The 1st Classical Fischer Random chess tournament ever starts today at the luxury Weissenhaus Resort located on Germany’s Baltic coast. The event takes place from 9-16 February with World No1 Magnus Carlsen, World No2 Fabiano Caruana, reigning World Chess Champion Ding Liren, World No6 Alireza Firouzja, World No11 Vincent Keymer, World No22 Nodirbek Abdusattorov, World No25 Gukesh D and World No26 Levon Aronian in the field.
Read more: Magnus Carlsen: I am very much looking forward to Freestyle Chess Classical
The total prize fund of the event is $200,000 with $60,000 reserved for the Winner. The Freestyle Chess GOAT Challenge will kick off with a preliminary rapid stage to determine the starting numbers for the main classical knockout phase. A two-day round-robin rapid will be followed by the classical knock-out matches phase. All information and tournament schedule can be found here.
The Opening press conference is scheduled for 11:00 CET, and live broadcast can be followed here. Live broadcast of the games can be followed here.
The players have already arrived at Weissenhaus, and yesterday evening enjoyed a dinner which was enriched with the magician’s performance. Ding Liren was surprised to see that the magician could almost read his mind and played with a card Ding imagined. See how it looked in the video attached below.
Detailed information about the tournament can be found on the official website.
