Heart rate sensors, confession booths, colourful jackets: What Freestyle Chess Grand Slam event looks like | Chess News

Magnus Carlsen sits on the board brooding over the position that he will have to start playing in another 10 minutes against Hikaru Nakamura when a camera technician approaches him and starts mic-ing him up. Ordinarily, this close to the start of a match is time for absolute solitude for any chess player, a time when they don’t even offer their opponent a customary eye contact when they have to shake hands. Today, though, things are different. Carlsen is happy to oblige, still staring intently at the board as the camera crew members slips wires inside his clothing.Enough has been spoken about what freestyle chess — which goes several names like Fischer Random and Chess960 — looks like.
With the positions of pieces on the back ranks randomised, the starting position of a board are revealed to the players only 15 minutes before each match. Players are permitted to use the 15-minute period to seek advice from other players, but not from an electronic source like a chess engine.
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That explains why, behind the playing stage, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Vincent Keymer and Vladimir Fedoseev are actually huddled over the board trying to discuss their options before the first rapid game of the Weissenhaus leg of the Freestyle Grand Slam Chess Tour starts. They chuckle, they move pieces, they whisper in conspiratorial tones.
Magnus Carlsen, Nodirbek Abdusattarov and Levon Aronian discuss an opening position before a game on Friday at the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event in Weissenhaus. (Screenshot: YouTube/Chess24)
This is chess with a tw after all.
After months of war away from the chess board, action returned to the 64 squares as the first event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour was held at a private luxury resort in Germany’s Weissenhaus.
What else will be different at the Freestyle Tour events? We explain:Story continues below this ad
Heart-rate sensors and headphones
All players at Freestyle Tour will have heart-rate sensors to monitor their cardiac activity while competing. The players’ heart rates are not displayed the whole time of the match on screen, but shown on broadcast to enhance the drama playing out. There have been some efforts made to trial such sensors in chess previously, like in 2022 when an event of the FIDE Grand Prix Series saw players’ heart rates being tracked AI. Sports like archery have also tried it in the past.
Players will also be given an option to sport “noise cancelling equipment” during games because the audience will be allowed close to the players (as close as two meters). To prevent players getting durbed, organisers have offered to provide players with voluntary noise cancelling equipment.
Colourful jackets, ‘neat shirts’
There is a dress code for the freestyle event as well (Although it does not mention whether players can wear jeans, which was the sticky point between Magnus Carlsen and FIDE at the FIDE World Rapid Championship).
Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Javokhir Sindarov and Vincent Keymer discuss an opening position before a game on Friday at the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event in Weissenhaus. (Screenshot: YouTube/Chess24)
“Wearing a neat shirt and formal jacket to be provided the organiser is mandatory. Shoes and long trousers must appear ‘smart casual’ to match the official upper body attire. Shorts, baseball caps, or any other headgear are not allowed,” the organisers of the Freestyle event have said in their guidelines.Story continues below this ad
All players have been given a unique, bright jacket that they had to sport in every game. This edition, Carlsen will be seen sporting a pearly white jacket while D Gukesh plays in a pink jacket.
Confession booth
Just like at Norway Chess, there will be a “confession booth” at the Freestyle Grand Slam events. In their regulations, organisers have “urged” players to enter confessional-booths to give a short, on camera, statement on the game so far.

Explained Did you know With the positions of pieces on the back ranks getting shuffled, there are 960 permutations for the pieces to line up behind the wall of pawns. This removes opening theory completely from the sport as you cannot predict which starting position you will have in a game. It is one of the reasons why Carlsen believes the format (also called Fischer 960) is interesting.

This means during the game, a player can walk into the booth and air their views about their game directly into the camera without anyone asking them.
Format
The 10 players — including five-time world champion Carlsen and reigning champion Gukesh — will be competing in two-day-long round-robin action in the rapid time control to decide seedings. There will be five rounds today and four tomorrow. At the end of these nine rounds, all players will have played the other contenders once and the standings will determine the seedings for the tournament.Story continues below this ad
The top eight players after these nine rounds of rapid chess will then play quarter-finals. The remaining two players will be eliminated and “urged to perform commentary tasks”. Otherwise, their prize money will be reduced 50 per cent.
Usually, classical chess is played over a single game that lasts anywhere between four to six hours. The exception is the FIDE World Cup, where players play on two consecutive days with colours reversed. At the Freestyle Tour events, each match will be best-of-two games, played with each player having 90 minutes and getting a 30-second increment per move.

Prize money
The prize money for each Grand Slam event in 2025 is set at $7,50,000 (approximately Rs 6.5 crore). Of this, $2,00,000 (approx Rs 1.7 crore) will go to the winner. $1,40,000 (Rs 1.2 crore) for player finishing second, $1,00,000 (Rs 87 lakh) for third, $60,000 (Rs 52 lakh) for fourth, $50,000 (Rs 43 lakh) for fifth, $40,000 (Rs 35 lakh) for sixth, $30,000 (Rs 26 lakh) for seventh, $20,000 (Rs 17 lakh) for eighth, $12,500k (Rs 11 lakh) for ninth, and $7,500 (Rs 6.5 lakh) for tenth place.