swiss and round tournament

Arena is great for this site. Jump in, play a tournament, no waiting around and you can easily get lots of games in.

But yeah if you wanted to organize tournaments like the 4545 league does, I'm sure people would be interested.

@savagechess2k
> No, it wouldn't . Swiss tournaments are too slow. For example; if you win a game in 5 moves, you have to wait about 10 minutes for the next game. Swiss can only played OTB.
This is nonsense. Can't you wait 5-10 minutes once or twice in a tournament if such a thing suddenly happened in blitz swiss and do something else in other tab? It is not very likely that you win in 5 moves.

Have you ever seen a Swiss tournament online? Swiss tournaments were played online on other chess playgrounds long before lichess came up with Arena. And are played today, too (on chess.com and chessplanet at least).

Swiss is not about playing OTB or online. You also have to wait for the next game OTB. It is about to determine a fair result from a small number of games. Arena fails to do that, and the only tournaments where the result is more or less fair are where most of the players play dozens of games like Lichess Titled Arena - long-lasting, but short time control tournaments. Swiss tournaments just take less time to get the same degree of fairness, and things like "Yearly Classical" are much better to make Swiss and at least halved in time. Playing a lot of bullet games in a row is fun, but playing 10-hour chess tournament is no fun at all, to say the least.

@Unihedron
> Long style tournaments imply having everyone to reserve their spot and commit to playing each round. This is simply not feasible with just the feature because it will lead to commitment problems since we can't force players to show up. If anyone bails out, the entire tournament is trashed.
Such problems are effectively resolved on other sites and in Lichess45+45 League's Lonewolf 30+30 in particular. There ARE ways to handle no-shows of players.

I think there should be option to play live team match, this would be very unique and interesting as you can play as a team (4vs4). This would also enable conduction of many tournaments.

I agree with this idea, Lichess has so many variants and no one is forced to play one variant , It's also free and so no one is forced to pay money to use the site, so why ALL players are forced to play Arena style tournament ?
I like arena , it's fun and sometimes crazy (especially with breserk)
but why not other types ? like swiss or knock-out or round robin ?
no one is forced to participate in them ! if you are arena lover so go play in arena :)
i really wish Lichess add more tournament styles :)

The problem here is not about the superiority of Arena, but about having the choice between several types of tournaments.

To the ones saying : "Only Arena is feasible online," well this is absolutely false, as there are Swiss tournaments in quite all chess sites except lichess (in fact, all the sites which have tournaments).

To the others replying : "If you want to play Swiss, or organize something like Lichess45+45," well what we're asking for here is actually not having to organize those things.

So why not adding Swiss, Round Robin and others ? Anyway, if you prefer one of them, you don't have to play the others.

Are they adding any of those noone-knows-about variants that ChessWhiz Plays ? No. because few people plays them.
Few people would play swiss and/or round robin online.

i agree, swiss tournament is far better than arenas

@savagechess2k

Hum hum. How many people play on... chess.com, for example ? When I was playing there (there were no Arenas then, I reckon), there were at least 50 people in Swiss tournaments.

Swiss tournaments are the only thing lichess lacks. Arenas are great, that's for sure. But many players ask for Swiss (+others) tournaments and therefore they should be added.

Swiss and Arena both have advantages and disadvantages and will appeal to different people. A problem with offering both is that by increasing the number of tournaments available it is likely to reduce the number of people entering each tournament. If you prefer a tournament format on a different site then there is nothing to stop you also playing on that site as well. I play on a variety of sites. None are perfect.

> A problem with offering both is that by increasing the number of tournaments available it is likely to reduce the number of people entering each tournament.

Is a tournament's goal to have as many people as possible? There is no difference between 200 people or 100.
The tournaments which do aim a big number of people, such as Marathons, won't be altered by the adding of Swiss.