Haren
A day after FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky wrote a long post accusing the organisers of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour of trying to split the world of chess, the brains and financial muscle behind the tour, Jan Henric Buettner, has written an open letter aimed at Sutovsky and FIDE.
Buettner said that FIDE had “alienated players” with the way the global governing body of chess had gone about things. He added that FIDE had demanded an “unjustifiable sum” of $500,000 to give its blessing for the Tour.
“Despite Freestyle’s willingness to offer $100,000 annually to FIDE, purely as a gesture of goodwill and to avoid harassment — this has been rebuffed. FIDE’s demand for $5,00,000, an unjustifiable sum for a format it has no involvement in, suggests that monetary gain is the primary driver. Our sponsors, many of whom prefer to avoid association with FIDE altogether, support our decision to remain independent,” Buettner wrote in the open letter.
“FIDE’s recent actions, such as threatening players with sanctions and demanding they sign agreements under undue pressure and without legal counsel, are deeply troubling. This is neither ethical nor professional. FIDE is attempting to exploit its dominant market position to strong-arm players into submission. Such tactics are unacceptable, and Freestyle will continue to defend the players’ interests against these abuses of power.
“It seems FIDE’s approach of good cop (Arkady Dvorkovich, FIDE president) and bad cop (Emil) tactics was bound to fail. Now, FIDE appears to have dropped the pretense entirely, adopting a confrontational stance toward the players.”
He added: “Let me clarify once again: our tour is not a ‘World Championship’ in the traditional sense, as I have explained to both Arkady and Vishy (Viswanathan Anand, Deputy President of FIDE). It is titled the ‘Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.’ At the end of each year, we crown a champion in Freestyle Chess – a format that might evolve in
the future, potentially moving beyond Chess960 to other new formats, but not classical chess. The title of ‘world champion’ in this context reflects the unique format of our events, not an attempt to challenge FIDE’s traditional World Championship cycle. If FIDE’s issue truly lies with the use of ‘World Championship’ terminology , it would have to address similar cases, such as the Bughouse World Championship, where even players like Ding Liren have participated. Yet FIDE has not penalized Ding or others for taking part. This inconsistency reveals the true motive behind FIDE’s actions: money.”
