R Praggnanandhaa has been clubbed with Magnus Carlsen in the same group, while Arjun Erigaisi and Vidit Gujrathi are in the other pool of the 16-player Freestyle chess tournament to be held in Las Vegas.
World Number 1 Magnus Carlsen will yet again start as the favourite for the title in this edition, which saw a lot of pre-event activities, including participation of NBA players. The tournament formally begins late on Wednesday.
The event carries a total prize pool of US $750,000 with $200,000 reserved for the winner. Each group has eight players in the line-up. The top four will advance to the next stage, while the bottom half will play against each other.
World champion D Gukesh has decided to skip the tournament as he will be playing the main event of the Grandmaster tour in about a month. Nineteen-year-old Praggnanandhaa will start his campaign against Nodirbek Abdusattorov of Uzbekistan, who was struggling in the previous edition of the Grand Chess tour in Zagreb, Croatia. Carlsen will play the winner of the first edition, Vincent Keymer of Germany, in his opening round.
Making his first appearance in the Freestyle chess tournament, American Hans Niemann will take on Erigaisi in the opener. Gujrathi will take on Fabiano Caruana of United States. For the first time, a woman player, Bibisara Assaubuyeva of Kazakhstan, has been included in the lineup to compete against the world elite.
Freestyle chess is a new name given to Fischer random chess or chess 960 where the position of the pieces is randomly changed at the start of the game. This version is gaining popularity as tame draws out of the openings have become a thing of the past, and there are usually a lot of fighting games right from the beginning.
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