Gukesh D, the reigning World Champion, had a disappointing run at the Freestyle Chess Tour 2025 consecutively for the second time. He shared the 11th position with fellow Indian Vidit Gujrathi in the Paris Leg, while he finished in eighth place in the Germany Leg held in February. Not only Gukesh but three other Indian chess players, Praggnanandhaa R., Vidit Gujrathi and Arjun Erigiasi, also struggled in the tournament.
Praggnanandhaa finished in 9th place, while Arjun Erigiasi did slightly better than his countrymen and finished in 5th position. His most notable achievement throughout the tournament was defeating Magnus Carlsen on Day 1 in the Round Robin format, followed by a victory over Vincent Keymer and Hikaru Nakamura. Recently, in a conversation with Chess.com, Gukesh revealed the challenges he faces in the Freestyle format along with other Indians.
Gukesh On Freestyle Chess
He said, “I think the most challenging part for me in Freestyle Chess is that everybody can calculate and see tactics. But, evaluating positions correctly, that is the most challenging, at least for me. Because a lot of positions and ideas are similar to standard chess but not exactly similar. And something which we think is good might not actually be good. Our intuition is simply not always correct in Freestyle.”
“Nobody knows the exact way. Some things that all the players are going, or at least I’m doing, is looking at the starting positions and think about the first few moves to learn some concepts or ideas and to solve some studies, because some positions are like studies,” he added.
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He concluded the conversation by emphasizing the difficulty level of the Freestyle format due to the random starting position, which makes it harder to understand the next move.
“I found it very hard to calculate and evaluate here because there is much more to calculate here than in standard chess. In standard chess, you see three or four options you know are good, and you calculate. Here, you just don’t know which ones are the good moves. Maybe the players who have this kind of feeling for where the pieces belong like Magnus or Vincent… not everybody has that,” he told Chess.com
Also Read: Magnus Carlsen, World Number 1 Wins The Freestyle Chess Tour Paris Leg
