Grenke Freestyle Chess Open

In 2024, the traditional Grenke Chess Festival returned after a five-year hiatus. The invitational "Classic" tournament was won by Magnus Carlsen, while the Open, which was held concurrently, was won by Hans Niemann, who thereby qualified for the 2025 Classic. On February 13, 2025, the organizers of the Festival and the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, a series of Chess960 tournaments being held throughout 2025, announced that a Chess960 open would be held in place of the Grenke Chess Classic. The new open is part of the Grand Slam Tour, with the top ten finishers scoring tour points, and the winner qualifying for the upcoming Las Vegas Grand Slam. He controversially withdrew from that tournament at the last minute without explanation, leading to doubts about his potential participation in Grenke. He ultimately did arrive to play in the Freestyle Open. == Format ==

Qualification As an open tournament, any interested chess player could participate. Players were distributed into three sections according to their classical FIDE Elo rating number and their German DWZ rating number. • Freestyle Open A: FIDE Elo or DWZ > 1950 • Freestyle Open B: FIDE Elo and DWZ < 2000 • Freestyle Open C: FIDE Elo < 1600 and DWZ < 1400 As of 10 April 2025, 466 players had registered, with 251 of them playing in the Freestyle Open A section. Tournament In each of the three sections, a 9-round Swiss-system tournament was held. For each round, a random position from the 960 possible starting positions of Chess960, excluding the standard chess starting position, was drawn, which all the games in that round used. A position that is drawn in one round is be excluded for all subsequent rounds. All games use a time control of 90 minutes with an increment of 30 seconds per move. Before rounds 2-5, any player was able switch from the Grenke Chess Open to the Freestyle Open, with points from the former tournament carried over. Prize money and grand slam points for the Freestyle Open A section was awarded as follows: == Results ==

Final classification Notes: • Only players with a score of at least 6 points are listed. • For tie-breaks, the Buchholz system was used. • The first letter in the brackets denotes if the player had the white or the black pieces in that round. The number after that denotes the final rank of the opponent. • If a player switched from the Grenke Chess Open to the Freestyle Open during the tournament, points carried over are denoted as "(open)". Since Carlsen had already qualified to the Las Vegas tournament, it was initially announced that a tiebreaker would be played between the seven players who tied for second place to determine the qualifier. The following day it was confirmed that Maghsoodloo was awarded the qualification spot. == Tour standings after the tournament ==

Note: Only the top five positions are included. == References ==