Imagine being in the middle of tennis’s clay-court season, and suddenly you have to switch to grass. Or alternate between Test, ODI, and T20 cricket on a weekly basis. This is the reality facing the world’s top chess players today. The rapid growth of the sport is leading to the proliferation of new formats, in turn creating a crowded year-long calendar. This is putting players under more pressure, having to shuffle between strategies and feeling like they have to play catch-up almost every week.
Take this week, for example. World champion Gukesh Dommaraju is in the US playing St. Louis Rapid & Blitz Championships – three days of rapid chess, then two days of blitz chess. Two days later, he will enter one of the strongest tournaments of the year in classical chess – the Sinquefield Cup, which has a loaded field.
In May, Arjun Erigaisi had played the Norway Chess tournament in the classical format. Five days later, he was at the World Rapid & Blitz Team Championships, followed by classical again in the UzChess Cup just three days later. In between, Arjun played the Champions Chess Tour online in a completely different time control – 10 minutes + no increments – as he qualified for the eSports World Cup. All this after Arjun had in the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour in Paris, another completely different format.
Dutch grandmaster Anish Giri won the Sharjah Masters tournament at the end of May in classical chess and then played a rapid tournament in Estonia five days later, before the World Rapid & Blitz Team Championships, and then the Grand Chess Tour’s Rapid & Blitz events in Croatia.
Currently playing the Chennai Grand Masters in the classical format, Anish admits that he hasn’t yet got a grip on switching formats. “It’s a big challenge for me indeed and I don’t know if everybody likes it, but I always feel that I am one step behind,” he tells ESPN.
The current state of the chess calendar, particularly with the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour coming in, demands that players to learn to switch between formats with ease. This has an obvious drawback in the long-term – burnout.
R Praggnanandhaa’s coach RB Ramesh put his slump at the end of 2024 down to playing too much chess. There was no time to rest, no time to reset and look at what was wrong. The tournaments simply didn’t stop.
Arjun also pointed to the time between classical tournaments in 2025 playing a part in his results being worse than he’s expected. “I have played classical tournaments with gaps in between; I have not got into a rhythm in classical this year.”
Does this mean chess players should pick and choose formats based on their strengths? Viswanathan Anand disagrees. “I don’t think players should rule out any particular format,” he says. “You won’t probably have good results in all the formats in all the years, but I don’t think you are assured of it in any format either,” he adds.
What are the challenges of switching between formats, that has left even the most accomplished of coaches like Ramesh confused?
Rapid and Blitz have completely different strategies compared to classical, Ramesh says. These are formats that allow players to be more experimental and risk-taking, and some opening choices reflect that. Opponents not having the time to calculate perfectly even if openings go wrong means that one can have a larger appetite for risk in the faster time controls, Ramesh says.
In most rapid and blitz tournaments, players play multiple games a day, so there are multiple opponents to prepare for, some with completely contrasting styles. In classical chess, preparations are focused on analysing particular lines in more detail than they would for the faster time controls.
This has led to Ramesh setting up exclusive teams for each of his players, so they can be involved in a large part of opening preparations. Players themselves cannot delve into various openings in great detail, simply because there isn’t enough time. As it stands, players use those three or four days they get in between tournaments to sit with their teams and go through their repertoire of openings.
However, Ramesh doesn’t prepare his wards for any particular format. He spots areas in their game that need work, and they focus on improving that with the understanding that it will help their games in all formats.
But what happens when there’s a disruptive format like Freestyle Chess, though, that almost completely takes preparation – particularly in openings – out of the window?
The Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour has two formats in the same event. First there’s a group stage with rapid time controls, and then the knockouts with classical time controls. So while not preparing for openings, one still must keep in mind the intricacies of what could pop up in middlegames or endgames.
That is the challenge, Ramesh says, while also adding that even within the same format, the regulations at different tournaments are different in terms of time controls, increments, and formats. For example, there’s no second addition of time to clocks at the Chennai Grand Masters. At the FIDE Grand Swiss next month, also a Classical event, there will be two separate additions of time to clocks – after moves 40 and 60. The sport is the same, the format may be the same, the regulations can be vastly different.
So what is chess’s most important format? Everyone that ESPN has spoken to on the sidelines of the Chennai Grand Masters has a unanimous verdict – classical. That’s where every chess player wants to be world champion.
German Grandmaster Vincent Keymer, who is poised to win in Chennai, says whichever direction chess goes in, the players need to be consulted so that they can continue to play at the elite level in any format. Ultimately, that’s what the sport is all about. That’s why they are here in Chennai. This gives them an opportunity to get into rhythm in classical chess ahead of the big tournaments later this year, which act as qualifiers for next year’s Candidates tournament.
Everyone (except one Magnus Carlsen) wants to be there at chess’s biggest show, which remains the World Championship. That is still the number one goal, but now there are just a few more distractions along the way, money-making ones at that, which have made the journey towards it that much more arduous.
