Freestyle Chess co-owner makes highly-offensive 'rape' comparison, adds fuel to accusations against FIDE

Freestyle Chess co-owner Jan Henric Buettner made a ‘rape’ comparison while talking about the ongoing controversy with FIDE.

The first leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour began in Weissenhaus, Germany, on Friday, as the likes of D Gukesh, Magnus Carlsen participated in initial rounds of the Chess960 tournament. But the private tournament, co-owned by Jan Henric Buettner and Magnus Carlsen, has also brought plenty of controversy and the FIDE has accused it of dividing the chess world.

Freestyle Chess is co-owned by Magnus Carlsen and Jan Henric Buettner.(Instagram)

The first week of February saw FIDE release a statement where it denied giving official recognition to a Freestyle World Championship. In response, Freestyle Chess released an open letter, leaking messages with FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich and also asked for his resignation. Freestyle Chess, Carlsen in particular, even accused FIDE of threatening younger players that if they would participate in a Freestyle World C’ship, they would be excluded from the ongoing cycle.

‘…. it’s like rape right?': Freestyle Chess co-owner

FIDE has denied that they threatened the players. Even FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky in a recent interview with Hindustan Times revealed that FIDE never put pressure on players, and the main issue was participating in a non-official world championship. Sharing his side of the story, Buettner decided to speak to Take Take Take application, which is once again co-owned by Carlsen, and gave more clarity into those accusations.

“What they have been doing, there are an organisation, a company, whatever they are, but they are an institution. They have their legal director send a legal document to sign to teenagers during a tournament they are playing with the deadline that ends on the day the tournament ends. So they have no chance to coordinate with each other, they have no chance to have legal counsel and they have no chance anyway. Then they even say you don’t have to sign it, you just have to acknowledge that the content is correct. What's the difference right, legally it is the same thing”, he said.

Then on a bizarre note, he went on to compare the treatment meted out to the players to rape, which seems pretty astonishing coming from the leader of a massive chess tournament. “It is basically if you are strong-arming as an organisation, a legal director, or a teenager into such a contract, it’s not valid anyway. This is why I call it an illegal document, because if the player goes to any court and says I signed it but they really pressured me, it’s like rape right? So you know it’s not valid”, he said.

“I think it's bad to go to the court so I said just don’t sign it, because they can’t force you to sign it anyway”, he added.

Ahead of the rounds on Saturday, qualifier Javokhir Sindarov leads the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour Weissenhaus standings, with 4.5 points. He is closely followed by Fabiao Caruana (4.5) and Alireza Firouzja (3.5). Nodirbek Abdusattorov is fourth with 2.5 points, Vincent Keymar (2) and D Gukesh (2) are fifth and sixth respectively. Meanwhile, Carlsen is seventh with 2 points, followed by Hikaru Nakamura (1) and Levon Aronian (1).