
My thoughts on freestyle world championship
I believe that world championship for a chess variant is fair, provided that it is clear in the title that it is the world championship for a variant, not chess. There is bughouse world championship, four-player chess world championship, and wait a minute, there is even already a chess 960 world championship. . So, is the new Freestyle Chess World Championship replacing the chess 960 world championship, also called the FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship. Yeah, that's where the problem lies. Chess 960 is the only chess variant recognized by FIDE, and FIDE has organized world 960 championships in 2019 and 2022. So, there should be only one world 960 championship, unless the title makes the distinction clear, such as FCC Chess 960 World Championship, and FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship. My take is that neither party (neither FIDE nor FCC) deserves to name their event as a world championship without prepending FIDE or FCC to the title, simply because neither FIDE nor FCC has a big part in the wide acceptance of chess 960 now (the World New Chess Association has a better claim to this, I think). Note that FIDE is naming its title appropriately. But, there is nothing appropriate or professional about FIDE trying to force control on chess variant events not organized by them by introducing a new contract (see reasons explained here). That being said, the FCC championship title should be FCC Chess 960 World Championship or FCC Fischer Random World Chess Championship: not FCC Freestyle Chess World Championship and definitely not Freestyle Chess World Championship. 'Freestyle' is an ambiguous name for a chess variant that has been around for decades and it already has two nice names. The problem with the name freestyle is that it is too vague, and when such a vague name is used for an event co-organized by one of the most well-known chess players such as Carlsen, it is simply misleading (whether intentional or not).