FIDE vs Freestyle Tour: President Dvorkovich confirms waiver dropped after apparent title dispute settlement
FIDE vs Freestyle Tour: President Dvorkovich confirms waiver dropped after apparent title dispute settlement
The controversial saga involving FIDE and the Freestyle Tour appeared to be over after International Chess Federation president Arkady Dvorkovich announced that the players would not be required to sign a waiver.
The announcement came after Dvorkovich confirmed that Freestyle Tour agreed to drop the ambiguous word “World Champion(ship)“ title from their upcoming tour.
“And as the regulations of “freestyle tour” have been changed and do not contain “world chess champion(ship)” notion anymore, no further signatures from players are required,” wrote Dvorkovich in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
He quote tweeted his previous message where he mentioned the waiver players needed to sign. “And I keep my promise: players formally acknowledging their commitments towards FIDE can play in “freestyle tour 2025 ” without taking any risks with regard to the world championship cycle.”
Earlier, World No. 1 Norway’s Magnus Carlsen had demanded that Dvorkovich resign for “coercion of players, misuse of power and broken promises” after talks to thrash out an agreement between the world body and the Freestyle Tour co-founded by him collapsed.
The 34-year-old was reacting to FIDE’s statement on Monday in which it declared that efforts to work out a consensus with the Freestyle Chess Tour, co-founded by Carlsen and German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, had failed over the use of the term world championship.
The Freestyle Tour reacted by lambasting FIDE but at the same time, agreed to postpone the use of the term world championship for its grand finale this year. The decision effectively triggered the decision that the players will not be required to sign a FIDE waiver anymore.
