Diving Chess

PlayStrategy was being represented at a surreal international Chess event earlier this month. Cape Town was hosting the final of the 2025 Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour - a series of Chess 960 tournaments. GM Levon Aronian (USA) won the event in South Africa, but former World Champion Magnus Carlsen (Norway) took the series overall prize with better scores in previous rounds.

With some of the world's best Chess players gathered in sunny South Africa for media events in the days leading up to the tournament, PlayStrategy's founder Etan Ilfeld introduced several of the GMs to his twist on Chess: Diving Chess.

The rules are simple, with a weighted Chess board and pieces, the set is lowered onto the floor of a swimming pool. Players then have to dive down to make their move, and may not resurface until their move is made - one breath for each move.

Hans Niemann (USA) won the four player tournament, beating Fabiano Caruana (USA) in the final. Javkohir Sindarov (Uzbekistan) took third, with Vidit Gujrathi (India) fourth. Niemann subsequently defeated the Diving Chess World Champion Michal Mazurkiewicz (Poland) in an exhibition match.

The variant was a hit with the players involved, and with a luxurious pool and stunning location commandeered for the event, it made for spectacular pictures like the one at the top/bottom of this post (credit: Stev Bonhage). Short highlights can be seen here: Reuters

Further "in depth" coverage featuring a PlayStrategy t-shirt can be seen here:

ChessBase India

Meanwhile, the 2025 Diving Chess World Championship took part this week in Groningen, Netherlands. FIDE Master Zyon Kollen won in home water. You can see the Gold medal match in this Study.

Visit the official Diving Chess website to find out more about playing Chess in a swimming pool, including how to get your hands on your own set suitable for pool play!

Quiz

We round off the 2025 year with an end-of-year Quiz which has 12 question about PlayStrategy in 2025. Finally, we wish all our users a happy and healthy new year! We look forward to some good games in 2026!