Freestyle Chess: Gukesh takes on Caruana in quarters

Hamburg, Germany: World champion D Gukesh will take on Fabiano Caruana of the United States in the two-game quarterfinal after the latter picked the Indian in a unique format typical of Freestyle Chess Grand Slam.

Finishing eighth among 10 participants, Gukesh just about made it to the knockout stage edging out Vladimir Fedoseev of Slovenia and Levon Aronian of United States, the last two finishers in the round-robin stage that was played under rapid-chess rules.

Alireza Firouzja of France defeated tournament leader Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan in the final round to top the tables.

As per the tournament rules, the top three have the right to decide their opponents in the quarterfinal and Firouzja picked Vincent Keymer of Germany as his opponent. Sindarov surprised everyone by going for Hikaru Nakamura of the United States -- a formidable name in chess 960 -- while Caruana opted for Gukesh, leaving out Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan to battle it out.

The knockout will be a different format and will be played under classical chess rules.

This attempt could be a path-breaker for the new variant on the 64 squares in which the piece position is changed just before the start of the round and the real chess skills are tested instead of the opening-game knowledge.

There are 960 different ways to set up the pieces, hence the version was, until now, popularly known as 'Chess 960'.

There will be two games in each knockout and, in case of a tied result, games of shorter duration will be played to determine the winner.

The tournament has a prize pool of $750,000 out of which $200,000 is reserved for the winner.

So far, five tournaments have been announced this year and there is an additional bonus of $150,000, 100,000 and 50,000 for the top-three finishers.

The event had run into rough weather with the international chess federation (FIDE) when it was proposed that there could be a possible Freestyle Chess World Championship run by the new promoters.

After much deliberation, the idea was dropped for the next 10 months and FIDE gave its approval to run the event as a grand slam.

However, given the fact that there is no love lost between FIDE and Carlsen on the matter, it is likely the issue will resurface soon.

Pairings (Quarterfinal): Alireza Firouzja (Fra) vs Vincent Keymer (Ger); Javokhir Sindarov (Uzb) vs Hikaru Nakamura (USA); D Gukesh vs Fabiano Caruana (USA); Magnus Carlsen vs Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzb) Final standings after rapid section: 1-2. Alireza Firouzja (Fra, 6.5), Javokhir Sindarov (Uzb, 6.5); 3. Fabiano Caruana (USA, 6); 4-5: Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 5.5), Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 5.5); 6. Vincent Keymer (Ger, 4); 7-8: Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzb, 3.5), D Gukesh (Ind, 3.5); 9. Vladimir Fedoseev (Slo, 2.5) 10. Levon Aronian (USA, 1.5). PTI Cor AM AM AM