Magnus Carlsen says he’s looking forward to playing Gukesh in Freestyle Chess

After spending the past two months battling against the world governing body of chess, FIDE, Magnus Carlsen said he was looking forward to facing off against the current world champion Gukesh in the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, when the Weissenhaus leg starts today at the luxury nature resort.
When Carlsen was asked ChessBase India who he was looking forward to playing at the first event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, he said: “I’m very much looking forward to playing the classical world champion, Gukesh. Obviously, I look forward to playing everybody, but getting a chance to play Hikaru Nakamura here… last year there was a bit of a generational battle. I’ll be trying a little bit harder to beat the youngsters.”
The first event of the Freestyle Tour at Weissenhaus will see Gukesh and Carlsen being joined the likes of World No 2 Fabiano Caruana, No 3 Nakamura, Nodirbek Abdusattarov, Alireza Firouzja, Levon Aronian, Vincent Keymer, Vladimir Fedoseev and Javokhir Sindarov. Sindarov was roped in as a last-minute replacement for five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, who pulled out as the FIDE versus Freestyle Chess battle got ugly in recent weeks. Anand is a deputy vice president at FIDE.
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Both sides threw accusations at each other, wrote angry open letters or social media posts and then the messages of FIDE top brass was leaked on social media.
Talking about the bitter battle between FIDE and Freestyle Chess, Carlsen said: “Generally unfortunate what has happened. Happy to focus now on the tournament. Things could have been resolved at an earlier point. Right now it is very hard to have a relationship with any of the FIDE leadership. Speaking for myself and my father.”