D Gukesh Starts Moderately In Freestyle Chess Grand Slam

World Champion D Gukesh began his campaign at the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam tour with three draws and a lone loss, signalling that he is gradually coming to terms with the new format.

A brainchild of World's number one Magnus Carlsen and German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, the freestyle chess event marks the beginning of what could be a permanent fixture for professional chess players despite a showdown with FIDE, the world's apex chess body.

Freestyle basically is a new name given to what was known as the Fischer random chess -- the name attributed to the 11th world champion Bobby Fischer who advocated this format that has the chess pieces randomly set up at the start of the game instead of conventional chess that sees a fixed alignment of forces on both sides.