In stark contrast to last December's photo finish, Magnus Carlsen (DrNykterstein) cruised to victory in the January Lichess Titled Arena. The World Champion finished 56 points ahead of a field of over forty Grandmasters, seventy International Masters, and a server that only through the valiant efforts of Lichess's volunteer staff survived a record 42,291 online players. In second place was the Ukranian Grandmaster Oleksandr Bortnyk (Night-King96), and in third one of Magnus's trickiest rivals in previous arenas, the wily anonymous International Master lodewijkfrederik. To give a sense of Carlsen's dominance, after his "customary" first round loss he dropped only three out of his next 58 games (minus one from technical difficulties), and at one point managed to put together a mind boggling 22 game win streak against the best blitzers in the world.

Continue reading this post

Inspired by GM Daniel Naroditsky, we bring you GM Adam Tukhaev from Ukraine who wants to take on Leela Chess Zero.

When: Jan 6th 19:00 UTC What: 3+2 with a mix of bullet at 1+1 and 1+0.

Continue reading this post

Just before the Tata Steel Chess tournament, start the year with some high quality bullet and come enjoy the 10th Titled Arena on Lichess.

As usual, the tournament will be preceded by a Warm-up Arena, open to all players on Lichess (with a minimum of 20 rated bullet games).

Continue reading this post

It’s been a huge year for Lichess, with a record number of events and a massive increase in users. In fact, there has been so much growth that we finally had to add an extra front-end server to cope! Lichess is not just growing in numbers, though – the hard work of our developers has brought about many new features and technical improvements. We’ve also expanded into new areas, including some forays into journalism and a string of special events. Please join us in celebrating the achievements of the year and looking forward to what the next one will bring!

Continue reading this post

GM Daniel Naroditsky (@DrDragonitsky) will be going head to head with Leela Chess Zero (@LeelaChess) on Sunday December 23 12:00 AM UTC. You can find the stream and countdown here.

Duration: ~2 hours

Continue reading this post

Lest anyone suppose that all things come easily to the once wunderkind, now wundermensch of chess, Magnus Carlsen, the latest Lichess Titled Arena demonstrated just how intense competition has become in the rough and tumble world of online bullet chess. In the end, the World Champion prevailed for the seventh time, surpassing his main rival penguingim1 (GM Andrew Tang) by the narrowest of margins.   In addition to the dramatic finish, Carlsen made some memorable contributions to bullet opening theory along the way:

Continue reading this post

Shortly before the lowly humans play in Titled Arena 9, Lichess will host a match between 2 stronger competitors. Leela Chess Zero and Stockfish 10 will play 6 games of 5+2 chess with Commentary by Lichess favorite ChessNetwork starting Sat, 15th Dec at 17:00 UTC.

Continue reading this post

After taking a break during the World Championship (congratulations to Magnus and Fabiano for a very tense match), the Lichess Titled Arena resumes normal scheduling on the 15th of December, at 19:00 UTC. Will Magnus Carlsen try to claim back the arguably more important accolade of Titled Arena Champion?

This event will also celebrate the 1 year anniversary of these Titled Arenas! The team welcomes any birthday cakes sent to Lichess HQ.

Continue reading this post

Tickets for the final day of the World Championship match, the rapid tiebreakers, had only been on sale for 36 hours when the VIP tickets, priced at 600 pounds, were declared sold out. (General admission was a bargain at only 120 pounds.)

Continue reading this post

Last Saturday, Lichess held a Meetup in London, in a pub near the World Championship Venue. People turned up en masse, from beginners to seasoned players, making the evening a huge success, as demonstrated by this heartwarming reddit post. Thanks to all the players that took part in our blitz tournament, and congratulations to the top 3 finishers: Robbie Cahar, Anil Cengiz and Eric Rosen, who all got a limited edition London Meetup hoodie.

While the team didn't have time to work on Lichess features for this Meetup, we still had time to take some pictures, enjoy our selection below.

Continue reading this post