Chess960 Event Underway
A.k.a. "Freestyle" chess, a.k.a. Fischerrandom
Given a choice between analyzing the Giuoco Piano with an early d2-d3 or the Berlin with 5.Re1 on the one hand, and watching a Chess960 event on the other, I’m choosing vacation in Greece…or finding something to stream online, or coming up with new ideas for my students…or maybe even watching grass grow. But YMMV, as the kids say when they’re not talking about “skibidi” or “Fanum tax”. (Chess960 is the answer to a problem no one but Magnus Carlsen has, and I’m not sure he has it either. But since he’s involved with the group funding the thing, more power to him.)
So, for those who are interested, here’s a link to the website of the Freestyle Grand Slam Weissenhaus 2025, the first event on the Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour. The tournament is monstrously strong with Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Gukesh Dommaraju, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Alireza Firouzja and more. (At least those were most of the players active during the round-robin stage. Now it’s down to the semis, with Carlsen taking on Vincent Keymer and Caruana facing Javokhir Sindarov.)
This whole thing with painting Chess960 as the "future of chess" seems way unfounded and wayyyyyy too early even if it was a reasonable possibility. I agree that its just top GM's who are sick of opening preparation who mostly love the idea. Bobby Fischer came to the same conclusion years ago and that's why he came up with it. So this isn't new.
As a spectator I'm not really interested. And since Fischer Random has been around a long time and has never "popped off" I don't see any evidence at all that it will this time just because Magnus Carlsen wants it to. That being said, it will be interesting to see how the whole narrative plays out.
The way I really see it what's going on is that Magnus and Hikaru have both peaked and can sense their relevance on the edge of a steep decline especially with all these very strong and passionate youngsters around. I'm sure that isn't pleasant and I'm interested to see how they handle it over the next few years (and even months).
My attitude towards Chess960 is similar to yours. Sure, maybe some top GMs are tired of studying theory, but why should I care? For 99.99% of chess players, theory overload isn't a problem.
Top GMs have a loud voice in the media, though, so they can make it seem like a widespread problem.