At a private luxury resort in Germany, Gukesh Dommaraju, the reigning world champion, has spent an entire week being deeply uncomfortable. Nothing seems to have gone his way at Weissenhaus, where he ended the first event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour 2025 without a single win. To put that into context, that’s zero wins, 11 draws and six defeats across classical and rapid time controls. He just about snuck into the quarter-finals after finishing eighth in the 10-player round robin stage, which was played in the rapid time control. Then, he lost or drew all his games in the knock out rounds in the classical time control to end up eighth. Should this event be a cause for concern? After all, last year it was Ding Liren who had suffered a similar fate at the freestyle event in Weissenhaus while he was still world champion. And Ding had been in wretched form for the rest of the year till he was relieved of the world champion’s crown by Gukesh. Do the results from freestyle chess prove that Gukesh has lost form — or worse, motivation — like his predecessor? Not really. Just days before the Freestyle event started, Gukesh had come within a whisker of winning the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, eventually losing to compatriot R Praggnanandhaa in tiebreaks after both players had ended on top of the standings after 13 games. Gukesh had in fact landed in the Dutch village just hours before his first match, having barely trained for weeks because felicitations and public appearances had consumed all of his time since becoming world champion. So what had changed for the teenager in the days that separated Tata Steel chess event — where he had gone unbeaten in 12 games before losing the final game — from the Freestyle event where he could not manage a single win? Simply put, the sport itself had changed. Freestyle chess might be referred to as a variant of the sport, but those who have had a close brush with it — like chess legend Judit Polgar who was a commentator at the Freestyle Tour event for a week — believe that it’s a “completely different sport which requires a completely different mindset”. In essence, freestyle chess is not like T20 is to Test cricket or ODIs. For chess, that equivalence to T20s and ODIs would be rapid and blitz formats. Freestyle chess is a whole new game. “It’s a completely different sport. You need a completely different mindset and completely different priorities than the ones we are used to. There are so many small details that you’re not used to. There are very few things that you can rely on from your classical way of thinking in chess,” Polgar told ChessBase. As envisioned by the legendary Bobby Fischer, who popularised Fischer Random (also known as freestyle chess and chess 960), freestyle chess essentially plunges players into the middle game from the first move itself. That’s why it wasn’t particularly surprising that in the final of the Freestyle Chess event in Weissenhaus, eventual winner Vincent Keymer actually spent 21 minutes to decide what his first move with black pieces would be against Fabiano Caruana. DEEP DIVE: Against Fabiano Caruana in the quarters, Gukesh was down to ONE SECOND on his clock at one point while in a completely losing position in the end game. Despite that, his heart rate was at 78 beats per minute. How does Gukesh do it? It's all in the mind, experts tell The Indian Express Fabiano Caruana recently spoke of how impressed he was with the amount of prep Gukesh had put in in recent years. The teenager had spent almost six months working excruciatingly with his team of seconds for the World Chess Championship. But in freestyle, most of that preparation is superfluous. What’s the point of all of those novelties and carefully set up booby traps when you find out your opening position a few minutes before your game? Freestyle neutralises not just preparation, but also all the centuries of work that has gone into perfecting the opening phase of chess. It’s a new world where a chess player does not know which square on the board is a landmine. READ MORE: Why freestyle chess is tougher for older players even though players don’t spend hours training before games While Gukesh went through the entire Weissenhaus event without doing any media interactions, his full-time second Grzegorz Gajewski explained why the freestyle variant had posed so many problems for the 18-year-old world champion in particular. “We faced some positions that are mindblowing. Some of them were a bit weird for our taste. It hasn't been easy for Gukesh to play here. Feels kind of like we’re late to the party. It’s not easy to basically learn a new game,” said Gajewski on ChessBase India live stream. He added that doing well in freestyle chess depended on the style of the player. For some, like Javokhir Sindarov, it's easier to adjust to freestyle. Gajewski was asked if Gukesh, who is known for his calculation ability on the board, needed to develop more intuition to thrive in freestyle chess. “I think it’s not a matter of developing intuition, but rather about fighting the habit of calculation. When you calculate so well, it becomes a habit. He does it automatically. In 960 (freestyle chess), calculation can be very misleading because you have to be careful about which moves you are calculating. Many moves that intuitively seem fine in classical chess are pure mistakes in freestyle.” Send your feedback to amit.kamath@indianexpress.com
