Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Faces Setback in India Due to Lack of Support
German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner’s plans to host the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in India have been put on hold due to a lack of local support. Buettner, who co-founded the tour with world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, had intended to visit India last week to secure sponsors and finalize a venue for the November event. However, he was met with limited interest from potential investors.
“The only ones interested (in India) were those who wanted me to invest a couple of hundred thousand into their hotel,” Buettner told HT. “It’s good as part of the plan. But if it’s only that, then I’d rather host the next event again, in my resort (Weisenhaus, Germany).”
Buettner emphasized that he is only willing to host events outside of Germany if there is significant financial support from local investors. “I’m not going to go to another country and spend millions of dollars just to do an on-site event there,” he said. “I have invested $2 million into this already, and I’m willing to keep investing but only if it makes sense.”
The inaugural edition of the Freestyle Chess GOAT challenge, held in Weisenhaus in February, was a success, with Carlsen emerging victorious. The tournament featured a unique format known as chess960 (Fischer Random), where the starting position of the pieces is randomized. Carlsen has expressed a strong preference for this format and skipped the Tata Steel event in Wijk Aan Zee to participate in Weisenhaus.
Buettner is now exploring alternative locations for the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, including New York and Cape Town. He is also in discussions with Netflix for a series on freestyle chess. “We are having lots of talks with people in America and Africa,” he said. “If we get funding we’ll go ahead with an event this year. Maybe it will take a bit more time to have it in India. It might be good for next year.”
Buettner stressed that the success of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour depends on securing investors who are willing to share the financial burden. “I started this together with Magnus and we said we’d do this one event and see how it goes,” he said. “Wesisenhaus went extremely well and then we got all excited and said we’ll do it again and it seemed like there was a lot of interest from other countries. But I kind of misunderstood it perhaps. The interest was from other parties for me spending my money over there. That’s not my interest.”