The Isle of Man International is in full swing (and you can catch the live games and commentary here on Lichess) but the allure of bullet chess is too strong, and during the rest day snuck in another installment of the Titled Arena. Willingly drawn away from their preparations for the next round were GMs Nihal Sarin (@nihalsarin2004), Parham Maghsoodloo (@grizzlybear79) and Eduardo Iturrizaga (@Eduiturri) - no doubt amongst countless others. All told, this is one of the largest Titled Arenas to date - possibly the largest, diligent fact-checkers are more than welcome to review this bold claim.

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The Lichess Titled Arena is back on Wednesday the 16th October at 19:00 UTC! In addition to the usual prizes, the three top-placing female participants will win additional prizes of $100, $50 and $20.

The event will as usual be preceded by a bullet 1+0 Warm-up Arena, open to all players with a minimum of 20 rated bullet games. Yes, even you.

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The first installment of the Horde World Championship is here at last, so get ready for the greatest pawn storm in Lichess history!

The event will kick off on October 13th. If you would like to participate, please make sure to read the rules. Registration closes October 12th and will be conducted through the official Horde World Championship team. If you are only interested in following the tournament, joining the team is a great way to stay tuned as well! 

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This September, we were treated to a double-bill of Lichess Titled Arenas, with a 960 variant edition at the unprecedented 3+2 time-control. Players were out in force with 270 participants. GM Andrew Tang (@penguingim1) took an early lead, but it was short lived - protesting on stream that he was only tired and not ill, the penguin was not in his finest form. IM Raunak Sadhwani (@Raunaksadhwani2005) took up the mantle with an impressive start and indeed led the field for over an hour and a half before starting to be pegged back by his opponents.

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The foyer of the 2019 World Cup venue, the Ugra Chess Academy just outside the centre of the city in Khanty-Mansiysk, is its own little world.

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It's been a little while since the last 960 Titled Arena. For this iteration, the duration will be 3 hours as last time but with a time control of 3+2.

This event will also be preceded by a Chess960 Warm-up Arena, open to all players with a minimum of 10 rated Chess960 games.

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The 2019 Antichess World Championship (ACWC) is going to start on Monday 30th September! Last year, FM Vladica Andrejić (@arimakat) took the trophy home after a tense final match against @Ogul1. Will he keep the Antichess World Champion title, or will someone else take the crown? We'll find out soon...

If you're unfamiliar with Antichess, you can read the rules here: https://lichess.org/variant/antichess

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The September edition of the Lichess Titled Arena took place yesterday and we were treated to a whole host of streamers in a whole host of languages! Of course a notable mention is World Champion Magnus Carlsen (@DrNykterstein) who streamed in Norwegian throughout. Joining him in the non-English streams were GM Sergei Zhigalko (@Zhigalko_Sergei - stream), GM Alexander Zubov (@Alexander_Zubov - stream), GM Sergey Shipov (@Crest64 - stream) in Russian, and Sabri Can Onay Yontar (@Satranc Medya) in Turkish , and many more - post your favourite non-English streams in the comments! Joining them were the usual suspects of NM Jerry of Chess-Network fame following Magnus's games, IM Eric Rosen (@EricRosen), and a Fionchetta/Astaneh double-act.

Back to the chess, and it seemed to be business as usual for the World Champion, who was looking to regain his crown after coming second to GM Alireza Firouzja (@alireza2003) last time out. He kicked things off with a win against GM Daniel Naroditsky (@RebeccaHarris) followed by strings of wins over the next hour and a had comfortable lead. However, things were not all smooth sailing and as the halfway point approached, he faltered with 0.5 from 4 games in a row. In fact, GM Naroditsky was his kryptonite, with a tournament score of 6-1 over Carlsen - continually extinguishing the crucial fire. This allowed the rest of the field to stay close and with 30 minutes to go, IM Saveliy Golubov (@Boss1005) was only a few points behind despite scoring "just" 0.5 out of 4 against the leader.

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Lichess Titled Arena is back next Saturday the 7th September at 19:00UTC!

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