Due to the recent gain in popularity of the Chess960 (or Fischer Random) variant, we're hosting a bonus Titled Arena: Chess960 Edition! The Titled Arenas has become among the world's strongest Bullet tournaments, and we're proud to now also offer a high quality Chess960 tournament to our players (actually, we announced it in a series of mysterious tweets a couple of weeks ago).

Many of you have also requested a longer time control during these titled events, so we're trying 2 minutes + 1 second increment this time. Moreover, to ensure that each player will get enough games with this longer time control, we're increasing the tournament duration from the usual 2 hours to 3!

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Magnus Carlsen has started the new year strong, winning every single tournament he has entered thus far. This version of the prestigious titled arena, more commonly known as the bullet World Championship, was no exception. The number one got off to a flying start winning nine out of his first ten games, before disappearing mysteriously. The internet searched everywhere without any results. For ten whole minutes the world stood still. Was this how the world was gonna end?

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Just as one of the strongest classical tournaments, Tata Steel Chess, settles, we announce another edition of the world's strongest Bullet tournament. Last month’s Titled Arena broke a new record both in number of participants and number of online players (42,291). Let's break it again!

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

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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!

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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

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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:

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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.

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