running ‘World Championships in chess. “Let me clarify once again that our tour is not a ‘World Championship’ in the traditional sense…. It is titled ‘Freestyle Grand Slam Chess Tour’. At the end of each year, we crown a champion in Freestyle Chess – a format that evolve in the future, potentially moving beyond Chess960 to other new formats, but not classical chess…The title of ‘world champion’ in this context reflects the unique format of our events, not an attempt to challenge Fide’s traditional World Championship cycle,” Buettner wrote in his open letter addressed to Fide CEO Emil Sutovsky.
The Freestyle Grand Slam Chess Tour is scheduled to hold its first event of the year in Weissenhaus, Germany next month and is supposed to have six of the world’s current top 10 players in its line-up.
Calling the collaboration between Freestyle Chess and Fide “increasingly strained”, Buettner claimed that Fide president Arkady Dvorkovich’s invitation to Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana to play a Freestyle Chess Summit in Singapore around the time of the World Championship, ended with them being “stonewalled and ignored” upon arrival.
The letter went on to claim that Fide has adopted a “confrontational” stance towards players, and Freestyle’s willingness to offer $100,000 annually to the body as a gesture of goodwill and to avoid harassment, was rebuffed. Buettner alleged that Fide’s “unjustifiable” demand for $500,000, suggests that “monetary gain is the primary driver”.
Buettner went on to say that “Freestyle seeks peace not conflict” and that they’re ready to contribute $50,000 annually so that “players are left undisturbed.”
Hours before Buettner’s open letter, in an explosive post on X, Fide CEO Sutosvky came down heavily on Freestyle Chess and its ‘leaders’ claiming that Freestyle Chess rode on the “publicity and budget” of the classical World Championship last year and their own ambitions of a World Championship suddenly “popped up”.
“Why instead of peacefully running your series one starts a battle aiming to split the chess community? Is it a personal ambition or the realisation that ‘World Championship’ sells better or an attempt to prove that this is the World Championship? If so, it won’t work.” Sutovsky alleged that “money is by far the main objective” of the commercial project run by Freestyle Chess. “You completely neglect the entire chess society, focusing on the interests of a few people and for that sake go to war…We’d love to work with any private project- in particular with ambitious ones…But if you want a war, try us.”
