GM Rauf Mamedov Wins Strange Chess Tournament With All the Pieces on the Wrong Squares.

Running a website often requires you to swallow your pride. Having everything working perfectly simply isn't an option; you only get to decide in what order you put your finite supply of band-aids on your infinite supply of problems. To our great embarrassment, at the start of yesterday's Titled Arena, there was a strange bug that scrambled the pieces at the beginning of each game. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the pieces were scrambled differently in each game, so all of the players' years of opening preparation were now useless. Of course it was far too late to cancel the event, and we pressed on despite the strange circumstances.

Joining Lichess for the tournament and streaming his commentary for the event was 8-time Russian champion GM Peter Svidler.

https://youtu.be/jmk-dXuKXXM

Early on, the odd placement of the pieces contributed to an amusing incident.

https://youtu.be/9IwK0jle3dU

The anonymous FeegLood spent the majority of the event in first place after only losing 1 of his first 21 games, but scoring 2.5 out of his last 5 would eventually doom his chances to win, and he finished 4th. Feeglood was overtaken by a trio of Grandmasters, GM Vladislav Kovalev, GM Haik Martirosyan, and the winner, GM Rauf Mamedov.

https://youtu.be/TNbhAG0CbAM

Once again, the berserking strategy played a huge role in this event. ("Berserking" is a Lichess-exclusive option that lets you give up half of the time on your clock for an extra point if you win) While there were no committed berserkers in the prize spots this time, (none above 27%) If you go just slightly down the table you'll find the anonymous Watnegberserking 68% of games in 8th, and the anonymous LyinTedberserking 76% of their games. The latter played a full 8 more games in the tournament than Mamedov as a result.

On behalf of Lichess, I'd like to congratulate Mamedov and apologize for the initial piece placement bug. We'll have it fixed soon.