The BIG one is here! Season 45 registrations are open, and a recap of season 44!

Registration is open for this one-time, numerically significant season, and this is the last weekend to sign up before teams are created and the season begins on Monday, July 28th! You can register HERE. Join hundreds of chess players as they compete in arguably the most numerically significant season of the 4545 Team League! As always, we kick things off with the traditional preseason Kick-Off arena, which is today, July 26th! You can join that HERE. Get hyped, establish those Classical ratings if not yet done, mingle with potential future team mates— or opponents— and get warmed up for the season that begins August 4th!
This isn’t just any season; season 45 marks a major milestone as the league approaches its 10-year anniversary this October. Every season, hundreds of players around the globe join in, with Lichess Classical ratings that range around 800 to 2500, although any rating is accepted, the league continues to thrive as one of the most welcoming and competitive online classical chess communities for players of all skill levels. If you haven’t tried it yet, we encourage you to! But don’t take our word for how great our Leagues are, International Master John Bartholomew also highly recommends the Lichess leagues as seen HERE! They have been participating in Season 37 of LoneWolf and posting all their games on their YouTube channel, which you can begin watching HERE if you haven’t already.

A look back at season 44 and its winners.
Season 44 has ended, and with the many teams formed each season, the team names vary greatly as glimpsed below just in our finalist teams. Whether it was through the use of the dark side of the force, the organizational structure of the empire generally, or perhaps a combination of the two, 1st place for season 44 was won by The Empire Strikes Back-Rank, followed by 2nd place Ctrl+ Alt + Defeat, and 3rd place, are we meant to have goals?. Congratulations to all three teams, and for all the 44 teams that competed in season 44. What a great season. Here is the final round 8 game of the top two teams’ match that decided the final standings, as annotated by one of our own community members, @susiedent!

A lot of exciting chess was played last season with hundreds of games. A few more games annotated by NameGoesInHere, susiedent, and jg777 are below.

Additionally, season 44 also gave us a new league record for both the longest game played by time used, AND moves played! It was played in round 6 between @Mennonite and @Hepatiaaa.

After 5 hours and 15 minutes of play, White missed the drawing resource 158.Qd5+! Ka7 159.Qa5+ Qxa5, which would result in a stalemate. Well played by both though!

Join us for this coming season and contribute to the exciting and fantastic chess that gets played. We hope to see you there!

Lichess4545 is an online chess league for people who like playing long time control games online. Players are assigned to teams and play one game per week with a 45+45 time control. For more information visit our league home page.
LoneWolf is a side league of the Lichess4545 league. It is an 11-round Swiss tournament where players play one game per week with a 30+30 time control. For more information about the LoneWolf tournament visit the LoneWolf homepage.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA).
Contributions to this edition by @jg777, @Mennonite, @NameGoesInHere, @rio2018, @PsyMar2, @somerapidplayer, @susiedent, @Tranzoo and @Warvold