No Surprises: Carlsen, Arjun, Caruana Start With Wins
There were no upsets on the top boards after round one of the Grenke Chess Freestyle Open. The closest we came to an upset (even a draw) was in the games GM Fabiano Caruana vs. CM Carlos Hauser and FM Matthias Bach vs. GM Levon Aronian. But, with large time advantages, the super-GMs managed to outpace their opponents.
Round two will bring more difficult pairings, and that begins at 4:00 a.m. ET / 10:00 CET / 1:30 p.m. IST on Friday, followed by round three on the same day at 10:00 a.m. ET / 16:00 CET / 5:30 p.m. IST.
Over 3,000 players (a record!) have descended on the Karlsruhe Convention Center in Germany for the world's largest over-the-board chess festival. The regular open classical tournament is back, but what's new is the Freestyle Chess tournament, which has replaced the Classic from previous years. There are three rating sections for each of the two formats: A, B, and C groups.
Just wow!
— grenkeChess 2025 (@GRENKEChess) April 17, 2025
Schwarzwaldhalle, Karlsruhe
📷@chessborn pic.twitter.com/gxHfyJ5sjF
The time control for both tournaments is 90 minutes for the entire game plus a 30-second increment starting on move one—with no more time added. In Freestyle Chess, players will navigate a brand-new starting position in every round. For round one, it was the following (position 758), and many players—GM Magnus Carlsen among them—started with 1.g4.
The highest finisher in the Freestyle Open (A) not qualified yet will earn a spot in the next Freestyle Chess Grand Slam event, which is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas in July. In addition, the top 10 finishers will win Grand Slam points in addition to monetary prizes.
The competition is extremely demanding, however, with the world's best players participating. Here are the top 10 players by rating:
| No. | Title | Name | Fed | Rtg |
| 1 | GM | Carlsen, Magnus | 2837 | |
| 2 | GM | Erigaisi Arjun, | 2782 | |
| 3 | GM | Caruana, Fabiano | 2776 | |
| 4 | GM | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | 2757 | |
| 5 | GM | Aravindh, Chithambaram VR. | 2749 | |
| 6 | GM | Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar | 2748 | |
| 7 | GM | So, Wesley | 2748 | |
| 8 | GM | Aronian, Levon | 2747 | |
| 9 | GM | Dominguez Perez, Leinier | 2738 | |
| 10 | GM | Niemann, Hans Moke | 2736 |
(See the full list of players here.)
An interesting quirk is that players are allowed before round five to switch from the regular classical event to the Freestyle Chess one and keep the same number of points. This means, for example, that someone like GM Awonder Liang, who's the top seed in the regular open tournament, at the end of round four can hop into the Freestyle Chess event if he so chooses. By Saturday we'll see how many players go this route and how much of an effect it'll have on standings at the top.
Round one was, as normal for a Swiss tournament, the most lopsided round, with the top seeds facing players in the 2200-rating range. Commentator GM Peter Leko predicted at the start that we wouldn't see even a single draw on the top-20 boards, and he was right.
Carlsen was the first to finish a game on the top boards, and his opponent resigned after 17 moves. Carlsen was able to achieve the ideal pawn center of d4 and e4 early on, and Black should have struck with the pawn break ...e5. Instead, when that opportunity passed, Black sacrificed a bishop out of desperation—a decision Leko praised at first—but went down in flames quickly after.
After GM Hans Niemann dropped out at the last minute from the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Paris for personal reasons (covered here), it was unclear whether he would participate in Germany. He did arrive, and somewhat poetically, he was the second super-GM to win, after Carlsen. The queen sacrifice was a flashy way to end it, even if the final move wasn't so difficult:
💥 ❗ ❗#FreestyleChess pic.twitter.com/J0jMV3m3kC
— chess24 (@chess24com) April 17, 2025
There were two serious battles where the underdogs came close to at least achieving a half-point against their 500-point-higher opponents.
Hauser correctly played a pawn sacrifice against Caruana and had equal chances for a while. It was only after he dropped under five minutes, while Caruana had over an hour, that he lost control. GM Rafael Leitao goes over the impressive struggle in the Game of the Day annotations below.
Aronian looked to be easily winning with an extra exchange, but after the natural 38...Qd8? suddenly his opponent was back in the game. Bach, in fact, had a forced draw with 42.Bxc7+ Kxc7 43.Rxb7!+, the key move you have to find. After the move played, 42.Rc4, the game was still equal, but the German master had about a minute against over an hour in a complicated position. Aronian managed to successfully lay a trap to re-win the game.
The biggest upset, on slightly lower boards, was CM Philipp Germer's win against GM Niclas Huschenbeth, after the German grandmaster lost control in mutual time pressure. It was a 104-move game.
The action will pick up quickly, with two rounds per day for the rest of the tournament. Tune in on Friday to see the next two rounds!
How to watch?
You can watch the broadcast on Chess24's YouTube or Twitch channels. The games can also be checked out on our dedicated events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by GM Peter Leko and IM Lawrence Trent.
The Grenke Freestyle Chess Open is a classical tournament in the Freestyle Chess (Chess960) format that determines one of the 12 participants of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event taking place in New York. The event takes place alongside a regular classical tournament, the Grenke Chess Open. The Freestyle Chess event is a nine-round Swiss with a time control of 90+30 for the entire game, with a prize fund of €225,000 and the chance to win Freestyle Grand Slam Tour points.
