The much-anticipated Indian leg of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, scheduled to take place in New Delhi from September 17 to 24, has been officially cancelled due to a lack of sponsors. The tournament, which was expected to feature World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, will no longer take place in India this year.

Freestyle Chess co-founder and CEO Jan Henric Buettner confirmed the cancellation to TimesofIndia.com, stating, “We still have the same situation as we’ve had for the past one and a half years. I’ve approached several Indian sponsors, but none have come forward. That’s why we’ve decided to take the event elsewhere.”

The decision comes as a major disappointment for Indian chess fans eager to see Carlsen compete in the unconventional Freestyle Chess format.

Earlier, Carlsen had spoken on Freestyle Chess and said that it can engage both chess aficionados and amateurs.

“I think perfection is kind of boring, right? So you want to make it difficult in some way,” Carlsen said. “So you start that in chess by having a time constraint, and then you make things a bit shorter and shorter.”

“We really do think that Freestyle Chess will be more compelling to people who know very little about chess, but do have an interest to to learn a little bit more,”

“They’re approaching things from a very basic level. So I think it’s really good to have that presentation as well, so that the commentators, even though they may be very good chess players, will try and approach everything with the curiosity of somebody else. I think that’s that’s really interesting.”

“We still have a long way to go, but I do think that we’re doing a lot of things well at the moment, and we definitely have a lot of momentum,” said Carlsen to HR.