lichess.org blog

Lichess: Year in Review 2023

2024-01-13T00:00:00.000+03:00

Lichess highlights in 2023

As another year passes, we want to share some highlights of our work, achievements and projects over 2023.

2023 has been a year of massive community growth for us. Much of what we have achieved this year simply would not have been possible without so many people who have kindly donated their time to us, and so many people who have generously donated money to support our projects and goals. From January 2024, we will continue our work in an online chess landscape that is marching towards a monopoly. This trend is not unique to chess – consolidation is happening across the internet and wider world.

But Lichess remains strong in spite of these challenges. We’re a charity that’s run by the community, for the community. Every cent donated to us is reinvested directly back into chess more widely; none goes to investors, shareholders or private equity firms. It’s your support that has helped us outlast competitors with countless millions of dollars in investment and equity-backing, and your belief in our mission and purpose that helps to inspire us every day. Support us today to help ensure free chess, for everyone, forever.

Growth in contributions

We’ve had 155 first-time code contributors this year, a massive number given that in over a decade we’ve had 812 code contributors in total. 35 different projects have received contributions, and nearly 400 of these code changes have been from first-time contributors! We set up our Gitpod workspace which streamlines the contribution process.

Code is more than making new features; it’s also maintaining it, managing updates and conflicts, keeping it optimised, and fixing any bugs or glitches that appear. This part of code contribution is effectively what keeps Lichess running smoothly, and creates a stable foundation allowing cool new features or projects to be expanded on top of it. A massive thank you to everyone involved!

Want to help us? We're always looking for contributors, and not just in code. Check out our contribution guide for more info.

Mobile updates

Around a year ago, growth in user donations and support allowed us to employ a full time mobile app developer to create a new Lichess mobile app. A year on, @veloce and nearly 20 other contributors have made great progress. Many features are implemented, such as puzzle training, puzzle storm, puzzle streak, the puzzle dashboard, leaderboards, Lichess TV, and a lot of backend work was recently completed, that also now allows games to be played and basic analysis.

Thanks to everyone on Lichess Discord for helping with beta testing the app so far. We will soon ask more users to join the beta. If you want to help create the new mobile app, you can join the Lichess beta testers team. We plan to send out a team message sometime in the next few weeks.

Better performance

Scalachess, our website code that checks the legality of every player move, has been rewritten from scratch and is now 50x faster. Lichess developer @thanh used many advanced techniques to optimize nearly every aspect of our chess logic in a heroic six-month effort. The result is a substantial increase in simultaneous game hosting capacity!

Scalachess benchmark notably showing +4575% in antichess move generation speed

Over 5 billion rated games

In 2023, we crossed over 5 billion standard rated games played on Lichess and stored in the Lichess games database. Similarly, March 2023 gave us our record of standard rated games played on Lichess in a single month (108 million), with over 1 billion games played across 2023 alone. That’s a huge number of games and traffic for a charity with only two full-time developers, and running on roughly €550,000 per year!

Massive Broadcast growth

Our PGN Broadcasts of over-the-board chess tournaments have received a lot of love this year. Dozens of new features have been added, such as showing clocks on the multiboard view, allowing 128 games to be shown in a single broadcast, and showing tournament schedules and leaderboards on some events. 7,709 OTB tournaments were hosted entirely for free on Lichess over 2023, with dozens of contributors and thousands of user-uploaded tournaments making it the biggest year for our PGN broadcasts.

Stonks

Meanwhile, we are planning further improvements to broadcasts given the massive amounts of feedback we’ve received over the year and especially the last few weeks.

Supporting and Partnering with OTB chess

In 2023, as well as hosting hundreds of hybrid and online events from other chess organizations, we’ve more formally partnered and worked with national federations, international federations, and major chess organizations. Over the summer, we collaborated with the Kazakhstan Chess Federation to provide online tournament support to the Kazakhstan Cup. Over 350,000 games of chess were played, with Lichess sending multiple titled players to the OTB events with expenses covered. We’ve also partnered with the newly formed Women in Chess Foundation, an effort to make the chess world safe and welcoming to women and girls. We were also Broadcasts Partner to the Asian Chess Federation, ensuring the PGN transmission of the tournament was relayed accurately to Lichess and other platforms.

If you’re involved with a major chess organisation, feel free to get in touch to see how we can potentially collaborate!

Lichess online events

The Lichess Bundesliga celebrated its 400th edition on 24th December. Overall the league counts almost 2 million registrations since its beginning on March 2020. The House Discord server won the yearly season 2023, overall for the fourth time in a row.

Meanwhile, our regularly scheduled Titled Arena have continued strong, with direct Lichess prize funds amounting to around $25,000 this year, which is roughly about 5% of our annual revenue. Indirectly, Lichess has supported dozens of prize fund events, some providing further significant prize funds to the wider chess community.

The Lichess4545 league continues strong, entering season 38. Starting on January 15th, registration is now closed - but keep an eye out for season 39 if interested in organised longer play matches online!

Lichess crossed 100 languages

The incredible Crowdin translation team have fixed thousands of translations, UI issues in translated languages, and helped with greater support for right-to-left languages. Thanks to this incredible community effort from nearly 3,000 contributors, Lichess is now partially available in over 100 languages spoken in the world, with around 40 of these fully translated.

New features

User flairs

Registered users can now optionally select flairs to represent them. A small visual graphic appearing next to the username, it’s an extra bit of personalisation and colour. User flairs can be selected and chosen in user settings — which have also had a bit of a revamp to allow a direct URL to each user setting.

New web analysis engines

A suite of new engines, headlined by Stockfish 16, are now available for use in web analysis, study, and puzzles. These updates offer a +60 to +120 Elo improvement over the previous Stockfish 14 NNUE, and the new Fairy Stockfish NNUEs offer anywhere from +90 up to +1100 additional Elo for variants. Many thanks to the Stockfish team for their commitment to making this free software, open source chess engine available to the world.

Feed

Our homepage has received a bit of a revamp. Eagle-eyed users will have noticed that if you scroll down to the bottom of the homepage, a new feature, called feed, has made its home there. You can also check it out at https://lichess.org/feed. Feed gives a regular update of Lichess and chess world news, updated regularly.

Voice recognition

You can now play games and puzzles with voice commands while doing your favourite activities, like woodworking, shaving, or reeling in a big fish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqvyfgiyMoU

Moderation statistics

In 2023, our team closed over 567,000 reports, including:

- 93,000 reports for cheating
- 298,000 reports for communication infractions
- 87,000 reports of sandbagging or boosting
- 89,000 miscellaneous reports

A huge number of these reports came directly from you. We have many automated systems in place, but user participation is necessary to keep Lichess fun for all. In 2023 alone, we:

- flagged 72,000 accounts for cheating using external assistance
- flagged 20,000 accounts for sandbagging or boosting
- sent 176,000 warning messages to users for various infractions
- removed chat permissions from 72,000 accounts
- communicated with users over 36,000 times through our appeals system

The vast majority of players are well-behaved and follow the rules, so thank you! Here's more about our reporting, fair play, and communications guidelines.

We also added a new report type. Sexism and sexual harassment has always been against our Terms of Service, but it is now a specific option when making a report.

Lichess meetup 2023

Continuing our annual tradition, the Lichess team met up and worked together in Barcelona in 2023. Hosting a community event on a lazy September afternoon, over a hundred people joined us to informally play blitz chess in the autumn sun. Read about it in our summary blog and keep an eye out for our 2024 plans!

Some of the Lichess team who were able to make it to Barcelona

Around the World

Our team was present at several events around the world this year. Our Director of Operations, Theo Wait (@Cynosure), represented Lichess on a number of occasions in Kazakhstan: at the World Championship match, and at the Asian Zonal. He was also kindly invited to Bhubaneswar in India by the state government, where he gave a talk on digitalizing chess in schools and education. While there, he was fortunate enough to see the incredible work of ChessBase India in teaching chess to all across India, visiting an orphanage in Mumbai where Sagar Shah volunteers time and donates equipment to the children. Additionally, FM Jens Hirneise (@Jeffforever), a significant contributor in several areas to Lichess, played with admirable results in the FIDE World Rapid Championship in Samarkand, as well as visiting multiple chess clubs around the world.

Theo playing against one of the orphans of the Chembur Children's Home in Mumbai

Finance and Governance

As a registered French charity, our independently audited accounts for 2022 were published in June (link to PDF). Our total income that year was around €579,000 – 95% from user donations. This was 2% lower than our 2021 income. Our total expenses came to €419,000 – 15% higher than 2021 – meaning we had a surplus of just under €150,000. Although our 2023 accounts won’t be finalised until next summer, the numbers should be reasonably similar to 2022. Our costs have increased in some areas such as moderation and administrative support, but we’ve achieved savings in other areas, for example by securing longer contracts for some of our servers.

In terms of governance, Lichess has been growing and becoming more complex with thousands of contributors, and according to SimilarWeb we briefly broke into the top 200 websites in the world in terms of traffic in 2023 (although our traffic is certainly underestimated by these services, given how SimilarWeb calculates it, and our approaches towards trackers, etc). Given this significant scale and complexity, much discussion and work has been going on internally with how we are structured, with various committees meeting regularly to track how the main areas of Lichess are faring, challenges they are facing, and what we need to do in the long-term, as well as learning from those who have gone before us, both in the open source project space, and in industry.

Lichess Development Made Easy With Gitpod

2023-11-09T00:00:00.000+03:00

Now you can write code for Lichess using a web browser

Lichess has always been open-source, and it's always been possible to download and run its code. However, that hasn't always been easy to do. Lichess has a lot of dependencies that need to be installed and quite a few background services that need to be running. Coordinating everything on your own machine in real-time can be difficult.

But now we've massively simplified the process of setting up a complete development environment and running lila, the primary Lichess codebase that's written in the Scala programming language (lila is short for "Lichess in Scala").

All you need to be able to run lila and write code for Lichess is a web browser like Chrome or Firefox.

With the open-source project Gitpod, you can run software projects in a ready-to-code environment on a cloud service. You get 50 hours of free usage each month.

Log in to Gitpod with a GitHub account, go to the lila-gitpod project, and click "Open in Gitpod". In about 10 minutes, you'll have an instance of lila running, where you can edit code and navigate a development version of the site. We've configured and automated all the setup, so all you have to do is click a button and a personal development environment will be created for you.

Check out this video to see how it works and what a contribution workflow can look like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imuo-d5vGS8

See the lila-gitpod documentation for more on how to work with Lichess inside your workspace.

Now that you can run lila, the hard part may be determining what to work on. If you need ideas, check out some of the open issues on GitHub or see other ways to contribute.

Our devs in action. Join Thibault and the gang, and help improve Lichess!

Livaic Wins the Pavlodar Qualifier!

2023-10-17T00:00:00.000+03:00

As mentioned in our announcement, the Pavlodar Open (third event of Kazakhstan Cup) granted three invitations with all expenses covered, to be awarded by a series of tournaments held on Lichess. Nine arenas in total were held within a week, at different times of the day, allowing players all around the world to compete, with the participation varying from 1600 to 4500 players each. With more than 100k games played, and only the top 20 from each arena qualifying, the competition was fierce, and many strong players had to play more than one qualifier to get a chance to go through.

The Swiss Stage was held on September 30th, featuring 127 players with an average(!) Lichess blitz rating of 2534. After 11 rounds, with the fight for the top spots being intense and unpredictable, @Aqua_Blazing (Valery Sviridov) prevailed for the second time in this series of events, in a 5-ways tie with 8.5/11, being the only undefeated player.

We have selected a few instructive positions for you to hone your skills:

https://lichess.org/study/embed/mEiL7ajS/4so5N67u

The three invitations were decided in the round robin final stage, with 7 players eventually participating. An average FIDE rapid rating of 2408 was promising some top-notch games and close fights until the end; and we definitely weren't let down. GM Leon Livaic managed to win the event undefeated with 4.5/6, followed by the 13 years old FM Edgar Mamedov, with 4/6, and GM Neuris Delgado Ramirez in 3rd place with 3.5/6, also undefeated.

In the game that probably decided the winner of the event, we witnessed Leon Livaic, who already had a positional edge, getting into a favourable imbalance of rook and two pawns for bishop and knight, and masterfully converting it:

https://lichess.org/study/embed/YQavLKwV/hWGJnF7a#39

Thanks to the Kazakhstan Chess Federation for their cooperation and generous patronage, and to everybody in the Lichess team who was involved!

If you are an organizer and would like to do something similar, do not hesitate to contact us!

2023 Lichess Meetup in Barcelona

2023-10-09T00:00:00.000+03:00

A weekend in Catalonia's beautiful capital!

At the beginning of September, over 20 Lichess team members met up in Barcelona for what turned out to be the largest team meetup and community event held so far.

Meetups are a fantastic opportunity for contributors to meet each other and collaborate across all areas of Lichess. They’re like extended hackathons but with less sleep deprivation and better food – it helps that some team members like to cook… while others can only be trusted with the washing up! There’s usually time to fit in some sightseeing too, but the highlight for many is a community event in a public space where people can play casual OTB chess (or just hang out).

In Barcelona we had team members from a wide range of countries and nationalities: Austria, Canada, France (and Brittany), Germany (and Bavaria), Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.

The team worked on multiple projects over the weekend. Lichess's founder and lead developer Thibault led an informal seminar about the codebase, Scala 3 and design choices. Our sysadmin Lucas led a similar session on servers and systems administration, and there was also a team-wide discussion about governance. Many bugs were also fixed, including one about correspondence email notifications that stayed below the radars for a while.

Devs discussing devilish dilemmas

A major thank you to La Vaca Coworking for being chilled about our office dogs, supplying unlimited tea and coffee, sourcing a great lunch and post-work beers, and generally being a fantastic co-working space. So much of our weekend was stress free because of them - if you're ever in Barcelona and need a place to work, do check them out!

The next day, some of the team chose to do a spot of sightseeing around the Sagrada Familia. A few others went for a run to the beach (and a swim). The wisest had a lie-in until late morning (or even later).

In the afternoon, we joined forces with the Barcelona Chess Meetup group, which organises casual chess meetups every Sunday in Parc de la Ciutadella. Armed with chess boards, beers, nibbles and soft drinks, we set up for a lazy afternoon of informal blitz games and hanging out in the park as the sun gently set over the Arc de Triomf.

Everyone in the park enjoying IRLichess (as some like to call it)

The meetup was extremely well attended in spite of our late notification to local Lichess users. At times, there were over 125 people spread across the benches in the park - all playing, talking and watching chess. It was absolutely incredible to get to see and meet so many fans of the game and Lichess in such a beautiful setting.

The "non-chess" table kept yelling "Leeeroooooy Jeeeenkins!" for some reason

Although Magnus Carlsen didn't show up like he did in Oslo in 2018, we were no less blessed by the presence of IM Greg Shahade and WGM Jennifer Shahade for various parts of the weekend. Several other titled players also attended the event in the park, but we think Greg maintained positive records against all challengers, albeit with a few close calls!

IM Greg Shahade challenges Lichess's finest (Nico)

If you're in Barcelona and fancy some casual chess, go check out the Barcelona Chess Meetup group, which meets every Sunday in the park when the weather's good.

Cammy analysing the rules

Your chance to qualify to the Kazakhstan Cup, costs covered – with a $50,000 prize fund!

2023-09-21T00:00:00.000+03:00

A $2,000 prize fund event - with the winner qualifying to Pavlodar Open

Starting 22 October, Pavlodar in northeastern Kazakhstan will host a nine-round classical open tournament with a whopping $50,000 prize fund up for grabs.

Three lucky players can qualify through a series of tournaments held only on Lichess. They will have their flights, full board, and accommodation in Pavlodar covered for them by the Kazakhstan Chess Federation – as well as a share of a $2,000 prize fund for the online qualifier.

The Lichess qualifier will have three stages. The first will comprise nine open-entry arena tournaments, aimed especially towards the timezones of North and South America, Europe, and Central Asia / India.

The top 20 players from each arena will then play a single 11-round Swiss tournament, where they may be joined by up to ten wildcard players.

Finally, the top seven finishers from the Swiss tournament will be joined by a wildcard player, and the qualifiers will be determined by single-encounter Round Robin Tournament.

Everyone who makes it to the knockout stage will receive a share of a $2,000 prize fund.

Prize fund

The Kazakhstan Chess Federation has contributed $2,000 towards the online prize fund, a share of which will be awarded to everyone who qualifies to the Round Robin stage of the qualifier, broken down as follows:

1st – $400 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Pavlodar Open, with a ~$50,000 total prize fund on offer (around $10,000 to first place).
2nd – $350 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Pavlodar Open
3rd – $300 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Pavlodar Open
4th – $250
5th to 8th – $175 each

Schedule and regulations

Nine first-stage arenas will be held online. Each arena will be two hours long, with a time control of 3+0. Berserk will be allowed. The top 20 players from each arena will qualify to the second stage. Players may enter multiple arenas as long as they have not already qualified.

In the second stage, a single Swiss tournament will be held for at least 180 players. This will be an 11-round tournament with a time control of 5+2. The top seven players from the tournament will qualify for the third stage.

Swiss Qualifier: Saturday 30th September, 14:00 UTC

A single encounter Round Robin tournament for the top seven players from the Swiss tournament, plus a Lichess wildcard. The time control will be 10+2

Round Robin Stage: Sunday 1st October, 14:00 UTC

All players in the knockout stage will be required to join an online call with FIDE-licensed arbiters. Lichess also reserves the right to ask for this at earlier stages.
Interested players should read the full regulations carefully. All qualifier participants will be assumed to have consented to the regulations, which can be found here.

Wildcards will be decided based on a combination of factors, including age, rating, and current playing opportunities. All wildcard decisions are final and made solely at the discretion of Lichess.

About the Kazakhstan Cup

The Kazakhstan Cup is a series of tournaments held in Kazakhstan and organised by the Kazakhstan Chess Federation. These qualifier events are possible thanks to the generosity of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation.

The tournament held in Pavlodar will be a nine-round event with a time control of 90+30.

Cover photo: Zac Allan

Titled Arena Announcement(s)

2023-09-03T00:00:00.000+03:00

Announcing our schedule for upcoming Titled Arenas!

We're pleased to announce the schedule for our upcoming Titled Arenas!

All events will be preceded by a warm-up arena open to all players with a minimum of 20 rated games in the relevant time control (excluding 960 warm-up, where the minimum rated games are 10).

Prizes unless otherwise stated:

1. $500, 2. $250, 3. $125, 4. $75, 5. $50.

Participation requirement: Verified FIDE or NM title (see below)

markdown
| Event                   | Date     | Link                                    | Warm-up                                 |
|-------------------------|----------|-----------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------|
| September 2023 Blitz TA | 9th Sep  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep23bua) |
| September 2023 TA       | 23rd Sep | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep23wua) |
| October 2023 Blitz TA   | 07th Oct | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct23bua) |
| October 2023 TA         | 21st Oct | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct23wua) |
| November 2023 Blitz TA  | 11th Nov | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov23bua) |
| November 2023 TA        | 25th Nov | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov23wua) |
| December 2023 960 TA    | 9th Dec  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/960dec23) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/96wdec23) |
| December 2023 TA        | 30th Dec | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/dec23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/dec23wua) |

Practical Information

If you are new to Lichess, it's important to become familiar with the arena tournament format. Read our FAQ and consider trying out an arena tournament in advance. Arena points are awarded based on the number of games you win. If multiple players finish the tournament with the same number of points, tournament performance is used to break the tie. Prizes will be awarded within three days after the event, through PayPal.

Title Verification

To participate in the Titled Arena events, you need a verified titled account on Lichess. If you don't already have a Lichess account, create one. Then, to get your FIDE or NM title verified, please fill out this title verification form, and we will process it within 24 hours. If you already have verified your title on Lichess, you don't have to do this again. When your title has been verified by us, you will be able to join the tournaments.

Streaming

We've had a bunch of players streaming the previous Titled Arenas, including Magnus Carlsen, Alexander Grischuk, John Bartholomew, Eric Rosen and ChessNetwork. We encourage both participants and fans to live-stream the tournament. If you plan to, check out our small streamer's kit for some useful graphics to include in your overlay, as well as some frequently asked questions about streaming fairplay.

Breaking the Silence

2023-08-10T00:00:00.000+03:00

Lichess will no longer cooperate with the US Chess Federation and the Saint Louis Chess Club

This article contains potentially distressing content.

Introduction

In February, chess commentator and author Jennifer Shahade publicly accused grandmaster Alejandro Ramirez of sexual misconduct. Her allegations sparked a swift and severe backlash against Ramirez, who was forced to resign from the Saint Louis Chess Club (STLCC), before being permanently banned by the United States Chess Federation (US Chess).

The allegations also exposed apparent failures at US Chess and STLCC. Yet, neither organization has faced any serious scrutiny or accountability for their handling of the case.

And Ramirez is not the only one. According to interviews and documents reviewed by Lichess, one other prominent American grandmaster has also been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women, raising further troubling questions about how chess organizations deal with such matters.

Lichess has decided to stop cooperating with both organizations due to serious concerns about their accountability. We will not provide them with support, and we will not advertise their events.

Women and girls in chess already face an uphill battle. They deserve a safe and supportive environment. But too often, they encounter abuse, harassment or worse. And too often, they feel powerless to report it or seek justice. It’s time to help break the silence.

Another high-profile case

Uzbek-American grandmaster Timur Gareyev has achieved several impressive feats in his chess career, such as sharing third place at the 2013 US Championship and reaching a peak classical rating of 2682. He is perhaps best known for giving large blindfold simuls, earning him the nickname of the “Blindfold King.” A 2013 ChessBase article praised him as “one of the most energetic mavericks in the chess world,” and in 2016 The Guardian profiled him as he prepared to break the world record by playing 48 games simultaneously while blindfolded in Las Vegas.

Timur Gareyev in 2015. Credit: Juan Jauregui.

However, there is another side to Gareyev. Lichess has obtained documents that show he has faced multiple sexual misconduct complaints since 2019.

Lichess has spoken to two women who allege that Gareyev assaulted them during separate chess tournaments in 2019. Both tournaments were sanctioned by US Chess. One alleged incident happened as the woman was walking from the tournament hotel to her car. The other happened inside the tournament venue.

One woman provided the following account to Lichess:

"Timur spins around quickly, pins my arms to my sides, and tries to kiss me, aggressively. His fingers were digging into my arms. I can not get free. I was turning my head side to side, saying, "No Timur. Stop. I don't want this." I can still feel his beard on both of my cheeks as I am struggling. He said, "But, I just want to …” He was holding my arms with both hands. When he changed his grip, I managed to force him off-balance for a moment and finally pulled away. I guess that I should have raised my knee to kick him, or maybe thrown my head forward to get him to let go. I had no idea that he was that strong. I was not expecting Timur to grab me like that. [...] Everything happened so quickly, but I was powerless to stop it."

The other woman’s account alleges that Gareyev approached and grabbed her so suddenly that it left her off-balance and afraid she was about to fall – before kissing her on the lips. She says that Gareyev seemed to think that it was funny, but she felt in shock and unable to move while it was happening, and afterwards remained in stunned silence.

One of the women filed a formal complaint with US Chess shortly after the alleged assault, but the US Chess ethics committee refused to “accept jurisdiction” of the matter. In essence, the committee said that it could only deal with complaints about incidents that happened inside or on the grounds of the tournament hotel, as these would have a “direct connection” to the tournament. But this incident had happened just outside the hotel, so the committee did nothing to sanction Gareyev beyond noting its dismay at the woman’s account and promising to keep the complaint on file.

Lichess has learned that this decision did not sit well with everyone at US Chess. There was sufficient unease within the organization that when the same woman attended a US Chess tournament in 2021 – two years after her alleged assault – a senior US Chess official was asked to escort her around the playing hall to ensure her safety in case Gareyev appeared.

Moreover, in 2021 US Chess received another report about Gareyev, this time alleging that he inappropriately touched a female player at a tournament.

All three alleged incidents were reported to US Chess. Two of them happened in relatively public places. It is therefore likely that many if not all US Chess executive board members were aware of them to some degree.

US Chess did eventually act against Gareyev, but only after receiving multiple Safe Play reports. These were filed in accordance with the US Chess Safe Play Guidelines, a framework for handling misconduct complaints that was first published in September 2019 – only three months after the ethics committee effectively rejected the first complaint against Gareyev.

In June 2022, Gareyev was banned from playing or attending US Chess national events for two years, and his US Chess membership was suspended for a year. But the sanctions were unlikely to have much impact, for several reasons.

First, his ban only applied to “US Chess National Events,” meaning that he could attend local and regional events, as well as give simuls and visit clubs (as he did recently when he worked with a youth chess club in Texas).

Second, since the sanctions (understandably) could only affect events within the United States, Gareyev was free to play in other countries. In the last 12 months, he has given a simultaneous exhibition at the 2023 FIDE World Championship, won the Kenyan Open, and played in the ongoing FIDE World Cup in Azerbaijan. The fact that high-profile offenders can avoid the consequences of geographically limited sanctions highlights the need for complete transparency by authorities.

Third, until late June, US Chess kept these sanctions a secret. When complainants were informed of the sanctions, they were also asked to “handle this information with the sensitivity it deserves.” The sanctions were not announced or publicized. The only sign of anything unusual was a small change on Gareyev’s US Chess member page, which showed the term “Suspended Member” for the duration of his membership suspension. This was removed on 6 June 2023, as his page returned to normal, but it can be seen in an older archived version. Even when it was spotted on Twitter last September, the discussion went nowhere. The change by itself was ambiguous, as it did not reveal the other sanctions or why they had been imposed.

An archived version of Gareyev’s US Chess member page from March 2023

On 23 June 2023 – after Gareyev’s membership suspension had ended – US Chess made a sudden move to disclose information about previously sanctioned members, saying it was “in the interest of transparency” in a brief statement.

Details about the sanctions against Gareyev, published by US Chess on 23 June (link to PDF)

In a letter informing one of the women about the sanctions, US Chess wrote that they hoped that the woman could “again participate in chess activities without fear.” However, the woman in question, who was previously a highly active chess volunteer, organizer, and official in various roles, says that she has stopped going to chess events.

When approached for comment, Gareyev said:

"I would love to focus on contributing to the betterment of [the] chess community and all the people benefiting from engaging intellectually, partaking in contests to raise their spirits through the game of chess."

Unresolved questions

US Chess and STLCC also continue to be silent about important and unresolved aspects of the Alejandro Ramirez case – six months after the first public allegations appeared.

Last year, US Chess commissioned a third-party review of its response to reports about Ramirez. But we only know three things about the review: (1) it was completed before 24 May, when US Chess released their final statement on Ramirez; (2) according to US Chess, it concluded that “the US Chess response was timely and appropriate regarding the reports it received about Ramirez’s conduct;” and (3) it will not be published for witness confidentiality reasons.

We accept that there could be valid reasons to not publish the review. However, in our opinion, the one-line conclusion in US Chess’ 24 May statement provides little assurance, not least because it has been challenged by two of the women who submitted formal complaints to US Chess about Ramirez. One of them is Jennifer Shahade, who made her views clear last month on Facebook and Twitter.

Tweet by WGM Jennifer Shahade, 12 July 2023

Another woman whose allegations about Ramirez were reported to US Chess also challenges the finding:

"I do not agree that US Chess was "timely and appropriate" in regards to reports about Ramirez's conduct. I submitted the Safe Play Complaint form with details of sexual abuse prior to an event I was attending where I knew [Ramirez] would be present. The receipt of my report was immediately acknowledged. However, I was not informed of an investigation until a month after my official report and after the event had passed. No effort was made by US Chess to ensure my safety during the event, where several US Chess officials and representatives were present. After my interview, I was told that the information would be reviewed at the next board meeting, and I would be informed of the results. I never heard back. During this time, Ramirez was allowed to participate in US Chess events and coach various female-only teams. Only when Jennifer Shahade raised the issue publicly several months later did anything concrete happen."

The 24 May statement has left many questions unanswered. US Chess has still not supplied a clear account of when officials received information about Ramirez’s alleged misconduct and what was done about it.

US Chess has not been fully transparent about how Ramirez was appointed as coach of the US women’s team for the 2022 Olympiad, and then why he was allowed to go to the Olympiad in August 2022.

Ramirez’s appointment as coach was announced online in June 2022. US Chess has claimed that the players on the team selected Ramirez “independently.”

But Jennifer Shahade has told Lichess that she had previously been assured that Ramirez would not be considered for any coaching roles, and so she was “shocked” when she first learned the news. This challenges US Chess’ claims about how Ramirez was selected.

Regardless, Shahade says that she emailed US Chess officials about the matter in June 2022 – two months before the Olympiad – and informed them that she had recently heard new information from a woman who alleged that Ramirez abused her when she was 15 years old, and that she herself had been attacked by Ramirez in the past. Therefore, even if US Chess officials had nothing to do with the choice of Ramirez as coach, they were nevertheless reminded of credible concerns about his appointment weeks before the event.

Furthermore, Ryan Velez, a former member of the US Chess executive board, has told Lichess that US Chess can remove a coach through a majority vote. Velez contends that if US Chess was contractually bound to pay Ramirez for his role, then the organization must bear ultimate responsibility for selecting him.

Velez went on to explain his specific concerns in a statement to Lichess:

"I believe US Chess has a blind spot when it comes to dealing with titled players. For most of the cases I saw involving sexual allegations, US Chess moved swiftly to suspend US Chess membership and/or take other measures against alleged offenders. However [...] regarding titled players, things often take longer which can potentially increase the number of potential victims. I also feel the 2023 statement by US Chess is misleading and continued evidence of the blind spot they have in these matters. US Chess is generally an excellent organization with a vibrant chess culture. The staff who work there are amazing and implement policy, but they do not shape the policy (that is the job of the Executive Board). I hope my voice contributes toward positive change within US Chess."

When approached for comment, US Chess provided Lichess with the following statement:

"US Chess is committed to protecting the safety of its members and their right to be treated with respect. Our direct actions in recent months include announcing a new Safe Play training requirement via a partnership with the U.S. Center for SafeSport for all of our Tournament Directors (we have 6,477 active TDs), publishing a list of members who have been sanctioned by US Chess, appointing a Safe Play Working Group, and updating our selection process for team coaches/captains. We will remain vigilant in identifying and adopting additional best practices."

Alejandro Ramirez at the World Chess Hall of Fame, December 2022. Credit: Austin Fuller

In our opinion, the Saint Louis Chess Club has also failed to provide a transparent account of its handling of reports about Ramirez. Lichess has seen internal club communications confirming that multiple reports had been received about Ramirez without any action being taken until an investigation was commissioned in September 2022. Lichess has also learned that Jennifer Shahade notified club officials several times about Ramirez’s alleged misconduct – including in summer 2020, October 2020, January 2021, and September 2022 – and that she urged the club to act against Ramirez.

For its part, the club has said in public statements that it received no reports of alleged sexual misconduct by Ramirez that occurred while he was a club employee, and that it initiated an investigation as soon as it received reports from an identified source.

At the same time, the club has not clarified its procedures for handling serious workplace-related complaints. Jennifer Shahade has told Lichess that when she first learned that Ramirez was scheduled to do commentary for the US Junior Girls Championship in October 2020, she immediately informed STLCC that she would not be willing to work alongside him. Shahade says she told the club that she was aware of multiple allegations of sexual misconduct by Ramirez, and that she herself had previously been assaulted by Ramirez. This is corroborated by the club’s public statements. Afterwards, however, as was reported in the Wall Street Journal, “she was told to call him and deal with the matter.”

After speaking to Shahade, Ramirez voluntarily withdrew from the broadcast of the US Junior Girls Championship. But later he worked on many broadcasts for the club, including the 2022 US Junior Championships. In fact, his already high profile in the chess community ascended to new heights after a notable interview with Hans Niemann at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. Meanwhile, Jennifer Shahade has not appeared on an STLCC broadcast since the 2020 US Junior Girls Championship – the event that Ramirez withdrew from. [1]

Ramirez with Rex Sinquefield (founder of the Saint Louis Chess Club), September 2022

Given the respective outcomes for Ramirez and Shahade, it is reasonable to ask whether the club has instituted appropriate procedures for handling workplace complaints. Some club policy documents are published on the STLCC website, but they fail to describe what a club employee should do if they were to experience or observe potential sexual harassment involving other employees or on club premises.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has reported that in 2021, Greg Shahade – Jennifer Shahade’s brother and a well-known chess professional in his own right – emailed STLCC to ask them to investigate Ramirez. Shahade informed the club of another woman who said she had been assaulted by Ramirez when she was 15 years old, who would be willing to be interviewed as part of any investigation.

According to the Post-Dispatch, in a letter sent to Shahade two months later, a lawyer for the club said that STLCC was not “aware of any inappropriate conduct” by Ramirez that was connected to his employment at the club, and that it was not the appropriate body to investigate allegations that were “external or unrelated” to STLCC, before going on to conclude, as quoted in the article: “In our judgement,” they wrote, “this approach balances the interests of the alleged victim to be in a safe environment and Mr. Ramirez’s right to his good name and reputation.”

Thus, it appears that STLCC were provided with an opportunity to potentially substantiate an allegation about Ramirez but declined to do so. When approached for comment, the club advised Lichess that "certain of [the article's] statements and assertions are not only incomplete in light of all the surrounding circumstances, and in some cases simply false."

Conclusions

In June, all four women on the US Chess Accessibility and Special Circumstances Committee resigned in protest at what international arbiter Judit Sztaray described as the hypocrisy of US Chess in addressing inclusion:

Tweet by IA Judit Sztaray, 20 July 2023

We share their concerns. Given what has been reported and what we have learned about their handling of allegations of sexual misconduct by titled players, we do not trust that the current leadership of US Chess and STLCC can be relied on to protect women and girls in chess.

Therefore, the Lichess team has decided to formally end all cooperation with both US Chess and STLCC, meaning that we will not provide them with any technical or direct support, and we will not advertise their events on Lichess or social media.

We are particularly concerned about the role potentially played by senior officers and committee members in both institutions in presiding over cultures where alleged misconduct was heard about and discussed but not acted on. Inaction can have devastating consequences.

We urge US Chess and STLCC to publicly acknowledge their past mistakes, be more open with the public, and hold those who engage in misconduct accountable.

Our criticisms are not aimed at most US Chess and STLCC employees, who are blameless. We especially appreciate the courage of everyone who agreed to speak to us for this article, and we hope their example inspires others to come forward.

We note that US Chess has recently taken steps to improve its processes: in May it committed to reviewing its internal policies, training and communications; and on 9 August, it announced that it had partnered with the U.S. Center for Safesport and introduced new mandatory training for tournament directors.

However, in our opinion, both US Chess and STLCC have failed to demonstrate an important aspect of accountability – a willingness to acknowledge and address past shortcomings. We do not think that reconciliation will be possible without this acknowledgement.

As Melinda Matthews wrote in a powerful and deeply researched essay on sexual harassment in the chess community, “Keeping silent about harassment and abuse has repercussions for the victim [...] it often means walking away from a game they love.”

The woman who made a complaint about Timur Gareyev in 2019 says that she no longer attends chess events. After being allegedly assaulted by Ramirez in 2014, Claire Grothe soon left her job. The four members of the US Chess accessibility committee who resigned in June also decided to walk away. This continues to happen in various forms to women in chess all over the world.

Meanwhile, Gareyev, who recently played in the FIDE World Cup in Azerbaijan, took to social media last month to criticize what he described as “badmouth and gossip promoted by certain individuals.”

Facebook post by Timur Gareyev, 4 July 2023 (link)

We invite anyone who wishes to come forward with new or relevant information to contact us by email (contact@https://lichess.org). If you have been affected by any of the issues in this article, please see the following links for information and support: BBC / RAINN / Helping Survivors. For those who wish to read more, a supplementary timeline of relevant events is provided below.

Notes

[1] Shahade’s prolonged absence from STLCC broadcasts has not gone unnoticed. For example, in a 16 February article for Chess.com, Peter Doggers wrote “Why we haven’t seen Shahade in the St. Louis live broadcasts was revealed today.”

Supplementary timeline

Dates in this timeline indicate when events and alleged incidents occurred, not when they were reported. Sources in parentheses are listed at the end.

2011

A woman alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Alejandro Ramirez at a chess camp in 2011, when she was 15 years old. (WSJ)
Jennifer Shahade alleges that she was assaulted by Ramirez for the first time in 2011. (Lichess)

2012

In November, Ramirez was a coach with the US delegation for the World Youth Championships in Maribor, Slovenia. While there, he published three articles for the US Chess website: "Arriving in Maribor" (which isn't currently accessible), "Clutch Preparation" (also not currently accessible), and "A Coach’s Perspective".
In October 2012, Alejandro Ramirez did his first stint as grandmaster-in-residence for STLCC, recording the first of many “Grandmaster Lectures”, which is no longer listed on the club’s YouTube channel. (Lichess)

2014

Jennifer Shahade alleges that Ramirez assaulted her for a second time in 2014.
Claire Grothe alleges that in 2014 she was assaulted by Ramirez at a reception organized by STLCC, and that the incident (and Ramirez’s response to it) led to her leaving her job at the World Chess Hall of Fame later that year. (WSJ)

2015

A woman who was underage at the time alleges that Ramirez encouraged her to drink alcohol, attempted to have sex with her, and initiated oral sex without her consent. (WSJ)
In September, Ramirez was named the coach of the Saint Louis University Chess Club, a program funded by STLCC.
In October, Ramirez was a coach with the US delegation (with 130 players) at the 2015 World Youth Championships in Greece. While there, he published three articles for the US Chess website: "Dragons on the Beach" (which is not currently accessible, but was accessible in October 2022), "Alejandro On The Race For Medals In Greece" (also not currently accessible), and "Four Medals in Greece".

2016

A woman alleges that in 2016, when she was underage, she was warned by STLCC employees to not allow herself to be alone with Ramirez. (WSJ)

2017

A young player’s mother says that in 2017 she alerted top US Chess officials to Ramirez’s behavior, and overheard STLCC staff make jokes about his interest in young women. (WSJ)

2019

Ramirez was hired to coach the U.S. women’s team at the 2019 World Team Championship; the team included two players aged under 16. (CL)
Chess.com decided to stop all association with Ramirez after learning of allegations against him. (WSJ)
A woman alleges that in 2019 she was sexually assaulted by Timur Gareyev while walking to her car from a hotel where a US Chess sanctioned tournament is taking place (in which Gareyev was playing). She submitted a complaint to US Chess shortly afterwards. The US Chess ethics committee declined to accept jurisdiction of the matter, as the alleged incident had occurred outside the hotel, and therefore (in the committee’s view) it could not be “directly connected” to the chess tournament. No action was taken against Gareyev. (Lichess)
Another woman alleges that at a different US Chess sponsored tournament in 2019, Gareyev grabbed her and kissed her against her will. (Lichess)

2020

Jennifer Shahade says she first learned about allegations of sexual misconduct by Ramirez against victims other than herself in the summer of 2020. She immediately informed US Chess and the STLCC. (Lichess)
US Chess have stated that they received reports of Ramirez’s behavior for the first time in 2020, and that as a result, they banned him from working with children. (US2)
In summer 2020, Ramirez worked as a children's coach at the online “National Chess Camp”, run by a US Chess affiliate (announcement).
In October, Ramirez was named as a commentator for the U.S. Junior Girls Championship. Jennifer Shahade complained to STLCC – which, according to the club, was the first time that they received a report about Ramirez. Shahade informed STLCC that she too was assaulted by Ramirez – in addition to the allegations she previously reported in the summer. She was advised to speak to Ramirez and resolve the issue herself; she spoke to Ramirez, who agreed to step down from his commentary role for the event. (WSJ, Lichess)
According to STLCC, “in October 2020, Shahade brought an allegation that Ramirez “had engaged in inappropriate behavior with female chess players” years before being employed there. However, the [club] said it was unable to initiate an investigation into Ramirez due to the individuals not being identified.” (CNN)

2021

In January 2021, Jennifer Shahade informed STLCC and US Chess of a case involving an alleged victim (of Ramirez) who said she was 15 years old at the time of the first alleged incident. She urged US Chess and STLCC to act against Ramirez. (Lichess)
In 2021, US Chess received reports of Timur Gareyev inappropriately touching a female player at a tournament where they were both playing. (Lichess)
At a different tournament, a senior US Chess official was asked to escort the woman who was allegedly assaulted by Gareyev in 2019 around the tournament hall as protection in case Gareyev appeared. (Lichess)
In August, Ramirez was hired by STLCC as a commentator for two tournaments: the Sinquefield Cup and the Saint Louis Rapid and Blitz.
In September, Greg Shahade – Jennifer’s brother and a well-known chess professional in his own right – contacted STLCC to inform the club of allegations about Ramirez’s behavior with an underage girl, but received a reply from an STLCC lawyer advising him that the club was not the appropriate body for investigating the matter and that the allegation itself was not connected to the club. No meeting happened. (PD, Lichess)
The same month, Ramirez was hired to work as a commentator for the 2021 Champions Showdown.

2022

Multiple complaints about Gareyev were submitted under the US Chess Safe Play Guidelines. One complainant had previously filed a report in 2019 – before the US Chess Safe Play Guidelines were published – but, as described above, the US Chess ethics committee determined it to be outside its jurisdiction. (Lichess)
In June, the US Chess Executive Board imposed sanctions on Gareyev – suspending his membership for one year and banning him from attending or participating in US Chess National Events for two years. In notifying a complainant about the sanctions, US Chess stated that they considered the matter to be confidential and asked the complainant to “handle this information with the sensitivity it deserves.” (Lichess)
In June, after learning of Ramirez’s appointment as coach for the US women’s Olympiad team, Jennifer Shahade emailed US Chess officials. She informed them that Ramirez had attacked her in the past, and that she was in contact with an alleged victim (who she had raised previously with US Chess) who was willing to share text messages sent by Ramirez at the time of the alleged abuse. She also told them about the existence of other credible allegations against Ramirez. (Lichess)
In response, US Chess informed Shahade that their ban on Ramirez applied to youth events only, the Olympiad coaches were selected by the players themselves, and that no official complaints had been received about Ramirez. (Lichess)
On 2 June, Ramirez was announced as the coach for the US women's team at the 2022 Chess Olympiad in Chennai, India. He went on on take his US Chess funded position at the tournament, which ran from 28 July to 10 August.
In September, Ramirez worked for STLCC as a commentator for the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. He conducted a notable interview with Hans Niemann.
The same month, Jennifer Shahade, and another unnamed player – who was underage at the start of a series of alleged abusive incidents – submitted written complaints about Ramirez to US Chess and STLCC. (WSJ, PD, Lichess)
On 7 September, the ChessRumors account tweeted: “GM Timur Garyev's USCF page says that he is suspended. Does anyone know why?” (No one knew.)
Meanwhile, Ramirez appeared on the US Chess podcast One Move at a Time.
In December, Ramirez appeared at a World Chess Hall of Fame ceremony honoring Judit Polgar, receiving a round of applause and posing for a photo with a US Chess board member. All members of the US Chess executive board attended the ceremony. (Lichess)

2023

Ramirez traveled with the St. Louis University women's chess team to Mexico and was seen with team members in social media photos. He then accompanied the team to the Pan-American Championships, a US Chess National Event. (Lichess)
In early February, Ramirez finalized plans to work as a commentator for the 2023 Grand Chess Tour, a series of high-profile international chess events spanning the year. (Lichess)
On 15 February, Jennifer Shahade tweeted her allegations against Ramirez, which became public knowledge for the first time. Within a week, Shahade was contacted by nine more alleged victims. (JS, Lichess)
The same day, US Chess published a short statement (US1) lauding "due process" and "confidentiality". Shahade says that she perceived the statement to be implicitly criticizing her decision to tweet. (Lichess)
Lichess has been told that Ramirez was immediately removed from a team match due to start later that week, with a roster including two teenage girls. (Lichess)
On 16 February, Ramirez was removed from coaching the St. Louis University chess team and also from FIDE’s Athletes’ Commission. (WSJ)
On 6 March, Ramirez resigned from all affiliated positions with STLCC, including his position as coach of the St. Louis University chess team.
On 7 March, the Wall Street Journal article about Ramirez was published. (WSJ)
On 9 March, US Chess published their second statement (US2) about Ramirez.
On 10 March, CNN published an article about the Ramirez allegations, which included new statements provided by US Chess and STLCC. (CNN)
On 11 March, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about Ramirez was published. (PD)
On 22 April, Gareyev gave a 14-board blindfold simul alongside the FIDE World Championship match in Astana, Kazakhstan.
On 24 May, US Chess published their third (“final”) statement (US3) about Ramirez, whose membership is permanently revoked. In the statement, US Chess committed to reviewing and extending its Safe Play guidelines; reviewing internal policies such as coach selection, employment practices and background screening; adopting mandatory Safe Play training; improving Safe Play communications; appointing an advisory group; and increasing members’ awareness of reporting channels.
On 29 May, Gareyev gave a tandem simul at Rockville Chess Club, in Maryland.
On 23 June, US Chess published information about previously sanctioned members on their website, in the process disclosing basic details about Gareyev’s sanctions.
On 4 July, Gareyev posted a message on Facebook in which he claimed to be facing “a tremendous challenge set by US Chess” as well as an “attack on [his] identity and reputation” that he characterized as “badmouth and gossip promoted by certain individuals.”
On 11 July, Jennifer Shahade publicly challenged the accuracy of US Chess’ final Ramirez statement (issued 24 May) in a Facebook post, writing that the third party's (*) conclusion that US Chess' response to the Ramirez allegations was timely and appropriate “doesn’t dovetail with my records, in which I notified US Chess at least four times about Alejandro’s alleged misconduct against girls and women [...] including his assaults against me…and pleaded they not send him there.” The next day, she posted a similar message on Twitter. (* This entry originally referred to "US Chess' conclusion...." Since publication this has been amended to "third party's conclusion..." to clarify the intended meaning and avoid possible misinterpretation.)
On 20 July, IA Judit Sztaray announced on Twitter that all four women on the US Chess Accessibility and Special Circumstances Committee (including Sztaray) had resigned their positions in June in protest at the actions of US Chess, including its failure to seriously consider “suggestions to remedy sexual assault within its ranks.”
On 9 August, US Chess announced that it had partnered with the U.S. Center for SafeSport and was introducing a requirement from 1 October 2023 onwards for all US Chess certified tournament directors to complete the center’s authorized core training (with annual refresher training required thereafter). The announcement acknowledged that “Recent safe play violations have highlighted the ongoing need for education and awareness about providing a safe environment for all chess players.”

Sources for timeline

CL: Elshan Moradiabadi, “U.S. World Teams Exceed Expectations”, Chess Life, June 2019, pp. 38-43.

CNN: David Close, “US Chess Federation investigates grandmaster following accusations of sexual misconduct”, CNN.com, 10 March 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/09/sport/alejandro-ramirez-chess-grandmaster-sexual-misconduct-allegations/index.html

Lichess: our own reporting

PD: Nassim Benchaabane, “At least 3 more women accuse St. Louis chess coach of sexual assault”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11 March 2023, https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/at-least-3-more-women-accuse-st-louis-chess-coach-of-sexual-assault/article_a5596f5a-75c8-5f54-b4cd-8973848e8e39.html.

US1: US Chess, “US Chess Statement on Recent Allegations”, 15 February 2023, https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-statement-recent-allegations.

US2: US Chess, “US Chess Statement on Misconduct Allegations”, 9 March 2023, https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-statement-misconduct-allegations.

US3: US Chess, “US Chess Final Statement About Alejandro Ramirez Investigation”, 24 May 2023, https://new.uschess.org/news/us-chess-final-statement-about-alejandro-ramirez-investigation.

WSJ: Andrew Beaton and Joshua Robinson, “How Sexual Assault Allegations Against a U.S. Chess Grandmaster Went Unaddressed for Years” Wall Street Journal, 7 March 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/alejandro-ramirez-jennifer-shahade-chess-allegations-622263b8.

Ju Wenjun is Womens World Champion

2023-07-22T00:00:00.000+03:00

GM Ju Wenjun is Women's World Champion for the fourth time.

In the end, the Women’s World Championship was a tale of two halves. In the first half of the match, held in Shanghai, the challenger Lei Tingjie looked untouchable, giving virtually no chances for the defending champion Ju Wenjun and taking a one-game lead.

But when the match moved to Chongqing for the second half, Ju found another gear, using deft positional maneuvering to cause problems for the challenger. She evened the score in game eight and struck again in game 12 to avoid a rapid playoff and claim the title for the fourth time.

With the White pieces in game 12, some expected Ju to play it safe, force a draw, and take her chances in the rapid tiebreaker. But when she opted for the Colle System it was clear that she wanted to end the match immediately. The Colle is somewhat restrained compared to d4 mainlines, but that’s what makes it dangerous: Ju was aiming for a complex position where she could outplay her opponent and she was willing to risk a loss to do so.

The move reflected a change in opening strategy that was partly responsible for Ju’s turnaround in the second half of the match. In the first half, she tried to challenge Lei’s repertoire more directly, but could not find any chinks in the armor. In the second half, Ju was less interested in getting an advantage out of the opening, and instead aimed for complex positions where she could use her strategic understanding to outmaneuver her opponent. This proved to be more fruitful, as she also had success with a quiet variation with 1. Nf3 and 2. e3 in her win in game eight.

In game twelve, the opening led to a highly imbalanced position where White had two passed queenside pawns against Black’s central pawn mass. Objectively the position was about equal, but Ju had clearly studied the resulting middlegames in advance and was hoping to use that knowledge to outplay her opponent.

https://lichess.org/study/PQR8Cvut/6Q4HQYQd#0

Lei may have been taken somewhat by surprise, as she took some time in the opening to decide on her plan. Nonetheless, she continued playing good moves and the game remained roughly balanced. Lei went for a knight incursion on the queenside that the engine thought White could have profitably ignored, but Ju reacted with an exchange. If anything, it seemed like Lei had absorbed the opening surprise and was even gaining the upper hand.

But on move 22 she went for a disastrously misjudged pawn exchange, breaking her central pawn chain to win a White pawn that was already isolated and weak. This single mistake was all it took to decide the world championship, as Ju took the advantage and ran with it. With Black’s central pawns broken up, Ju was able to establish her knights in the center of the board.

For the rest of the game Ju’s technique was impeccable. She slowly improved her position step by step, never giving Lei a glimmer of hope. Finally, the knights escorted her passed d-pawn down the board to make a new queen, forcing Lei’s resignation.

In the post-game press conference the players remained true to the personalities they displayed throughout the match, Lei mercurial and engaging, Ju reserved and professional. If you watched with the sound off, you probably would have thought it was Lei who had won. Even after claiming such a hard-fought championship, Ju did not permit herself to smile. In contrast, Lei breathed a few sighs of regret, but also found moments to smile and laugh.

GM Lei Tingjie (Photo: FIDE, Stev Bonhag)

For Lei it was a heartbreaking end to the match, losing in the final game. Nonetheless, she certainly gained fans the world over with her dynamic, resourceful play, and her expressive personality on and off the board. At only 26 years old, it would be no surprise to see her compete for more world championships.

Meanwhile, Ju Wenjun showed once again why she is such a deserving world champion. This match marks the fourth time she has won or defended the title. It was not smooth sailing – far from it, as Lei looked untouchable in the first half, and Ju was playing from behind for much of the match.

Nonetheless, she never lost her composure, and in the second half of the match found new ways to pressure her younger opponent. When asked what she learned from the match, Lei gave credit to her opponent:

“How can you control yourself under such pressure? I learned some spirit from my opponent. Fight for every game and fight until the end.”

Women's World Chess Championship: Half way done

2023-07-12T00:00:00.000+03:00

(Photo: Stev Bonhage, FIDE)

Ju Wenjun stared at her position, a bishop-down endgame, for several seconds before extending her hand in resignation. Normally at this level of chess she would have resigned several moves earlier, but Ju seemed reluctant to concede the game in a match where wins have been exceedingly hard to come by.

So far the 2023 FIDE Women’s World Championship has been a gritty struggle with good defense stymying good offense, the only exception a brilliant victory in game five by the challenger Lei Tingjie. With the other games all drawn, that gives Lei a narrow lead of a single point heading into the midway point of the 12-game match.

The Players

Ju Wenjun is the reigning Women’s World Champion. She claimed the title in 2018 by defeating her compatriot Tan Zhongyi. She had little time to rest on her laurels, as she had to defend her title in a 64–player knockout tournament still in 2018. Remarkably, Ju cut through the field to remain the World Champion. In 2020 she successfully defended her title again against Russian grandmaster Aleksandra Goryachkina.

For the challenger Lei Tingjie, this is her first World Championship match, but she’s not without accolades. She won the 2021 Women’s Grand Swiss ahead of many of the top players, as well as the Chinese Women’s Masters Tournament in 2017. And of course she won the Candidates Tournament to gain the right to challenge Ju for the World Championship.

In some ways, the players are similar. Both hail from China, of course, and their ratings are separated by only ten points (2564 for Ju vs. 2554 for Lei). If there is one factor separating the two, it is perhaps World Championship experience; at 26, six years her opponent’s junior, Lei hasn’t yet competed on the absolute highest stage, while Ju has already defended her title successfully multiple times.

While they are very close in terms of rating, they are strikingly different in terms of their board presence. Lei wears her heart on her sleeve, smiling or grimacing depending on how she feels about her position, and even looking up at the ceiling a la Beth Harmon. In contrast, Ju maintains a reserved, businesslike demeanor regardless of what’s happening on the board.

The Match

The 12-game match is being held in China, the first six games in Shanghai and the latter six in Chongqing. The two cities are the birthplaces of Ju and Lei respectively. The first player to 6.5 points is the winner. In the event that the score is tied after the 12 classical games, the title will be decided by rapid and then blitz games. The prize fund for the match is €500,000, with €300,000 going to the winner and €200,000 to the runner-up.

The two combatants appear to be on good terms, as they struggled to maintain straight faces for an intense photo op before dissolving in laughter. This is perhaps a sign of the camaraderie of the Chinese players, which Hou Yifan has cited as a reason for China’s dominance in women’s chess. If Lei wins she will be the fourth consecutive Chinese woman to sit the throne (Hou held the title before Tan Zhongyi).

The tension is palpable between these fierce rivals. pic.twitter.com/tWd3IGELRH
— David Llada ♞ (@davidllada) July 1, 2023

Still, there can only be one World Champion, and both women have invested a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get to this stage. Once the clock starts, there are no friends on the chessboard!

As is often the case in a World Championship, the match began with a feeling out period. The first two games resulted in two fairly quiet draws as both players got their bearings.

In game 3, Ju had the first big chance of the match, when with the Black pieces she capitalized on an opening inaccuracy by Lei to win a pawn. Nonetheless, Lei kept her cool, and Ju struggled to find a way to press her advantage. She decided to return the pawn and the game fizzled out to a draw.

In game 4, Lei chose a combative opening with the Black pieces, but it was again Ju who was pressing for the win. She found one way after another to extend the game and keep up the pressure, but Lei was up to the task defensively and held on for a hard fought draw.

Finally, Lei drew first blood in game 5 with a masterful positional performance. She switched from the Ruy Lopez, which she had used in her first two White games, to the Italian Game. The two openings are structurally similar, but the Italian is somewhat less forcing; players sometimes choose it when they want to defer the struggle from the opening to the middlegame.

Lei gained the upper hand when Ju went for an ill-advised pawn advance that created weaknesses in her own camp. She was hoping to make up for it with active piece play, but the long-term weaknesses would come back to haunt her. Lei built up her advantage with a series of deft maneuvers. Ju landed in a miserable endgame where she had no active plan, but just had to wait and defend as Lei probed her position. As is often the case in such a situation, the defender eventually cracked. Lei chose just the right moment to pounce with a pawn break. She transposed into a winning endgame and claimed the full point. Overall, it was a virtuoso performance where Lei never put a foot wrong.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/usrO0sLL/7pzWCeDO

There is one school of thought that says when you lose a game you should first make a draw in the next game to regain your equilibrium before pressing to regain the point. Perhaps thinking along these lines, Ju went for a very safe choice in game 6, going for a position with a symmetrical pawn structure where her only potential advantage was the bishop pair. This did not appear to bother Lei, who quickly and confidently activated her pieces, soon forcing the trade of one of the bishops and cruising to a draw.

Following game six, the second half of the match will move to Lei’s birthplace of Chongqing. The change of scene is unlikely to make a big impact though as both players are well familiar with both cities. The bigger issue for Ju is figuring out a way to overcome her one point deficit. So far, she has not been able to make much of a dent in Lei’s opening preparation. Both players have been very consistent with their choice of first move with White: Ju has opened every game with 1. d4, while Lei has started all her games with 1. e4. We’ll see if either player has any opening surprises in store for the second half.

If playing in her first World Championship Match occasioned any nerves, Lei has not shown any sign of it. She’s hardly made a mistake in the first six games. She may begin to feel some jitters, though, as the possibility of becoming World Champion gets closer to becoming a reality.

For her part, the defending champion Ju will have to reach into her bag of tricks to find a way to even the match. She may need to get more risky and enterprising with her opening choices, because so far she has not been able to pose many problems against a poised and well-prepared challenger.

For as well as she’s played, Lei is still only up one point. As the match enters its second half, a single game – even a single move – could change everything.

Andreikin wins the Uralsk Qualifier!

2023-07-04T00:00:00.000+03:00

Andreikin, along with Galaktionov, Sviridov, Sevgi, will play in the second stage of the Kazakhstan Cup, expenses covered!

As mentioned in our introductory blog, the Uralsk Open (second event of the Kazakhstan Cup) decided to grant an invitation to four players, selected by a series of events held on Lichess. The first stage was divided into twelve blitz arenas which took place in a week, with starting times staggered over 24 hours, to allow for participation across the world. More than 175k games were played in this stage, many of which were already of a very high level: several strong titled players joined the event, along with over 35,000 total players! The fight for the top 20 was intense, and several strong titled players were forced to play more than one tournament to qualify for the second stage.

@Aqua_Blazing (Valery Sviridov, possibly the strongest non-FIDE titled player in the world) convincingly won, undefeated, the Swiss portion with 9/11, half a point ahead of a group of 6 tied players.

(By the way, from the 704 games played we extracted 9 instructive positions of various levels and situations: have fun with Howard!)

https://lichess.org/study/embed/PM0Decm6/Ogvn6ajG

The clash for the invites took place in a round-robin format: 7 strong rapid players, led by the aforementioned Sviridov (untitled but with 2550 Fide Standard) and by GMs Ponkratov and Moroni, faced the Super GM Dmitry Andreikin: World Junior Champion in 2010, two-times Russian national champion, and the winner of a match against current World Champion Ding Liren in 2019.

None of the players managed to end the stage undefeated, and the general tone of the tournament was well represented by the round 5 game Volkan - Andreikin: a hand-to-hand combat with both kings exposed! This game didn’t prevent Andreikin from winning solo, while it was probably decisive in granting Volkan the qualification.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/KxRgMnsp/ztEqcbXP

The organization of this tournament was more ambitious than the previous edition, but we are happy to call it a complete success! Thanks to the Kazakhstan Chess Federation for their cooperation and generous patronage, and to everybody in the Lichess team who was involved!

If you are an organizer and would like to do something similar, do not hesitate to contact us!

Your (second) chance to qualify to the Kazakhstan Cup, costs covered – with a $50,000 prize fund!

2023-06-10T00:00:00.000+03:00

A $2,000 prize fund event - with the winner qualifying to Uralsk Open

Cover photo: Ilyuza Mingazova

Starting 22 July, Uralsk in western Kazakhstan will host a nine-round classical open tournament with a whopping $50,000 prize fund up for grabs.

Four lucky players can qualify through a series of tournaments held only on Lichess. They will have their flights, full board, and accommodation in Uralsk covered for them by the Kazakhstan Chess Federation – as well as a share of a $2,000 prize fund for the online qualifier.

The Lichess qualifier will have three stages. The first will comprise twelve open-entry arena tournaments, aimed especially towards the timezones of North and South America, Europe, and Central Asia / India.

The top 20 players from each arena will then play a single 11-round Swiss tournament, where they may be joined by up to ten wildcard players.

Finally, the top seven finishers from the Swiss tournament will be joined by a wildcard player, and the qualifiers will be determined by single-encounter Round Robin Tournament.

Everyone who makes it to the knockout stage will receive a share of a $2,000 prize fund.

Prize fund

1st – $400 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Uralsk Open, with a ~$50,000 total prize fund on offer (around $10,000 to first place).
2nd – $350 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Uralsk Open
3rd – $300 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Uralsk Open
4th – $250 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Uralsk Open
5th to 8th – $175 each

Schedule and regulations

Twelve first-stage arenas will be held online. Each arena will be two hours long, with a time control of 3+0. Berserk will be allowed. The top 20 players from each arena will qualify to the second stage. Players may enter multiple arenas as long as they have not already qualified.

In the second stage, a single Swiss tournament will be held for at least 240 players. This will be an 11-round tournament with a time control of 5+2. The top seven players from the tournament will qualify for the third stage.

Swiss Qualifier: Sunday 18 June, 14:00 UTC

A single encounter Round Robin tournament for the top seven players from the Swiss tournament, plus a Lichess wildcard. The time control will be 10+2

Round Robin Stage: Saturday 24 June, 14:00 UTC

If you would like to be considered for a wildcard spot for either the Swiss or knockout stages, please complete this online form. Wildcards will be decided based on a combination of factors, including age, rating, and current playing opportunities. All wildcard decisions are final and made solely at the discretion of Lichess.

About the Kazakhstan Cup

The tournament held in Uralsk will be a nine-round event with a time control of 90+30.

Thrilling final sends Savchenko flying to Aktobe for the $50,000 Kazakhstan Cup

2023-06-06T00:00:00.000+03:00

Winning the Lichess qualifiers he will play with full expenses covered in the $50,000 Aktobe Open tournament in Kazakhstan

As mentioned in our previous blog, the Aktobe Open (part of the Kazakhstan Cup) decided to grant an invitation to the winner of a series of events held on Lichess. The first stage was staggered over 24 hours into three blitz arenas, to allow for participation across the world. Participation in each arena had excellent turnout, with over 15,000 total players entering. Among them, several strong titled players joined the event, which led to many high-level games already in the first stage of the qualifiers!

The Swiss portion of the event featured 41 players among qualified and wild cards, while putting up for grabs seven spots of the KO section. For the eighth spot, Lichess invited Pavel Eljanov as a wildcard, the current world #33 and consistently FIDE-rated 2700+ for several years. Savchenko concluded the Swiss in 10th place, but clinched a qualification spot to the final Knockout bracket after a last minute withdrawal.

To aid Lichess’s stringent Fair Play requirements, the knockout tournament – which was the 3rd and final stage of the qualifiers – required not just live monitoring of the games by moderators, but also connecting to a Zoom call with arbiters for all players. In the Swiss stage, this had been required from untitled or lesser known players.

In the top side of the bracket, GM Boris Savchenko beat IM Jakub Pulpan and then GM Pavel Eljanov smoothly. On the other side, IM Siva Mahadevan engaged in an edgy battle against IM Nikoloz Petriashvili, resolved only in an Armageddon tiebreaker. Meanwhile, Croatian wunderkid GM Leon Livaic waltzed past GM Maxim Dlugy in straight sets. In the semifinals, Siva confirmed to be a tenacious player – forcing his opponent, Leon Livaic, to the Armageddon stage again.

The final was resolved by two rapid games with a score of 1.5-0.5 in favor of Savchenko, with both players showing their love of chess by analyzing their game for several minutes in the Zoom call afterwards and congratulating each other. A very lovely sign of sportsmanship, from two players who clearly had a lot of respect for each other.

The organization of this tournament was intense, but we are happy to call it a complete success! Thanks to the Kazakhstan chess federation for their cooperation and generous patronage and to everybody in the Lichess team who was involved!

If you are an organizer and would like to do something similar, do not hesitate to contact us!

Your chance to qualify to the Kazakhstan Cup, costs covered – with a $50,000 prize fund!

2023-05-23T00:00:00.000+03:00

A $2,000 prize fund event - with the winner qualifying to the Vladimir Dvorkovich Memorial, Aktobe Open

Starting 17 June, the riverside city of Aktobe in western Kazakhstan will host a nine-round classical open tournament with a whopping $50,000 prize fund up for grabs.

One lucky player can qualify through a series of tournaments held only on Lichess. They will have their flights, full board, and accommodation in Aktobe covered for them – as well as a share of a $2,000 prize fund for the online qualifier.

The Lichess qualifier will have three stages. The first will comprise three open-entry arena tournaments, aimed especially towards the timezones of North and South America, Europe, and Central Asia / India.

The top 15 players from each arena will then play a single 11-round Swiss tournament, where they may be joined by up to five wildcard players.

Finally, the top seven finishers from the Swiss tournament will be joined by a wildcard player, and the qualifier will be determined by single-elimination knockout rapid matches.

Everyone who makes it to the knockout stage will receive a share of a $2,000 prize fund.

Prize fund

The Kazakhstan Chess Federation has contributed $2,000 towards the online prize fund, a share of which will be awarded to everyone who qualifies to the knockout stage of the qualifier, broken down as follows:

1st – $500 and flights, full board and accommodation to the Aktobe Open, with a ~$50,000 total prize fund on offer (around $10,000 to first place).
2nd – $500
3rd and 4th – $250 each
5th to 8th – $125 each

Schedule and regulations

Three first-stage arenas will be held online. Each arena will be two hours long, with a time control of 3+2. Berserk will be allowed. The top 15 players from each arena will qualify to the second stage. Players may enter multiple arenas as long as they have not already qualified.

In the second stage, a single Swiss tournament will be held for at least 45 players. This will be an 11-round tournament with a time control of 5+3. The top seven players from the tournament will qualify for the third (knockout) stage.

Swiss Qualifier: Saturday 27 May, 14:00 UTC

A single-elimination knockout tournament will be held for the top seven players from the Swiss tournament, plus a Lichess wildcard. The format will be two 15+10 rapid games (one with White, one with Black), with two 5+3 blitz games as tie breaks if necessary, and a final tie break of a 5 / 4 Armageddon game.

Knockout Stage: Sunday 28 May, 14:00 UTC

All players in the knockout stage will be required to join an online call with FIDE arbiters. Lichess also reserves the right to ask for this at earlier stages.
Interested players should read the full regulations carefully. All qualifier participants will be assumed to have consented to the regulations, which can be found here.

About the Kazakhstan Cup

The tournament held in Aktobe will be a nine-round event with a time control of 90+30. The full regulations for that event are available in Russian here.

(Title image - The Astana Times)

World Chess Championship 2023: Reactions, Statistics, and Impressions

2023-05-12T00:00:00.000+03:00

A look back at the 2023 Chess World Championship

It’s been just under a week since Liren Ding became the (undisputed) 17th Chess World Champion, in a spectacular victory over Ian Nepomniachtchi. In the fourth and final rapid tiebreak, Ding, playing with the black pieces, declined a repetition and instead played the iconic 46… Rg6!?, dubbed by Magnus Carlsen as a “self-pin for immortality”.

The move took much of the chess community by surprise – seemingly including Nepomniachtchi – who widely assumed Ding would repeat the position. There was some speculation that Nepomniachtchi had not even considered Ding would play the move.

In cinematic scenes, Nepomniachtchi’s shock was clear as a few moves later he fumbled and knocked over chess pieces before offering Ding his resignation. Ding’s relief was clear as he immediately slumped over the board, hiding his face as the moment sank in – before in shock shaking Nepomniachtchi’s hand again.

Despite Ian Nepomniachtchi's best efforts, he fell short of his ultimate goal. However, his many qualities - including innate skill, erudition, creativity, unconventionality, and daringness - make him an inspiring player who has captured the hearts of many. He will be back. pic.twitter.com/F2grulX5hp
— Olimpiu Di Luppi (@olimpiuurcan) May 2, 2023

Ding did not qualify for the 2022 Candidates, and it was pure luck he ended up playing it. Sergei Karjakin’s vocal support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in a six month ban from FIDE events, and therefore his removal from the 2022 Candidates Tournament. Ding took Karjakin’s place, and after a rocky start finished in second place – a strong result, but not good enough to play the World Championship, where only first place becomes the Challenger.

However, fortune again favored Ding as the 16th World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, announced his abdication from the Classical title. As a result, Ding, as the second placed finisher in the 2022 Candidates, qualified to play the Challenger – Ian Nepomniachtchi – to determine the new World Champion.

Prior to the match, Ding had been considered to be somewhat of an underdog – although least so by the Lichess Mastodon community who thought the match up was pretty equal (clearly showing the supremacy of FOSS communities :P).

Although historically very stable and consistent, his 2020 Candidates results were shaky – and his form seemed to clearly decline following a period of inactivity during the Covid pandemic. A poor performance in 2023’s Tata Steel at Wijk aan Zee made many suggest he was underprepared and had lost his historical consistency.

Ding later shared that he only began preparing for the World Championship following Tata Steel – a very short period of time to prepare at the elite level – and chose Richard Rapport as his second after playing some games against him online. Rapport joined Wei Yi, a friend and long-time collaborator with Ding who had been providing remote seconding support.

At the start of the World Championship, Ding was frank about his anxiety, depression, and fears he felt, causing him to freeze up in Game 2. He later shared that had he lost the World Championship, he was considering retiring from chess – such was the pressure he felt.

Despite this internal psychological battle, Ding fought back tenaciously over the board – apparently inspired by the philosophy of Camus (“if you can’t win, you have to resist”). Tragedy struck again midway through the tournament, as his online preparation games against Richard Rapport were allegedly discovered – an oversight that never would have happened had unrated games been played instead. Ding highlighted that whilst he initially did not feel worried about it, he later realised “it left them with no real ideas, so they had to come up with new ones” mid-tournament.

It is difficult to overstate how catastrophic revealing prep can be, especially midway through a critical tournament. Nepomniachtchi’s team included Kramnik, Tomashevsky, and Matlakov – a formidable and experienced team who undoubtedly pored over the opening ideas and quickly found ways to rebuff them.

As a result, Ding moved out of prep quickly and played offbeat openings to avoid Nepomniachtchi’s deep preparation. By the end of the match, Ding had adapted and begun finding safe counters to Nepomniachtchi’s Ruy Lopez, and in a Hollywood ending, showed unbelievable mental resilience and fortitude to overcome his struggles and win the World Championship title.

A similar analogy in another sport for the impressive nature of what Ding overcame and the struggles he pushed through – are similar, perhaps, to beating Nadal on clay for the Roland Garros final, while playing with a loose racquet and a sprained ankle.

Exclusively for Lichess, GMs David Navara and Harikrishna Pentala gave detailed thoughts and annotations of every single classical game. Missed it at the time? The full link will always be available here.

The games were not played as accurately as previous World Championships:

The boxes show the average range of accuracy, with the dates corresponding to the World Championship played that year. The diamonds aligned vertically show the outliers at both extremes.

Some of that is undoubtedly due to unusually inaccurate play, with nerves affecting both players. But equally, both were willing to play inaccurately to force their opponent into complex positions that had a chain of single moves to maintain or keep the advantage. While these are inaccuracies at the engine level, tactically they can provoke greater errors from an opponent if they cannot find the only good line in a very pressured scenario. Equally, Ding avoided deeply analyzed openings, taking advantage of oversights in Nepomniachtchi’s preparation – for example Ding scored 2 / 2 with white in the London and Colle systems – openings that an engine with an opening book will not be impressed by.

Ultimately, Ding’s calculation and raw chess intuition was stronger than Nepomniachtchi, who also succumbed to blitzing out questionable moves in complex positions. This was highlighted by us in our preview article as a historic weakness of Nepomniachtchi, having now cost him several high-stakes games.

The chess community, including former World Champions, were quick to praise Ding with Magnus Carlsen, Viswanathan Anand, and Garry Kasparov tweeting congratulations:

Self-pinning for immortality. Congrats Ding!! https://t.co/pswA5g6bz9
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) April 30, 2023

Congratulations to Ding Liren, the first Chinese World Champion! @FIDE_chess #NepoDing
— Viswanathan Anand (@vishy64theking) April 30, 2023

First off, congratulations to Ding Liren on his victory. Welcome to our very, very small club! 2/8
— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) May 1, 2023

The international media also quickly wrote about the match's dramatic conclusion, with very interesting interviews from the players coming particularly from Leontxo Garcia of El Pais, and Sean Ingle of The Guardian.

My interview with Ding, in English. What a fascinating champion! https://t.co/lkHiPFNHuz #Chess #NepoDing
— Leontxo García (@leontxogarcia) May 2, 2023

Spoke to Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi about their epic world chess title match. Ding exhausted. Nepo on great form - but revealed how he'd not slept all night before tie-breaks as his sleeping pills were taken. Will tweet a few more chess bits below
https://t.co/1B4dndjqFu
— Sean Ingle (@seaningle) May 2, 2023

While the match was broadcast on CCTV (China Central Television), the media attention and social media interest was surprisingly muted - despite China currently having both the Open and Women's World Champion in chess. This is an unusual achievement, last occurring with undisputed World Champions in 1991 with two players from the USSR: Maia Chiburdanidze and Garry Kasparov (Antoaneta Stefanova and Veselin Topalov also achieved this for Bulgaria in 2005, but this was during the FIDE/PCA split).

However, crowns are heavy – and from early interviews it seems Ding is a philosopher king – aware of his responsibilities and role as an ambassador for chess to the world. It is surely only a matter of time until China understands the possibility they have open to them, with Ding and with chess.

Photo credits FIDE / Stev Bonhage / Anna Shtourman

Titled Arena Announcement(s)

2023-05-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

Announcing our schedule for upcoming Titled Arenas!

We're pleased to announce the schedule for our upcoming Titled Arenas!

All events will be preceded by a warm-up arena open to all players with a minimum of 20 rated games in the relevant time control (excluding 960 warm-up, where the minimum rated games are 10).

Prizes unless otherwise stated:

1. $ 500, 2. $ 250, 3. $ 125, 4. $ 75, 5. $ 50.

Participation requirement: Verified FIDE or NM title (see below)

markdown
| Event              | Date             | Link                                             | Warm-up                                            |
| ------------------ | ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------- |
| May 2023 Blitz TA  | 6th May 2023     | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/may23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/may23bua) |
| May 2023 TA        | 20th May 2023    | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/may23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/may23wua) |
| June 2023 Blitz TA | 3rd June 2023    | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/jun23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/jun23bua) |
| June 2023 TA       | 10th June 2023   | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/jun23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/jun23wua) |
| July 2023 Blitz TA | 1st July 2023    | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/jul23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/jul23bua) |
| July 2023 TA       | 15th July 2023   | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/jul23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/jul23wua) |
| August 2023 960 TA | 5th August 2023  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/960aug23) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/96waug23) |
| August 2023 TA     | 19th August 2023 | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/aug23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/aug23wua) |

Practical Information

Title Verification

Streaming

World Chess Championship: Game 14 and Tiebreaks

2023-05-01T00:00:00.000+03:00

Ding Liren is the 17th Chess World Champion: “this match was the deepest reflection of my soul”

Ding Liren prevailed over Ian Nepomniachtchi after a slightly lucky escape in Game 14, and four thrilling tiebreaks.

GM Harikrishna Pentala – one of the strongest players in the world (FIDE rating 2704, world ranking 34th) and former top 10 player with a 2770 peak rating – provided Lichess with annotations of Game 14 and impressions of each tiebreak - all text in italics is from him.

Game 14

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/1ofREiik

This was the final game in the classical portion. Playing with the white pieces, Ding tried to put pressure on Nepo.

One of the interesting things about this match so far is Black has scored only one victory (Game 2). This gives a lot of confidence to Ding as he has the last opportunity with the White pieces.

As expected, this game was full of ups and downs. Ding had given many chances in this game, but Nepo was keen on controlling everything and missed some simple winning chances. Playing too quickly when the position demands precise calculation has been the main problem for Nepo in this match.

Now we move on to the tie breaks. In the rapid portion, the match should be balanced. However, if it were to proceed to blitz, I rate Nepomniachtchi as the favourite.

Rapid Tiebreak Game 1

https://lichess.org/study/embed/jCs1wd0E/N0zfHJGL

By now, it is clear that Ding will jump from one variation to another with the White pieces. It is unclear and hard to predict which rare setup he would go for.

He chose a rather innocent-looking third move and followed the game between his second, Richard Rapport, in Rapport vs Shankland up to around move 7. While Ding achieved some chances, Nepo quickly took the initiative by setting up an incredible queen sacrifice.

Nepo failed to find some key moves which would have given him chances to put pressure. Later a massive trade of material occurred, and players had to repeat the moves, giving both players half a point.

Rapid Tiebreak Game 2

https://lichess.org/study/embed/jCs1wd0E/93FF5sF9#1

Nepo and Ding both repeated the Ruy Lopez once again. Nepo came up with some interesting ideas in the opening. But once again, due to oversimplifications, the play steered into a draw. Nepo tried in vain for several moves to get something more from a drawish position. Perhaps this tired Nepo out to a certain extent – both players remained on equal points, 1 – 1.

Rapid Tiebreak Game 3

https://lichess.org/study/embed/jCs1wd0E/kg9R9qJr

In his last game with the White pieces, Ding decided to try a Catalan without d4. Players followed well-known theory until move 15, but Nepo was ready for this surprise and equalized quickly by sacrificing a pawn.

The players repeated moves as there was nothing much White could do in the opposite-colored bishop ending which had emerged, despite being a pawn up – both players remaining on equal points, 1.5 – 1.5.

Rapid Tiebreak Game 4

https://lichess.org/study/embed/jCs1wd0E/8QvKR1zU

With only one game remaining in the rapid portion, one of the biggest dilemmas in a chess player's mind is whether to go all in or play a controlled game.

Nepo deviated from theory on move 12. Sometimes it is puzzling that Nepo gets an excellent position out of the opening and then spoils it immediately. The same thing happened in this game as well.

Ding went for a dynamic play on the kingside as the play progressed by temporarily sacrificing a pawn. It was pretty balanced until move 48, where Nepo blundered. This could be an effect of Ding's 46th move Rg6!?, where Ding decided not to repeat moves despite having just a minute and sixteen seconds on his clock.

After some moves, Ding gave one chance for Nepo to escape defeat. Nepo missed an amazing perpetual checks sequence starting from 59. Bg7. After that chance passed, it was just a matter of technique for Ding. Nepo resigned, with the score being 2.5 – 1.5 in Ding’s favor!

A massive moment for chess and for Ding Liren, as he became the 17th World Champion!

The moment of the final handshake, followed by the momentous nature of Ding's victory sinking in at his players area, before attending the press conference (title image). All photos credit FIDE / Stev Bonhage.

World Chess Championship: Games 12 and 13 - Ding's Third Comeback: Chaos in the Colle!

2023-04-28T00:00:00.000+03:00

A recap of Games 12 and 13 of the World Championship between Nepomniachtchi and Ding, and with annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala

Games 12 and 13 of the 14-game match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren have just been played in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The winner will be crowned as the new World Champion in classical chess, following Magnus Carlsen’s abdication of the title.

The schedule of games can be found here, with Lichess providing a live broadcast transmission of all games. Read below for detailed thoughts and annotations on the games from GM Harikrishna Pentala – one of the strongest players in the world (FIDE Rating: 2704, World Rank: 34) and a former world top 10 player with a peak rating of 2770, along with more general impressions on the tournament so far.

Game 12

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/VZr0vdSB

With the score at 6 – 5 in Nepomniachtchi’s favor and going into the last few games of the match, Ding was running out of time to catch up again on points. Meanwhile, Nepomniachtchi would be comfortable to play for draws in games 12 – 14, as doing so would still get him to 7.5 points and win the World Championship title regardless.

These last few games represented Ding’s last serious chances to potentially comeback and at least draw level to trigger tiebreaks, as in the last three games Ding has the white pieces twice – giving a small initial advantage at this level.

Ding played 1. d4 and went for the Colle system – seen infrequently at master level play, and with a reputation similarly divisive as the London system which Ding employed to score a win in Game 6. Unlike the London system, the Colle system has been seen in World Championship match history before, with Carlsen opening with it and losing to Karjakin in the 2016 World Championship, Game 8. Some may say this was not an auspicious start for Ding.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Regardless – perhaps searching for a weakness in Nepomniachtchi’s preparation – Ding came out of the opening into a sharp and double-edged position with a small advantage. However, these positions generally favour Nepomniachtchi, and he was able to find the best play to develop a scary big attack prepared against Ding’s castled king.

Things were looking dire for Ding, but a series of blunders and mistakes – unusually inaccurate play at this level – from move 26 removed the winning advantage Nepomniachtchi had built up, restoring equal chances into the position.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

A final blunder by Nepomniachtchi on move 34 sealed the position for Ding, who seemed initially uncertain if he had missed something. However, after careful calculation he realized Nepomniachtchi had simply made a massive blunder, and after finding the winning idea, Nepomniachtchi resigned.

Ultimately, the game was a massive lucky break by Ding to get him back into contention at 6 – 6. As GM Harikrishna Pentala writes in his annotations, “This is one of the games where players were playing way below their usual level. Call it the nerves, fatigue, or both; It is unprecedented in a world championship match to have so many mistakes in a single game.”

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Nepomniachtchi showed his main weakness; move-impulsivity which has cost him World Championship games against both Carlsen and Ding. Will it cause him to lose the match overall?

Game 13

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/oD6UdrNl

Questions were on Nepomniachtchi to see how he would handle and react to Ding's third comeback – Nepomniachtchi has been known to “tilt” at losses before and with no rest day in between the games, managing his emotions would be critical.

At the same time, Nepomniachtchi had the white pieces – his last game before tiebreaks with white. Opening with 1. e4 and going for a closed Ruy Lopez, neither player wanted to take over extensive risks.

However, Nepomniachtchi was the first to create imbalances in the position – and these equalized the position, and then eventually even a small advantage to Ding. However, Ding was not able to build on it and after some inaccurate play, after an exchange sacrifice the position resolved into a tense, but likely drawn, position.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

With so much on the line, neither player was keen to take unnecessary risks – and black offered a repetition that white accepted.

Bringing the score 6.5 – 6.5, with Ding playing with white in the last game of classical, we have an exciting finish ahead of us! A draw will take us to tiebreaks, or a win by either player will give us a new World Champion, tomorrow. With so much on the line, and the players so tired – will it be decided by nerves and pressure? Or will both players want to be safe and test each other in tiebreaks instead?

Snap verdict

GM Harikrishna Pentala gives the snap verdict best in his annotations – “Game 14 would be quite interesting, and we can expect ups and downs. With a nail-biting finish waiting ahead, Chess fans can expect a thriller in the last game. It is natural for the players to get tired after many days of intense games. But the ups and downs we have seen in the last two games are quite surprising. Like every chess fan, I eagerly await the last game in the classical part of the match.”

What do you think will happen in Game 14? Tell us in the comments!

Lichess is regularly running World Championship Thematic Arenas on the days of the tournament - with positions taken from the games. Make sure you follow our social media to see when the next one will be!

(Title photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

World Chess Championship: Games 10 and 11 - Business as Usual?

2023-04-25T00:00:00.000+03:00

A recap of Games 10 and 11 of the World Championship between Nepomniachtchi and Ding, and with annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala

Games 10 and 11 of the 14-game match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren have just been played in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The winner will be crowned as the new World Champion in classical chess, following Magnus Carlsen’s abdication of the title.

At a Glance

First time following the World Chess Championship match? Check this handy infographic to get to speed:

The more the graph is in the red, the greater the advantage Ding had. The more the graph is in the blue, the greater advantage Nepomniachtchi had. The numbers on the bottom of the graph, on the x-axis, correlate to the number of moves, and a +1 advantage on the side of the graph, on the y-axis, is roughly equivalent to converting the position to a win 50% of the time.

Game 10

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/wbRPyQMY

Coming off two draws, Ding was a point behind and his turn with white potentially represents an opportunity to draw level again.

As in Game 4, Ding opened with 1. c4, deciding to try the English opening against Nepomniachtchi again. Ding diverged from Game 4 – Nepomniactchi’s seconds have almost certainly analyzed it extensively by now – and seemed more hesitant with his opening than Nepomniachtchi.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

The depth of Nepomniachtchi’s preparation was apparent at several key junctures where he remained confident in the best response to give. By even around move 19, it was likely Nepomniachtchi remained in prep.

Even at this quite early stage of the game, the position appeared to be heading towards a draw with queens already traded off and the players down to rooks and some minor material. These were quietly traded off with no uncomfortable surprises for either player, and both players agreed to a draw.

Nepomniachtchi will be pleased with this result – as it keeps him in the lead and removes another opportunity for Ding to come back.

Game 11

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/oh9z5SOB

Nepomniachtchi has another chance with the white pieces – and opens with 1. e4, the main weapon he’s chosen in this match against Ding so far. Ding opted for a closed Ruy Lopez again, rather than a Berlin defense.

The first real question for Ding came at move 15, with Nepomniachtchi being incredibly well prepared against seemingly every eventuality. Nepomniachtchi seemed to be gaining momentum in the position and generally had more attacking chances, but Ding found the best defense and Nepomniachtchi’s attack was successfully diverted.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Pieces were quickly traded off, and again by move 25 or so it was clear that the most likely outcome for the game would be a draw – and indeed on move 39 a draw was agreed.

Snap verdict

If Ding’s openings have been discovered by Nepomniachtchi’s team, this could explain why Ding has been playing more cautiously. Ding’s seconds may be trying to buy time while they prepare new lines and new openings for Ding to play.

Meanwhile, Nepomniachtchi’s team – rumored to include 14th World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, 2004 Vice-World Champion Peter Leko, the 2021 Russian Champion Nikita Vitiugov, and former European Champion Vladimir Potkin – has clearly prepared Nepomniachtchi very well and in incredible depth.

Yet even so, when Ding surprises him or the game progresses beyond what Nepomniachtchi has prepared with – Ding still seems to get good chances. The last few games represent the final few chances for Ding to score a victory and push to the tiebreaks. He is rapidly running out of games, but has two chances left with white to equalize.

At the same time, this shouldn’t detract from Nepomniachtchi’s own skill and ability. Preparing so well is in itself a great skill and ability, and he has avoided any real wobbles in the opening.

(Title photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

World Chess Championship: Games 7, 8 and 9 - Ding’s Prep Discovered?

2023-04-22T00:00:00.000+03:00

A recap of Games 7, 8 and 9 of the World Championship between Nepomniachtchi and Ding, and with annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala

Games 7, 8, and 9 of the 14-game match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren have just been played in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The winner will be crowned as the new World Champion in classical chess, following Magnus Carlsen’s abdication of the title. Given the change of tournament schedule at Game 7, this recap is slightly longer than the others.

Game 7

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/1S2qOMQ0

Going into Game 7, Ding had just come off a victory in Game 6 and equalized the score back to 3 - 3. The players began Game 7 with a line of the French Defence – our annotator’s own favored opening for black before he became a super-GM.

Ding’s opening, however, appeared to be positionally shaky with a daunting attack being mounted by Nepomniachtchi. The aggressive momentum was with Nepomniachtchi, whereas Ding had to play extremely precisely to avoid losing pieces, or getting mated.

Ding managed to do so – but at the cost of most of his time. Yet, the momentum began to shift and the position became entirely equal if not even slightly in favor of Ding.

Disaster struck for Ding at move 33. Explaining in the post-game interview that he simply believed he was losing and his position was lost, he spent around 80% of his remaining time – from 11 minutes down to well under 2 minutes – considering what to play. The truth is, he could return his rook to its position from a move earlier, and still have equality and try a different idea.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Playing a catastrophic blunder, Nepomniachtchi won a pawn, obtained a much stronger position, with multiple threats coming Ding’s way, leading to Ding’s resignation.

Much like in previous games, the real battle in Game 7 was between Ding and Ding’s own psychology. On the board, he again outplayed Nepomniachtchi – but he froze up and seemingly got hit by pressures of the Match.

With this important victory for Nepomniachtchi, he took the lead with 4 - 3.

Game 8

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/NejLULhF

After a crushing loss for Ding, the primary question was again on Ding – and whether the rest day would be enough for him to recover.

Ding opened with 1. d4 and the players opted for a Nimzo-Indian. By move 9, the Lichess Masters Database showed the players had entered new territory. Yet looking at the Lichess Players Database – the game database of rated games played on Lichess – viewers noticed that up until move 14, the exact opening had been played between two Lichess players.

A closer look into the accounts revealed that they only ever played each-other in rated games, and they played openings which coincidentally matched many of the openings Ding had played in this World Championship Match so far. It is extremely unfortunate for team Ding if this was him and his seconds preparing on low rated “burner accounts”.

For any players wanting to hide preparation, it is advisable to play casual, unrated games, as they do not appear in the players’ database. It is also possible to open a private, unlisted study and only invite your seconds to it. For even greater anonymity, note that ‘burner accounts’ are not required at all. Playing without logging in, while only sharing the game link among each-other, would never reveal any plans or novelties. Many players preparing for elite level play – including previous World Championships, according to rumors – have used these last two methods before, without incident.

Meanwhile, those who are very privacy-conscious can even use our code to make their own private Lichess server to play on, so long as our software license is complied with. This is basically the Fort Knox option of online preparation, giving the preparer complete oversight over every aspect including access, infrastructure, and the database.

Ding’s opening was creative and aggressive, with a passed d-pawn by move 19. His position looked extremely promising, with a number of mistakes and inaccuracies played by Nepomniachtchi. Ding’s time management was much better, also, keeping pace with Nepomniachtchi.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

At move 31, Ding could have been an entire Rook up – but concerns with a potential perpetual check made him play a different line. Regardless, despite refusing to take the Rook he remained with the advantage and dynamism of the position. A second blunder by Ding at move 37 cost him the advantage, and the position quickly collapsed into a draw.

A frustrating result for Ding, but a lucky break for Nepomniachtchi. Again, it feels Ding outplayed Nepomniachtchi over the board, but couldn’t convert due to his own internal factors.

Game 9

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/C0VKdsBI

Following the potential discovery of Ding’s prep during Game 8, the natural question was whether team Ding would avoid the lines in that prep, or continue with them.

With Nepomniachtchi opening 1. e4, Ding went into a Berlin Defence. After a few inaccuracies by Ding, the momentum again felt to be with Nepomniachtchi, who marshaled his pieces into another kingside attack. The position looked very scary for Ding, with the slightest inaccuracy likely costing him the game – yet again, he somehow defended tenaciously and Nepomniachtchi’s attack fizzled out.

Regardless, the position still looked daunting for Ding, and it remained Ding’s game to lose. A tense endgame ensued, which looked drawn but looked harder to defend for Ding. After 82 moves, the position was an obvious draw and the players shook hands, making this the longest game of the match so far.

Snap verdict

In the last three games of this very exciting match, we have had massive amounts of drama. Team Ding haven’t caught any breaks – with a freeze reminiscent of Game 2’s collapse, and a potential discovery of their preparation – months of work and ideas which is an absolute disaster for them if true.

Nepomniachtchi currently leads 5 – 4, so in the best case scenario for Nepomniachtchi, in just three more games the match, and a new World Champion, could be decided. Given what we’ve seen in the games themselves, it continues to be a coin toss. Ding is getting solid chances and often outplays Nepomniachtchi on the board, but his time management and psychological state are his real opponents here.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

But if his prep has truly been discovered, he may struggle to get convertible advantages in future games – and with Nepomniachtchi in the lead, he has a real uphill struggle now, with very little room for error.

While this author has been optimistic of Ding’s chances, a comeback by him at this point in the match, with all of these internal and external factors against him – would make this a comeback of the ages – the sort of thing that would go down in chess history. While that is never impossible, it looks increasingly remote, barring some kind of collapse from Nepomniachtchi.

(Title photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

World Chess Championship: Games 5 and 6 - A Slugfest

2023-04-17T00:00:00.000+03:00

A recap of Games 5 and 6 of the World Championship between Nepomniachtchi and Ding by the Lichess team and with annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala

Games 5 and 6 of the 14-game match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren have just been played in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The winner will be crowned as the new World Champion in classical chess, following Magnus Carlsen’s abdication of the title.

Game 5

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/5kPuntXV

Coming into Game 5, the big question was how Nepomniachtchi would play after the loss to Ding Liren in Game 4. Despite having the rest day to recover, Nepomniachtchi has in the past struggled to overcome a loss.

Much like in Game 1, the players opted for a closed Ruy Lopez, highlighting the days of the Berlin Defence meta might (hopefully) be behind us – at least for this match. Nepomniachtchi appeared to be incredibly well prepared, blitzing out 20 opening moves using just three minutes from his clock. Ding, psychologically and from the time perspective, was on the back foot.

Regardless, Ding played the first 25 moves or so perfectly – as did Nepomniachtchi. The tiniest positional passivity from Ding was seized upon by Nepomniachtchi, who just needed that slightest finger-hold to begin prising open the position with the aggression he is known for. With Ding having no real options for counter-play, the ball was very much in Nepomniachtchi’s court, as he rolled his kingside pawns down for a crushing attack.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Meanwhile, Nepomniachtchi circled Ding like a hawk on the playing stage in between moves, keeping his eyes fixed not on the board but on Ding himself. Far from being tilted by the Game 4 loss, Nepomniachtchi seemed to be fired up, more motivated and hungry for a win than ever. After 48 moves, Ding resigned – with this game certainly being one of the best and most precise from Nepomniachtchi who seemed to conjure up a win from almost nothing.

The win, aside from being a major psychological victory for Nepomniachtchi, also put him back into the lead with a score of 3 - 2.

Game 6

The annotations by GM Harikrishna Pentala are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the full study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/JYZ4SXRf

Following his earlier psychological fragility, the question was on how Ding would cope with his loss in Game 5 – which Ding had described as a harder loss for him than in Game 2. Surprisingly, Ding opened with 1. d4 and went into the London System – again, perhaps with the fingerprints of his second somewhat visible (Rapport has a line in the London System co-named after him; the Rapport-Jobava line).

Depending on who you ask, the London System is either viewed as dry and unambitious for white, or as a potent weapon whose potential is not fully understood by a community of Luddites. Regardless, it is not often an opening (sorry, “system”), that is often seen at the elite level – in fact, this is the first ever classical World Championship game in history where the London was played.

As a system, extensive opening theory isn’t required – but Ding perhaps took this to extremes, claiming in his post-match interview to be out of preparation by move 6 (it is not uncommon at such a level for players to have memorized entire lines to move 30 or beyond). With the honesty Ding has shown in the post-game interviews so far, it seems unlikely he would be deceptive about this.

Yet the solid, relatively quiet, position did appear to frustrate Nepomniachtchi, who perhaps out of impatience was discontent with such a passive position. Nepomniachtchi’s preference for aggressive and dynamic chess was perhaps used against him masterfully by Ding, giving Nepomniachtchi a double-edged opportunity to bring the game to life, at the cost of his own positional stability.

(Photo - FIDE / Anna Shtourman)

While by no means clearly winning for Ding, he continued building on his advantage until it was clear that the momentum of the position was with him, and having a greater pool of viable candidate moves that at least maintained his edge. By move 42, Ding had a mate in 18 moves, and a few moves later Nepomniachtchi resigned – a brutal blow to Nepomniachtchi as Ding came out swinging, making the score a level 3 – 3.

Snap verdict

What an exciting mini-match! This has become one of the most decisive World Championships in history, matching the same ratio of wins to draws by Game 6 as Karpov – Korchnoi in 1981, and Steinitz – Gunsberg in 1891. In just 6 games, both players have the same number of losses (two), as Carlsen received over a decade of playing World Championship games!

Nerves and pressure have clearly affected both players significantly. Many elite-level commentators, such as Caruana and Giri, have remarked that they don’t believe the play has been reflective of their true level. But beyond that, it seems that the particular preferred playing style of both players are anathema to each-other. Nepomniachtchi gets frustrated by Ding’s preference for slow, positional grinds; Ding gets overwhelmed by the ferocity of Nepomniachtchi’s attack. At this level, that shouldn’t mean much – but the smallest imbalances are exploited by both players.

To the surprise of Caruana and Giri, Ding does genuinely seem to have come into this match underprepared. Yet, despite Nepomniachtchi’s deeper prep, and with a team with World Championship experience, allegedly including Kramnik, Leko, Vitiugov, and Potkin – Ding is still holding his own.

The Game 6 loss will not be easy for Nepomniachtchi, but he again has another rest day to reset and recover. How will Game 7 go? At this point it’s essentially a coin toss! But this author still gives it perhaps 53 – 47 in Ding’s favor. The clearest winner? Proponents of the London System, who can now boast it has a 100% win rate in World Championship games.

(Tile photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

World Chess Championship: Games 3 and 4 - A New Hope?

2023-04-14T00:00:00.000+03:00

A recap of Games 3 and 4 of the ongoing World Championship between Nepomniachtchi and Ding, with annotations by GM David Navara

Games 3 and 4 of the 14-game match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren have just been played in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The winner will be crowned as the new World Champion in classical chess, following Magnus Carlsen’s abdication of the title.

The schedule of games can be found here, with Lichess providing a live broadcast transmission of all games. Read below for detailed thoughts and annotations on the games from GM David Navara – one of the strongest players in the world (FIDE Rating: 2676, World Rank: 59), along with more general impressions given on the tournament so far.

Game 3

The annotations by David Navara are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/t9bzSaMp

In Games 1 and 2, things were looking dire for Ding – in a very touching and human series of interviews and press conferences, he readily shared he was feeling anxious and depressed with the pressures of the match and the end of a personal relationship. With his psychology in flux, Ding didn’t look comfortable and after losing Game 2, had an uphill struggle ahead of him.

With a rest day to recover, where he apparently listened to the discography of Bob Dylan with his second, Richard Rapport, (Blowin’ in the Wind is Ding’s favorite) – it was important for Ding to stop the bleeding in Game 3.

Nepomniachtchi chose a surprising opening weapon with 1. d4, something he plays rarely. The players entered a line Ding had played against Giri in online rapid in 2022 (with that encounter ending in a draw), and while it felt Ding had a little more momentum, the position was overall balanced. It can be a risk to over push, with the main consideration for Ding being simply to put the loss behind him.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

A repetition was made and accepted, with neither player willing to take an unnecessary risk. For Ding, the most important objective was achieved, securing a draw with the black pieces after coming off a loss.

Psychologically, Ding seems to have recovered, spending more time at the board and being more comfortable answering interview questions.

Game 4

The annotations by David Navara are provided in the embed below, with a direct link to the study available here.

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/MeY7tGG0

A more confident looking Ding with white opened with 1. c4, perhaps seeking vengeance for his earlier loss against Nepomniachtchi in the 2022 Madrid Candidates, which began with the same opening move.

They opted for a line which Ding’s second, Richard Rapport, had coincidentally played and won with in 2013. Ding diverged with 11. O-O finding an improvement from Rapport’s game. During the press conference, Ding confirmed he found this move over the board, with his preparation ending at 9… Nf4. The position looked promising for white with a strong pawn center and with black’s pieces being uncoordinated.

(Photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Tension remained high, with a position the engine gave a perfectly equal evaluation to, where Ding’s pawn sacrifice was compensated with a positional advantage. From a human perspective, the pressure was on Nepomniachtchi to find the best move each time in a very defensive position, whereas Ding had more freedom and a greater range of perfectly good candidate moves.

In our preview, we highlighted Nepomniachtchi can seemingly suffer from lapses in concentration when making committal moves in complex drawn positions, and perhaps can suffer from frustration in positions where he has passivity. This seemed to arise with 28… Nd4 – a blunder Ding was quick to capitalize on. The position quickly became hopeless for Nepomniachtchi – and Ding secured an important victory, taking the overall score to 2 – 2 with 10 games left to play.

Snap verdict

Supporters of Ding will have much more to reassure them about Ding’s play from the last two games. While there is still a long way to go in this match and it remains anyone’s tournament, the results in these two games and his overall demeanor suggest more of a return to his usual level of play.

It will now be Nepomniachtchi’s turn to dig deep and find psychological resilience after what must be a disappointing loss for him and his team. Losses have historically also been a struggle for him, having been prone to “tilt” in the past. But the rest day will give him an opportunity to recover – and then it will be his turn to stop the bleeding.

For spectators, the score equalizing is only a positive; it makes it more probable that fighting chess will continue to be seen, from two players who can be very volatile. However, given the seemingly remarkable psychological recovery from Ding, the author believes the momentum is now with him.

To overcome such pressures and stress at this level and then come back with a necessary win only days later shows signs of that mental fortitude and stability Ding was renowned for returning to him. From what we’ve seen in these first four games, if Ding has no relapse, an overall victory for him feels not just possible but more likely.

Lichess is regularly running World Championship Thematic Arenas on the days of the tournament - with positions taken from the games. Make sure you follow our social media to see when the next one will be!

(Title photo - FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Chess World Championship: Nepomniachtchi versus Ding – Games 1 and 2

2023-04-11T00:00:00.000+03:00

A recap of the first two games of the ongoing World Championship with annotations by GM David Navara

The first two games of the 14-game match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren have already been played in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. The winner will be crowned as the new World Champion in classical chess, following Magnus Carlsen’s abdication of the title.

The schedule of games can be found here, with Lichess providing a broadcast transmission of all games. GM David Navara (2676, World #59) is providing annotations for games 1 - 4.

Game 1

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/pmUwO0a8

Overall, it felt like Nepomniachtchi had most of the momentum and was pressing for a win in the middlegame. However, despite Ding facing incredible time pressure, he was able to defend resolutely and Nepomiachtchi’s attack fizzled out. The players agreed to a draw on move 49, in a very equal position.

(Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

Ding seemed to be feeling the pressure of the match acutely. While he naturally has a shy and unassuming disposition, he seemed to be affected by the intensity of the match in previously unseen ways. He spent much of the match in his private area, bundled up in a thick coat, and was reluctant to stay at his board other than to make a move before retiring back to his private room.

During the player’s post-game interview, he admitted he had hardly been able to concentrate or focus on the game at all, feeling anxiety to such an extreme he felt physically cold, and “depressed”. If Ding is unable to control his psychological state, it is almost certain he will be unable to perform at a high 2700 level.

Game 2

https://lichess.org/study/SkQqKSso/rmU8rZf3

Ding tried – and succeeded – to take Nepomniachtchi by surprise and potentially out of prep with a very unusual move (and near novelty) 4. h3!?. This move was later clarified by Ding to have been the idea of his seconds, with the unorthodox Richard Rapport known to be on Ding’s team.

Ding seemed to be well prepared in the opening, but seemed to struggle in the position that came from it. At the key juncture of 11… Na5, white seemingly has only two serious candidate moves. Ding spent 33 minutes considering his response to this position, opting to exchange knights on f6.

(Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

However, in the post-game interview, Ding said that despite thinking for so long he had only considered the response of 12… Qxf6 and not gxf6 – opening up the g-file for black’s rook to eventually stare down on white’s castled king. Overlooking such a possibility and thematic move in the position is unexplainable and continues to highlight that Ding’s psychological state does not seem to be in the zone needed to perform at this level.

Ding’s resignation on move 29 made it the shortest Round 1 or 2 win (by number of moves) for Black in World Championship history, ignoring Fischer’s protest-default against Spassky in 1972.

Snap verdict

Fans of Ding will be bewildered and possibly even concerned by his performance so far. His focus seems to not be on the game in front of him but, in a purely armchair opinion, on some internal struggle instead. He has not yet shown the positional stability which he has built his reputation on. He seems to be finding it difficult to recall his preparation at key moments. It is difficult to come to any conclusion other than that if he continues like this, the match will be all but a walkover for Ian Nepomniachtchi.

(Photo: FIDE / Stev Bonhage)

It is not too late for Ding to turn this around; the score is only 1.5 - 0.5 with another 12 games to go. In previous World Championships, both Fischer (1972) and Anand (2010) turned around early deficits to take the title overall. Ding is a player who seems to need to warm up into a tournament, with his best results in the 2022 Candidates coming in the later rounds of the event.

However, in a match format time is of the essence for Ding, and strategically Nepomniachtchi will be happy to sit back and play for draws – not trying to create any advantage but exploiting one if the chance appears. Such a strategy forces Ding to take risks, but there is ultimately no alternative for Ding if he wishes to become World Champion.

Preview: FIDE World Chess Championship 2023

2023-04-06T00:00:00.000+03:00

Ahead of the 14 game match between Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi, Lichess previews what may be in store

Officially since 1886 and unofficially since at least the 1830s, World Chess Championships have been played to determine the World Champion in chess. The title-holder since 2013, Magnus Carlsen, has abdicated his throne without being defeated. This means that Ian Nepomniachtchi (ranked #2 in the world, with a current rating of 2795) will play Ding Liren (ranked #3, with a 2788 rating) for the title in a 14-game match in Astana, Kazakhstan, with the first game scheduled for Sunday 9 April.

("Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown" Henry IV Part Two, William Shakespeare (photo credit: Andrea Kontokanis, 2016 Chess Olympiad)

Carlsen is not the first World Champion to refuse to defend the title, but it is rare. Memorably and most famously, Bobby Fischer refused to defend the title against Karpov in 1975. Fischer found the proposed match format unfair, arguing that it could easily be exploited by a player. Prior to this, the undisputed World Champion in 1948 failed to defend his title, but Alexander Alekhine had a rather convincing reason, having died two years earlier.

Some will undoubtedly question the true credentials of the World Champion after this match, as the top-ranked player in the world and (in the author’s opinion) the best player in history hasn’t been clearly defeated in a match format. Moreover, much like in boxing, the power of the title has historically come from a new champion defeating the old champion. The former World Champion and chess legend, Garry Kasparov, recently gave his thoughts, indicating “it’s an odd situation” and that Fischer’s precedent may not be entirely applicable: “Fischer stopped playing chess, Magnus has not”. Kasparov highlighted it is even likely that Carlsen will be playing both Nepomniachtchi and Ding shortly in the Grand Chess Tour, just weeks after the match.

However, with or without Magnus it promises to be an excellent match between two intriguing competitors. The players’ eligibility is certain – by virtue of having finished first and second in the 2022 Candidates Tournament.

Nepomniachtchi’s focus and passion for chess have justifiably been questioned at some points in his career. Nepomniachtchi has publicly discussed how at one point he was considering focusing on esports full-time – especially Dota 2, a game he once played semi-professionally.

Despite these different interests, from a young age Nepomniachtchi has been one of the most promising, creative, and aggressive chess players of his generation. Never afraid to take a risk or make a position double-edged, when in form he can exert an unmatched dominance over his rivals. For example, most recently in the 2022 Candidates tournament in Madrid, he finished 1.5 points ahead of second place, becoming only the second player ever to win two consecutive Candidates tournaments (the first being Smyslov in 1953 and then 1956). However, as much as his intuition can be his greatest strength, this can lend itself to not always playing as carefully or as methodically as other elite chess players.

(Photo: Stev Bonhage/FIDE - Nepomniachtchi at the Madrid Candidates)

For example, in Game 6 of the 2021 World Championship Match in Dubai, Carlsen seemingly frustrated him by forcing him to play what seemed to be a drawn (albeit complex) endgame late into the night. Nepomniachtchi allowed himself to momentarily lose focus, replying instantly despite having plenty of time left on the clock – until he made a terminal error, thus losing the first decisive game of the match after playing the longest game in World Championship history.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/RoBvWqfx/0IsLRqJa#260

Likewise, in Game 9 Nepomniachtchi played 27. c5 very fast, missing a three-move tactic for his opponent to win a full piece which he would definitely have identified if he had spent more time assessing the position.

Ding Liren meanwhile has historically been an incredibly solid player, at one point holding the record for the longest undefeated streak in classical chess, breaking Mikhail Tal’s record (Ding’s record was eventually surpassed by Carlsen). A testament to that stability is his FIDE ranking and rating – since May 2018, Ding has been in the top five players in the world or higher, with a rating average from then until the present day of 2802. Ding generally seems to prefer positional play, and is one of the best players alive at raw calculation, with particular strengths within the endgame. However, cracks have been appearing in Ding’s play, seemingly starting around the same time as the global Covid pandemic.

Ding had a disappointing performance in the 2020 Yekaterinburg Candidates, both in the first half and then the second half once Russia’s borders had reopened in 2021. Likewise, Ding struggled in the recent Tata Steel Masters 2023, with losses against Praggnanandhaa, Giri, and Rapport, finishing 11th out of 14 players with 5.5/13. His loss of 23 rating points from the tournament gave him his lowest rating since April 2018 and caused him to drop a place in the world rankings (from second to third). It’s certainly possible that he could have been hiding his match preparation, keeping his eye on the bigger goal – but even if so, such a disappointing result could be difficult to bounce back from psychologically.

(Photo: Stev Bonhage/FIDE - Ding Liren at the Madrid Candidates)

The 2023 World Championship promises to be exciting for all fans of chess. It should be closely fought, as for the first time in nearly a decade it’s essentially a coin toss to determine the winner. Assuming we get the confident, creative, and aggressive Nepomniachtchi, against the historically rock-solid Ding – it could be an absolute cracker of a match, where the author would give the edge to Ding. But, if both players continue to show the form they have done recently – then the author believes Nepomniachtchi will win overall.

The Public’s View

Lichess polled its different social media channels to see who the public thought would win.

Every social media channel believed Nepomniatchi would be most likely to win. This was most obvious in our Instagram community, which gave a 65-35 prediction in favour of Nepomniachtchi. Similar figures came from Telegram (63-37) and Twitter (63-37).

Our Mastodon community (a free/libre open source software alternative to Twitter which has recently exploded in popularity) was more moderate in its prediction, with a 55-45 split in favour of Nepomniachtchi.

The Mastodon results were closest to what the bookies say, as the latest odds slightly favour a Nepomniachtchi win (for which a $1 stake would return $1.60-$1.80 compared to $2-$2.25 for a Ding win).

Controversies

As is recent tradition – what’s a good chess tournament without a few major controversies?

Against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its second year, questions have been asked about the sport’s governing body, FIDE, continuing to maintain commercial ties with Russian organisations and figures supportive of the Putin regime.

FIDE has come under fire for seemingly selling broadcast rights to Match TV per the Russian Chess Federation. Match TV is a Russian TV channel owned by Gazprom-Media, which is under sanctions including in the US and Canada. While it is not clear whether Match TV will receive the live video feed, FIDE has not distanced itself or released any public statement regarding what the Russian Chess Federation has announced. Consequently, FIDE appears to be doing business with entities sanctioned in the West, while other international sports organisations such as the English Premier League, Formula 1, and WWE have terminated their deals with Match TV.

Western media – namely Norwegian national TV channel, NRK – will not be broadcasting this World Championship for the first time in a decade, despite having paid for the broadcast rights. While their motivation is due to Carlsen dropping out, those using the video feed in the West will need to be wary to ensure laws on not indirectly or inadvertently advertising sanctioned companies are followed – such as logos on players’ clothing. Nepomniachtchi has historically been sponsored by Russian companies close to the Russian state, several of which are now sanctioned.

FIDE’s president, Arkady Dvorkovich, who was formerly a deputy prime minister of Russia (2012–2018), has continued to maintain strong links with the Russian government, by continuing to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Russian Chess Federation. Dvorkovich sits alongside two senior and central figures of the Russian government – Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, and Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov (who has both made and defended threats of apocalyptic nuclear war if Russia loses the war in Ukraine) – as well as other individuals and representatives of businesses, sanctioned by dozens of countries. In total, 13 of the 17 members of the Board of Trustees are sanctioned.

Earlier this month, a Russian Chess Federation senior official shared with Russian state media that Dvorkovich’s control of FIDE was probably the main reason why chess has not followed the example of sports such as gymnastics in a total ban of Russian and Belarusian players from playing in events under any flag. Other sports such as athletics, swimming, cycling, skiing and ice-skating have taken similar approaches to gymnastics. FIDE’s CEO, Emil Sutovsky, recently highlighted that their position since the invasion has been similar to that adopted by tennis authorities, where Russian and Belarusian teams are banned from competition but individual athletes can still play under a neutral flag. Even so, tennis does not show the Russian or Belarusian flags on their online rating lists, but FIDE does - see Nepomniachtchi’s FIDE profile or the FIDE rating list, for example. Essentially FIDE’s policy enables Russian and Belarusian players to continue competing internationally with practically no changes from before.

Given the long history of state support for chess in Russia, few doubt that the Kremlin would welcome a Nepomniachtchi victory, and may even seek to use it for propaganda purposes. FIDE has not given any public statement regarding measures they have made to limit this, or on how to handle a player potentially receiving funding from internationally sanctioned entities. That said, it is worth highlighting that Nepomniachtchi's personal views are vastly different to those of the Russian state, as he was one of the 44 Russian chess players who signed an open letter to Vladimir Putin in March 2022 expressing firm opposition to the war and solidarity with the Ukrainian people. These same propagandistic concerns can of course also be said for how the PRC may view a victory for Ding, should he prevail. From this perspective, neither options are good for the marketability and health of chess, as it approaches a zenith of popularity in the West, with both having political implications.

FIDE was approached for comment, but after several hours, has not given any.

Some will say that such political considerations have no place within sport. But how can that be true for chess when the sport has regularly been co-opted for political ends, from Fischer versus Spassky right through to Russia's official diplomatic efforts in 2018’s FIDE presidential elections?

But the politics is not the players' fault; and controversies aside, a new World Champion in classical chess is a major event. Both Ding Liren and Ian Nepomniachtchi richly deserve their chance at glory; and we look forward along with all chess lovers to what the next few weeks has in store for us.

(Title image: Stev Bonhage/FIDE - Ding and Nepomniachtchi at the Madrid Candidates 2022)

Life moves pretty fast (not really)

2023-04-01T00:00:00.000+03:00

...if you don't play quickly, you could miss it.

[EDIT] April fools! Unfortunately, life still moves pretty fast, but Lichess no longer has decrement time controls. Thanks to everybody participating in our 1-1 Arena, it was fun!

We’re all busy people! Sometimes we don’t have time for a long chess game. Most of the time even! Ever since the dawn of online chess, we’ve been pushing faster and faster time controls: blitz, bullet, hyper bullet, ultra bullet! Well we’re pushing further once again.

Introducing: decrement time controls! If you don’t have the time for a ¼+0 game, try a ¼-1. Every move you play takes an additional second off your clock. This gives you an added incentive to finish your opponent quickly, since there’s only time for 15 moves even if you play instantly!

The new homepage quick play buttons

No more infuriating defeats due to time scrambles! Do not trust in your mouse, trust in good moves! This update will also incentivise chess to be more suitable for short-video based media while still maintaining an ethical standpoint of quality over quantity like OTB:

THIS IS CRAZY 🤯🤯🤯 Pieces flying, hands all over the board, illegal moves❗️"Someone check my heart rate" @ginger_gm said for the @penguingm1-@chessleinier game ⏳

This is ARMAGEDDON chess 🔥 pic.twitter.com/fYn3nWX24z
— World Chess (@theworldchess) March 7, 2023

We hope you enjoy this update on today, April 1st! Have fun in our inaugural decrement arena https://lichess.org/tournament/losetime.

FIDE Women’s Grand Prix Collapses into "Chaos" as Players Withdraw

2023-03-26T00:00:00.000+03:00

GM Abdumalik, GM Paehtz withdraw hours before and during the event following alleged bad conditions, unfair pairings

The third leg of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix was due to begin yesterday, but after a turbulent 24 hours it has only begun today amid chaotic scenes and the withdrawal of multiple players.

(Title image: the players confer - photo credit ChessBase India / Aditya Sur Roy)

The FIDE Women’s Grand Prix is a series of tournaments to determine who will play the Women’s Candidates Tournament 2023 - 2024. The previous two legs of it, in Astana and Munich, went without an issue – with Lichess providing some coverage of the events so far.

The first players to withdraw, just a few days before the tournament, were the Ukrainian players Anna and Mariya Muzychuk. While they have not given any statement for their withdrawal, they were due to play three Russian-flagged players on FIDE’s ranking list: Kateryna Lagno (who was born in Ukraine but switched to the Russian Chess Federation in 2014), Aleksandra Goryachkina (who has previously received financial support from pro-Putin companies), and Polina Shuvalova (who has expressed public opposition to the war).

What appears to be the position of the Muzychuks seems to be aligned with many international sports federations. FIFA and UEFA (football), the IAAF, Formula 1, UCI (cycling), FIS (skiing) and dozens of other sports have outright banned Russian and Belarussian individuals and teams from participating in sporting events.

While (similar to tennis) individual Russian and Belarussian chess players can participate in events, they cannot do so under the Russian/Belarussian flag, nor can their national anthems be played. Unlike tennis, those chess players – even when temporarily playing under a neutral flag at a chess tournament – still appear in the FIDE rating lists as Russian/Belarussian. Further, unlike professional tennis players, professional chess players in Russia and Belarus often receive state funding.

Shortly before the tournament was due to start yesterday, it was discovered that Zhansaya Abdumalik had also withdrawn. While the circumstances of her withdrawal are not yet fully known, it seems that she had no transport from the airport, limited contact with the organizers, no FIDE personnel were on-site to assist players, and Abdumalik highlighted that conditions in the hotel were not suitable per tournament regulations.

The German Chess Federation has gone on to highlight that:

The players traveled alone and unaccompanied by taxis in New Delhi in the middle of the night, with the players feeling extremely insecure;
There were no rooms available for several players in the official hotel despite their arrival date being known and they had to wait several hours from 5am for a room to be available; some players had to move to a different room a day after checking in;
There was (and continues to be) no FIDE technical delegate who was on-site; they would ordinarily be the contact person and check the venue and hotel in advance.

ChessBase India had the opportunity to discuss these topics with Bharat Singh Chauhan, President of the All India Chess Federation and Tournament Director. Namely, Singh highlighted Abdumalik's flight arrived around 30 minutes early, and this is why nobody met her at the airport.

In a post last night, Abdumalik shared she had discussed the issues with FIDE President, Arkady Dvorkovich, who apologized to her, took the blame for the situation, and highlighted his understanding if she had no energy left to play.

The same post shared that several other players officially complained to FIDE, asking to postpone or cancel the event:

One of the players named on the letter, Bibisara Assaubayeva (2 times Women’s World Champion in Blitz), published a scathing and personal criticism of her compatriot’s decision to withdraw. She also suggested her name had been added to the official complaint without her permission or knowledge (auto-translated screenshot below):

Somewhat understandably, this prompted a strong response from Abdumalik (auto translated screenshot below):

Assaubayeva then replied back (screenshot auto-translated):

One gets the overall impression that the two most promising women players in the Kazakh Chess Federation do not see eye to eye. The Kazakh Chess Federation was not immediately available for comment.

Elisabeth Paehtz was then also drawn in to defend the signing of the open letter to the FIDE President, highlighting no player would add another player’s name without their explicit consent:

From a source close to the tournament, speaking under condition of anonymity, the local organizers proposed a replacement player to take Abdumalik’s vacant spot. This source has told us that this suggestion was strongly refused by the players, as two replacements had already been found when the Muzychuks withdrew.

Likewise, redoing the pairings of the round-robin with 11 players would also have been trivial and kept the pairings fair – allowing each player to have five games with White and Black each. However we are told that this suggestion was met with Goryachkina walking out of the technical meeting, giving the implication she was threatening to withdraw from the tournament. This matches with Paehtz's final statement, which states the ultimatum of a single player prevented a fair distribution of the pairings.

Following Abudmalik’s withdrawal, Goryachkina currently has a tournament with six games with White and four with Black, and a rest day (when she was due to play Abdumalik) in the middle of the event. Arguably, this has created a potential precedent where a single player influenced other players’ plans and risked terminating a whole tournament - something an earlier FIDE statement said would be untenable.

An image posted by ChessBase India shows that at the start of the round, Goryachkina refused to shake hands with Bharat Singh Chauhan, the Tournament Director and Indian Chess Federation President.

Photo credit: ChessBase India / Abhyudaya Ram

Consequently, Elisabeth Paehtz decided to withdraw today, giving her statement to the German Chess Federation:

"I cannot accept that not every player starts the tournament with the same qualifications.The intended solution of a new draw with a fair distribution of colors failed due to the ultimatum of a single player.Even if you start with 6 times white and 4 times black, as in my case, an unfair distribution of other players is not a prerequisite for a fair and equal tournament for everyone."

Meanwhile the tournament continues with players now receiving two rest days in the tournament (in the form of byes), and the pairings becoming even more distorted. Shuvalova, for example, now receives six games with White and three with Black, with another rest day midway through the tournament, in Round 5.

Finally, adding to the woes of the FIDE Women’s Grand Prix, the organizer for the fourth leg appears to have pulled out. Originally scheduled on FIDE’s website as due to be in Bydgoszcz in Poland, the location no longer appears (although it has not been removed from Wikipedia). While no reasoning has been given as yet, a source close to the tournament has suggested it could be due to the Polish tournament organizers being unwilling to host Russian players.

FIDE did not respond to a request for comment, asked three hours ago at the time of publishing this article, but yesterday had published an apology to the remaining players of the tournament. If they give a further statement we will update this article.

Aronian Takes WR Masters

2023-02-27T00:00:00.000+03:00

PHOTO: Lennart Ootes / WR Chess Masters

When Levon Aronian made a quick draw against co-leader Dommaraju Gukesh in the final round of the WR Chess Masters, it seemed like an uncharacteristically timid move for the Armenian grandmaster, who’s long been known as one of the most creative and aggressive players on the tour. But it was all part of his strategy: after that quiet interlude, the lover of classical music brought it to a crescendo in the rapid tiebreaker, where he blasted Gukesh and Ian Nepomniachtchi, who also joined the tie for first, in three straight games to crown tournament victory.

Aronian got off to a fast start with four points in the first five rounds. With a full point lead on the field, he seemed to be in cruise control going into round seven with White against Nepomniachtchi. Given the tournament situation, Aronian could be content with a draw, and Nepomniachtchi had drawn all of his previous six games. Saving energy (and opening prep) for his upcoming World Championship match against Ding Liren, you might think, but in fact he had been playing fighting chess and the draws were more a coincidence than anything. Nonetheless, Aronian went for a fairly tame variation of the Queen’s Gambit Declined, and when the players started repeating moves, a draw seemed to be in the offing. But then things took a strange turn.

Aronian tried to claim a draw by threefold repetition, but Nepomniachtchi put up two fingers, and the arbiter confirmed the position on the board had only happened twice. The false claim seemed to have the same effect on Nepomniachtchi as waving a red cape in front of a bull, as he spurned the repetition and launched his kingside pawns forward. In the press conference he explained his reasoning:

“If he wants a draw that badly then I should push him.”

Objectively, Aronian’s position was not worse, but he started to go wrong, and then blundered a piece to a tactic. Nepomniachtchi finished off the game precisely and with the full point, he was only half a point behind Aronian. Also in round seven, Gukesh beat Esipenko with the Black pieces, to move into a tie for first with 4.5 points. Suddenly, it was anyone’s tournament.

https://lichess.org/study/tqDIFlT9/UjuCWGZY

All the leaders drew in round eight, setting up a showdown between Aronian and Gukesh in the ninth and final round. Or so it seemed, but Aronian was content to defer the battle to the tiebreaker, and he went for a well-known drawing line in the Ragozin. Within minutes, the players were shaking hands.

That left Nepomniachtchi to try to catch the leaders by winning with Black against Vincent Keymer. He did just that in a six hour masterclass that showed just how tough top-level chess is these days: first he showed great preparation in a rare line of the King’s Indian to saddle Keymer with an isolated pawn. Then he applied pressure with a variety of feints in a complicated middlegame. Finally on move 59 Keymer made his only real mistake of the game, allowing his king to come under attack. Nepomniachtchi finished off the attack perfectly to move into a three-way tie for first.

There have been a few three-way ties for first in top-level tournaments in recent years. Perhaps most memorably, in the 2018 Sinquefield Cup, Aronian finished in a tie for first with Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. In that case it turned out that the rules called for a drawing of lots to determine two players to play a playoff, with the third left out. The players objected to this and negotiated a shared first place. The WR Masters had a more satisfying tiebreak procedure, at least from a spectator’s point of view: the three players would play a rapid double round robin straight away.

In the first game, Aronian had White against Gukesh. He went for another Ragozin, but there would be no quick draw this time. He introduced a new wrinkle in a well-known line and Gukesh didn’t react in the best way. Aronian got a positional pull, which he used to win a pawn, and then convert a queen-and pawn endgame.

Aronian was onstage again for the second game with Black against Nepomniachtchi. An English opening led to a complex strategic struggle. Perhaps feeling the effects of his slugfest against Keymer, Nepomniachtchi made a few missteps. Aronian gradually gained the upper hand, going for a creative king march from g8 to b7. When the position opened, it was Aronian’s pieces that were better placed, and he scored another point.

In the third game, Gukesh beat Nepomniachtchi with White, effectively ending Nepo’s chances at first. Then it was Gukesh vs. Aronian in the second leg of the round robin, Gukesh having the White pieces this time. A risky opening choice by Aronian seemed to go awry; his position was on the verge of collapsing, but he kept finding tricky resources. In the end he turned the tables completely and ground down his opponent in an exchange-up endgame. With three points out of three games Aronian had already secured the tiebreak win and the remaining games weren’t played.

https://lichess.org/study/tqDIFlT9/E7OlL56w

This was the first ever WR Masters, a new entry into top-level tournaments. The organizers struck a nice balance between familiar faces and up-and-coming stars. There was certainly plenty of drama, with several comebacks and finally the rapid tiebreaker.

For the moment, the story at the top level of chess is all about parity. Apart from Magnus Carlsen, no one has been able to consistently find separation from the pack. It seems as though anyone from the top group can win a tournament if they’re in good form and can catch a few breaks. Anish Giri, who won the previous super tournament, Tata Steel Masters, but found himself tied for last this time, said, “I don’t think anybody is better than anybody else at this point.”

The younger generation, led by Gukesh in this event, seems to have drawn themselves equal to the veterans without surpassing them. Aronian showed that the old dogs still have some bite left in them as well. When asked by ChessBase India to comment on his feelings after winning the tournament, the always witty Aronian responded, “I highly recommend it.”

https://twitter.com/wr_chess/status/1629863627996921860

5 Centimeters of Hair: Iranian Chess in 2023

2023-01-11T00:00:00.000+03:00

Shohreh Bayat had not been planning to take a stand, but sometimes it happens anyway. She was working as the Chief Arbiter for the 2020 Women’s World Championship held in China when the President of the Chess Federation from her native Iran sent a message that got under her skin. “The president of the chess federation sent me a message; he said my hijab is not proper. It really made me furious,” Bayat told Lichess in an interview. Head scarves partially covering the hair, also called “hijabs,” must be worn by women at all times in Iran by law. The President’s complaint to Bayat sprung from the head scarf’s exact position; it was too far back, revealing too much hair. “I was already doing my best to tolerate this with difficulty. It was fine by Iranian standards, but he was pushing me and pushing me. I was miles away from my country and they were still hassling me.” Bayat decided to make a little show of force, nothing serious, just a small reminder that she couldn’t be pushed around.

Bayat with a hijab placement deemed improper. (Photo: Zhang Yanhong, FIDE)

“I decided to stand against him, but in a way that I could still come back to Iran, and not get in trouble, sending a message to leave me alone. The next day I pushed my hijab back a bit further” There was no immediate response. Bayat even appeared in an official federation news report, but they used images from the previous day when she’d worn a more acceptably placed hijab. It seemed that the message she wanted to send had been safely delivered without causing too much trouble. “The next day nothing happened.” However, a difference of about 5 centimeters in hijab position would change her life forever. “When I came back to the hotel… I had no idea… I turned on my phone, I was the top news for every news agency. There were loads of messages from people sending me screenshots and telling me not to come back to Iran.” Photos had been circulating in Iran that showed her low-hanging head scarf. Making the situation worse, some were taken from an angle that gave an exaggerated impression of how far back she had pushed it. In some pictures the head scarf appeared to be around her neck, barely covering any hair at all.

Bayat During Round 2, pushing her hijab back further to make a point (Photo: Zhang Yanhong, FIDE)

Even still, Bayat had hopes of salvaging the situation. Tense negotiations with the chess federation began. There was talk of exchanging an apology for a safe return home. “I got in touch with someone from the foreign ministry as well, he sent me a list of things to do. That was really awful. He told me I can only give interviews with the state news agency. I have to say that all my achievements belong to the Iranian regime. I had to praise Ayatollah Khomeini and Qasem Soleimani. There were 2 pages of things to do.”

When Bayat was younger, men and women chess players were not permitted to play against each other in Iran. This represents a serious barrier for young players who want to move up in the chess world and need to play the best players possible to develop their skills. Bayat’s father managed to negotiate an exception for her. “Everybody there was men, I was a little kid, like 9 years old, there was nobody to speak to.” She won many prominent tournaments as a young player. Her successful playing career was a springboard to become a highly successful chess arbiter and organizer. In 2017, she was appointed as the General Secretary of the Iran Chess Federation, the first female General Secretary of a sports federation in the country.

At the 2020 Women’s World Championship, the prospect of a peaceful return home for Bayat was fading fast. “I saw an interview with my Dad, I hadn’t spoken to him about anything. He said I’d spoken to him, and that I would come back to Iran and explain everything, like I did something wrong. I knew these were not my father’s words. That's what the regime does to people, forces them to do these interviews. The next day I decided not to wear a head scarf at all.”

Bayat, now having given up on the head scarf altogether (photo: Lewis Liu, FIDE)

Over the last few years many prominent chess-playing Iranian women have left the country, often in connection with not wearing a head scarf at international chess tournaments. The first one was IM Dorsa Derakhshani, who was kicked off the national team after not wearing a head scarf at a 2017 tournament in Spain, something she’d done often at events outside of Iran before, but had somehow gone unnoticed. It’s hard to imagine such a casual commitment to monitoring head scarves from the Iranian government these days. The country has been racked by protests against mandatory head coverings in public since a woman named Mahsa Amini died while in police custody after being severely beaten in September of 2022. She attracted police attention by doing exactly what Bayat had done, wearing her head scarf in a way they deemed improper.

In this atmosphere, Bayat knew that returning to Iran would not be safe, however she didn’t have legal residency in any other country. Her husband was also still in Iran. “I got in touch with Malcolm Pein, he found a lawyer for me who told me what to do.” Bayat was eventually granted asylum in the UK. After 1.5 years her husband was able to escape as well. “My husband was shaking in the airport, but he managed to get out.”

Another Iranian woman, IM Sarasadat Khademalsharieh, joined the list of head scarf rebels at the 2022 FIDE World Rapid and Blitz Championships in December. WGM Atousa Pourkashiyan, an Iranian US resident, also went without a head scarf at that event. In 2014, the Iranian Women’s team finished 20th at the Chess Olympiad, all players from that team have now left Iran. Khademalsharieh relocated to Spain, Pourkashiyan to the US. WGM Mitra Hejazipour is in France, and WGM Ghazal Hakimifard in Switzerland. Iran has also had problems holding onto their male players. Former Iranian #1s GM Alireza Firouzja and GM Elshan Moradiabadi now reside in France and the US, respectively.

Khademalsharieh, playing for the first time with unrestricted hair (Photo: Lennart Ootes)

Another issue affecting Iranian players is the expectation that they will refuse to play against Israelis, a rule that exists in all sports for Iranian competitors. The two countries have had hostile relations since the Iranian revolution in 1979. At the same event where Derakhshani got into trouble, her 15-year-old brother Borna was also banned from the national team for playing a game against GM Alexander Huzman from Israel. This “protest” was even less planned than Bayat’s. According to Borna, he had no idea what his opponent’s nationality was until after the game.

In 2019, Iranian GMs Parham Maghsoodloo and Amin Tabatabaei played games against Israelis at the Sunway Sitges Chess Festival leading to some short-lived speculation that the boycott policy had been changed. Afterwards an Iranian state news agency published an interview with Maghsoodloo where he apologized and claimed he didn’t know the nationality of his opponents. Six months later, the Iranian Chess Federation elected a new president, Hassan Tamini. Tamini has never played a FIDE rated chess game and had never held a position with a large chess organization before becoming president. He was previously the head of the Morality Police at Tehran Medical University, the organization responsible for enforcing mandatory head scarves.

FIDE, the chess world’s governing body, has had a varying response to all this. For years, FIDE formally avoided pairing Iranians and Israelis to play against each other, giving no opportunity for boycotts to happen. That changed in 2018 when Arkady Dvorkovich won the FIDE presidential election and reversed the policy. At the 2020 FIDE general assembly a resolution was passed threatening Iran with “targeted punishments” if the boycotts continued. In response, the Iranian Chess Federation released a statement claiming that the boycotts were not mandated but instead a “personal decision” of the players. Sports federations in Iran have banned multiple athletes from the national teams in chess and soccer explicitly for playing against Israelis. A large number of Iranian athletes competing in chess, judo, soccer, wrestling and other sports have fled the country and confirm that the boycotts against Israelis are mandatory. Since that time, numerous games have been boycotted and no further action was taken by FIDE.

The "Amir Kabir University uprising" in September of 2022 in Tehran (Photo: Darafsh, Creative Commons)

Contacted for comment, FIDE Chief communication officer David Llada says that the situation is complicated: “The difficulty in taking action lies in the fact that for FIDE, protecting the players and the chess community is a much bigger priority than punitive actions against a federation. Iranian players and officers receive instructions from their government, and not following them can have serious consequences for them — this is something that has to be clearly understood. Suspending the federation entirely on these grounds is an extreme measure that could bring disastrous consequences for chess in the country.”

A blanket ban against the whole federation would not be totally unprecedented. The Iranian Judo Federation, and by extension all of its athletes, are currently serving a four year ban from international judo after Iranian Saeid Mollaei was allegedly asked to lose a match on purpose to avoid facing an Israeli at the 2019 Judo World Championships. After reporting what he was asked to do, Mollaei fled Iran to Germany and won a Silver Medal at the 2020 Olympics representing Mongolia.

The 2020 Women’s World Championship wouldn’t be the last time that Shohreh Bayat got into trouble for resisting the Iranian regime, although this time the trouble would come from a different source. While working as an arbiter at the 2022 Fischer Random World Championships, she decided to wear a shirt with the Iranian protest motto “Women, Life Freedom.” According to Bayat, “Arkady [ed note: Arkady Dvorkovich is the President of FIDE] got so annoyed with me. A FIDE official asked me to remove it. I said it was not against the dress code. He said I was right.” The pressure to remove the shirt continued, inching closer to becoming a direct order without quite crossing over that line. “A FIDE official told me that Arkady was officially asking me to not wear the T-shirt. I said if it's official, I want you to send it in a written form. Nothing has ever been sent to me.”

Bayat and the "Women, Life, Freedom" shirt (Photo: Lennart Ootes)

David Llada concedes that there is no FIDE arbiter dress code for Bayat to violate: “This is true, and it is something FIDE should fix ASAP.” However, he stands behind the decision to ask Bayat to remove the shirt: “FIDE officials need to follow political neutrality while on duty, and of all the official positions one can hold, that of an arbiter is the one that demands higher standards of integrity, neutrality, and discretion. No matter how noble or uncontroversial the cause is, doing activism from that role is inappropriate and unprofessional.”

Arkady Dvorkovich’s job as FIDE president is far from the most prominent one he’s ever held; it must be considered a step down from Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, a post he held from 2012 to 2018. Iran has always been an important ally for Russia, even more so since the invasion of Ukraine. The Russian Federation relies partly on drones manufactured by Iran for its attacks on civilian infrastructure and has historically been the main supplier of arms and weaponry to Iran. Both countries face heavy sanctions from the United States and European Union. Dvorkovich has often associated with fellow politicians in his official capacities with FIDE. Russian President Vladimir Putin was invited to make a statement at the opening ceremony of the 2021 Online Olympiad. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a speech at the 2022 Olympiad.

Narendra Modi addresses the Olympiad crowd while Dvorkovich applauds on the left. Also in attendance Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin and Sports Minister Anurag Thakur. (Photo: Lennart Ootes)

The categorization of the request to not wear the shirt continued to vacillate back and forth from official to unofficial. “The next day he (Dvorkovich) sent a private message to me, he said this is a personal request, asking me to not make the tournament political and take off the T-shirt.” Bayat carefully considered her options. “I told him I wouldn’t wear my T-shirt for one day but I wanted to think about it, I wanted to do the right thing.” Eventually she decided to replace the shirt with a different one that perhaps Arkady would find more acceptable. “I wore a Ukrainian dress, I dedicated it to the Ukrainian flight which was shot down by the Iranian regime.”

Bayat in her "Ukraine Dress" (Photo: Lennart Ootes)

Bayat had been a member of the FIDE Arbiters’ Commission, but after the battle with Dvorkovich that would change. “My federation nominated me. They said they were very happy with my work, they were talking about putting me in a higher position. Other federations like Hong Kong and New Zealand also nominated me. Then the list was published on the FIDE website, I was the only one removed from every commission.” She was offered a spot on the new Women’s Commission, but accepting the job could have been awkward. The new Women’s Commission secretary, Shadi Paridar, is also the current Vice President of the Iranian Chess Federation.

Dvorkovich, second from left, at the King Salman rapid and blitz, a FIDE event named after the Saudi head of state. (Photo: Amruta Mokal, FIDE)

FIDE denies that Bayat’s position on the arbiters’ Commission was removed in retaliation. According to David Llada: “All FIDE commissions undergo a profound renovation every four years. 11 of the 15 commissions had a new chairperson appointed during 2022. Over 60% of the 285 people who are part of the commissions have changed during this renovation process.” Bayat shared multiple private messages with Lichess from FIDE officials who seem sure the position on the commission was removed in retaliation for Bayat’s clothing choices at the Fischer Random World Championships.

Bayat’s future with FIDE is unclear. She was not invited to work as an arbiter at the most recent FIDE event, the 2022 Rapid and Blitz World Championships. Fortunately for Bayat, there are many other organizations that organize chess tournaments, so a potential FIDE exile would not be career-ending. She’s integrated well into the British chess community, including being named the Head of Events for the English Chess Federation. She also works for numerous non-FIDE events throughout Europe and in the US. Bayat is stoic about the consequences of her clash with Dvorkovich and FIDE: “I thought that this would be the outcome, I was ready for it.”

The Iranian Chess Federation was contacted for comment on this article and did not respond.

Titled Arena Announcement(s)

2023-01-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

Announcing our schedule for upcoming Titled Arenas!

We're pleased to announce the schedule for our upcoming Titled Arenas!

All events will be preceded by a warm-up arena open to all players with a minimum of 20 rated games in the relevant time control (excluding 960 warm-up, where the minimum rated games are 10).

Prizes unless otherwise stated:

1. $ 500, 2. $ 250, 3. $ 125, 4. $ 75, 5. $ 50.

Participation requirement: Verified FIDE or NM title (see below)

markdown 
| Event                 | Date               | Link                                             | Warm-up                                            |
| --------------------- | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------- |
| January 2023 Blitz TA | 7th January 2023   | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/jan23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/jan23bua) |
| January 2023 TA       | 21st January 2023  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/jan23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/jan23wua) |
| February 2023 960 TA  | 4th February 2023  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/960feb23) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/96wfeb23) |
| February 2023 TA      | 18th February 2023 | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/feb23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/feb23wua) |
| March 2023 Blitz TA   | 4th March 2023     | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/mar23bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/mar23bua) |
| March 2023 TA         | 18th March 2023    | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/mar23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/mar23wua) |
| April 2023 960 TA     | 1st April 2023     | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/960apr23) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/96wapr23) |
| April 2023 TA         | 15th April 2023    | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/apr23lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/apr23wua) |

Practical Information

Title Verification

Streaming

Lichess End of Year Update 2022

2023-01-01T00:00:00.000+03:00

Happy New Year!

Like that, 2022 is over! Is it just us, or does it feel like it has flown by? 2022 has been an unprecedentedly eventful year for chess, and it’s been no exception for us at Lichess. Thank you to everyone who makes it possible – to all those who volunteer, to all those who share their spare CPU power, to all those who spread the word about Lichess, and of course to all those who financially support us.

Here’s a recap of some of the work we’ve done over the course of the year.

New Features

Puzzles by Openings

The ever-expanding puzzle set is now also organized by the openings that gave rise to the tactics. Look for your favorite openings on the overview page or follow the recommendations directly from the analysis board.

Notifications

A new preference page gives you granular control over notification types and how they're delivered. Streamers going live, study invites, and forum mention notifications are now available for devices & push to your browser. You can also once again find the option to receive a daily recap email of your correspondence games we added earlier this year.

A new push-to-many system allows efficient delivery of streamer live notifications to thousands of online subscribers. We have plans for additional multicast notifications in the future.

Opening explorer

We optimized the opening explorer to the point that it can now serve all rated Lichess games (rather than a sample, as before) without requiring more expensive hardware. You can now see what players in the lower rating brackets are playing, more easily do sound statistics across rating groups, and are more likely to find useful numbers and games deep into your favorite lines. Along the way, we made small improvements, like adding performance ratings to the personal opening explorer and adding arrows to indicate moves in referenced games.

A new PGN viewer makes for better embedded games in forum posts and is available as a standalone widget for third-party projects. The coordinate trainer now has a reverse mode where you can practice notation by naming the highlighted squares and more options to customize your training.

There’s also been countless bug fixes, progress on planned features, and many smaller improvements. We’ve been slacking on keeping the changelog in sync (sorry, check back soon!), but until then, or if you want to follow everything live, check out the commit log on GitHub. The commit messages are often understandable even for the non-programmers among us.

Technical Updates

Backend

In July, @arex gave a talk at the TNG Big Tech Day 2022. It gives a great overview of the latest state of our backend architecture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crKNBSpO2_I

Scala 3 and the JVM

One of the mammoth tasks of the last few months has been upgrading the version of Scala (the programming language that much of Lichess uses) from version 2 to version 3. Now that we’re out of the woods there, we’re pleased to say there have been major performance gains across the board and that Lichess is running more efficiently than ever!

However it was not all a smooth ride, and the migration surfaced some long-standing issues! In the first updated versions we started to notice erratic CPU spikes after 24 hours of uptime.

Red lines indicate updates/restarts. Frequent bug fix releases after the initial migration masked the issue for a while.

After a call for help, and thanks to the amazing community experts and discussions on forums across the web, we nailed it to bad JVM code cache tuning.

As stressful as this was, we’re ultimately lucky it happened, because we learned a lot about profiling the JVM and got useful hints along the way. Using jvm-async-profiler we optimized our production setup and are pleased to announce that lila is now using half the CPU compared to previous versions, for similar use.

These improvements were made with the community on our public discord, where you can find (and help) our developers. A more in-depth of our JVM issues can be found on thibault’s blog, as well as his opinion on the improvements Scala 3 brings to Lichess.

Frontend builds

We switched from rollup to esbuild and yarn 1 to pnpm, for major build time improvements, on the order of 10 minutes down to 2 minutes for a clean build. A new custom build script gives much more convenient watching builds for and across the frontend packages.

Other notable changes include the addition of a new server lila-http (Rust, axum) to offload large tournaments, the addition of an API that allows using external engines on the analysis board (official providers under development), tweaks to lag compensation (now also taking into account low-level WebSocket pings), and a fishnet update bringing the latest Stockfish 15.1 for server-side analysis.

Moderation

We’re typically fairly quiet on specifics around moderation, but this year we have decided to pull back the curtain a little on total activity, to highlight the huge contribution that our moderation team makes to keeping Lichess a fun place to be. In 2022, our team closed over 650,000 reports, including 91,000 reports of cheating, almost 340,000 reports of communication infractions, 82,000 reports of sandbagging or boosting, and 138,000 miscellaneous reports for other disallowed behaviors. Many of these reports were created automatically by Lichess itself, but a huge number also come from you, the users of Lichess. We have many systems in place but your reports really do help us keep Lichess fun for all. Here's more about reporting, fair play, and communications guidelines.

Reports are not the only mechanism we use to identify where actions need to be taken, but in total, combined with our other systems, Lichess flagged over 61,000 accounts for cheating using external assistance, flagged over 25,000 accounts for sandbagging or boosting, sent almost 200,000 warning messages to users for various infractions, removed chat permissions from 60,000 accounts, and communicated with users over 33,000 times through our appeals system.

These numbers may seem high to some, or low to others. Lichess has many millions of active users with millions of games played each day. The vast majority of users follow the rules, are well-behaved, and play fairly, so thank you!

We also added a new AI-based cheat detection tool, Kaladin, that we spoke about in the mid-year update.

Organisation

The Lichess team is always growing, which is both great in general, and necessary with the ever-growing size, complexity, and offerings of our site, mobile app, and other software. You can read about 25 of our contributors in our Advent Calendar post!

As well as growing in size, we’ve also been putting a huge amount of effort into updating our organisational structure and processes, to ensure we keep offering a great platform to all our users (and contributors) for the future.

Some of the organisational highlights this year include:

Hiring @veloce as a full-time mobile developer! Given we rely almost entirely on small community donations, hiring another full-time developer is a major step for us, and one we’re very excited about. The new app is developed in the open and will start accepting contributions when the foundations are set.
Additionally, over this year we’ve significantly increased the number of skilled and experienced members of the team we regularly contract to work for us. Just under 20 people (from full-time to quite casual part-time) are hired by us (roughly equivalent to 6 full-time positions). We hope to increase this to provide more support to our users, more improvements, and more efficiency overall. Plus, to increase professional opportunities within chess.
Ensuring our staff and team have the freedom to learn and try out new skills to continue developing professionally is really important to us. The freedom to try new things and fail with no expectations or risks is vital in learning. So we set up a small budget to allow anyone in the team to ask for help in any books, training courses, or software they might need to learn new skills or develop existing ones.
Over 500 people got in touch with us to support our work in moving to an association d’interet general and investigating options in other countries, including the US. Teams within Lichess have begun reaching out to some of the people willing to volunteer with the most relevant skills we need right now.
Working with traditional print media to implement DMCA procedures.
We’ve established and set up several “councils” (like committees within the charity organisation) to help us manage and handle some of the areas within Lichess. These largely existed informally before, but now have more structure and organisation around them. We plan to share more on these soon!

One of our most critical councils is the Finance Council, led by a Lichess trustee who’s also an economist. The Finance Council ensures Lichess can stay financially viable both today and in the future, considering future risks, making projections, keeping our books up to date, and communicating with our independent accountants and auditors.

Speaking of books, we believe now is a good time to share more details about our finances. As mentioned in a blog publish in October, we retain the services of a French accountancy firm to compile and sign off our annual accounts, which are then reviewed by an independent auditor. This happened for the first time in 2021, and you can see our 2021 accounts.

For the oddballs who don’t enjoy reading French charity accounts, we’ve summarised the important numbers below.

markdown
FY 2021 | EUR
--- | ---:
**Income** |
Donations | 552,701
Merchandise | 19,226
Services | 6,613
Interest | 383
Other income | 177
**Expenses** |
Salaries and employer taxes | 207,933
Servers and hosting | 68,364
Admin fees | 24,654
Prize payouts | 24,434
Content expenses | 20,308
Other admin costs | 9,549
Other charges | 4,855
Depreciation | 1,945
Equipment | 845
**Totals** |
Income | 579,101
Expenses | 362,887
Surplus | 216,214

Our 2022 numbers will probably be published in the spring (or June at the very latest). At this point, we believe they should show a smaller surplus than the previous year, due to higher expenses, but still a surplus, meaning that our income exceeded our expenses, allowing us to save for bad months. A surplus is always better than a deficit, but with the global inflation we expect a significant increase of our expenses in 2023.

Some interesting facts:

Our average donation is of 5.64€ - Lichess is grassroot funded!
About 0.3% of our active userbase donate
Donors from the US and Germany make up over 50% of our donations

Content & Community

At Lichess we cherish freedom in all its forms. The recent events at Twitter reminded us to create a Mastodon account. Mastodon is a FOSS alternative to Twitter. We encourage all our Twitter followers meet us there.

Thanks to the community which put on great tournaments and events on Lichess! Here’s some of the higher profile events that Lichess hosted, supported or organised:

Lichess sent two players to a chess World Championship! GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov and GM Hikaru Nakamura were victorious on Lichess over 86,201 entries to win their respective finals and play OTB in Iceland, where Nakamura became World Fischer Random Champion 2022. Many thanks to Charlotte Chess Centre and Offerspill Sjakklubb for their co-organisation of this event with us.
This year, we organised 25 Titled Arenas, paying out a total of $25,000 in prize money to professional chess players, and helping provide more opportunities and accessible regular prize fund events to the chess community as a whole.
In total, around 95,000 players took part across all four of our seasonal marathons this year, for a chance to win a coveted seasonal trophy!
Lichess hosted two United States Chess Federation scholastic tournaments, organised by the Charlotte Chess Centre. That is more than 1,500 children who took part in these national events played on Lichess.
The Lichess Swiss team hosted over 8,000 tournaments in the Swiss tournament format, breaking over 250,000 members in the team!
Candidates coverage including video recaps
The Lichess Twitch and Youtube channels did 119 live streams, mostly using the “Lichess Plays” format where viewers play against strong titled players like IM John Bartholomew, IM Eric Rosen, WGM Sabina Foisor and more.
Broadcasts growth, added standings feature.
Grassroots tournament organizing continues to be strong on Lichess. The Lichess Bundesliga had almost half a million participants in 2022, with more than 500 active teams. New teams can be registered for free by contacting the league manager.
Another grassroots event, the Mega Team Battle, happens every other Friday. It’s a gigantic arena, often with more than 300 teams and thousands of participants.

You may have met some of us at the Montreal meetup. Thanks for coming!

We also worked with a number of other organisations on various projects:

Over the course of the year, we provided technical support and custom help to over 400 schools or educational institutions, aiding the provision of free, accessible chess education to educational institutions all around the world. Assuming the average student population of public schools, this could be estimated to positively impact 200,000 schoolkids and students!
We donated content we commissioned and produced for the Candidates Tournament to the Kelantan Chess Association for the Disabled, to produce a limited edition book. All profit from the sale of this book went towards supporting the disabled chess community in Malaysia.
Members of the Lichess team met with the French Ministry of Education, to discuss projects and initiatives related to the provision of chess education, tech education and FOSS within the French education system.
We offered free advice and support to over a dozen private companies or other organisations – some outside of chess, looking to get active within it, others within chess relying on code and software we had produced.
Lichess continued to support Free Open Source Software (FOSS) within the chess ecosystem. In a milestone for chess, in 2022 we welcomed FIDE into the FOSS community, with their game viewer using Lichess AGPL code.
Several companies within chess began using, or continued to use Lichess FOSS code, licensed under the AGPL, in order to develop their products (such as FIDE Online Arena, GChess, Clono, and many others). Lichess is happy that our FOSS code supports private industry and innovation within chess, where those companies respect the license of the code, the contributions and work of the community, and recognise the impact charitable altruism has on their business.

Epilogue

We hope you enjoyed Lichess in 2022 and wish you a happy new year!

The November Titled Arena 960 does a 360 with Bortnyk first, Carlsen seventh

2022-12-04T00:00:00.000+03:00

Fischer Random lives up to its name. Well, at least the random part.

For the first few millennia, life on this planet made a certain degree of sense. Creatures would eat, reproduce and subsequently die followed by their offspring doing roughly the same. Then, not much more than a hundred years ago, we humans devised a way to harness electricity, that weird stuff originally figured to be used by the Gods to indicate displeasure with us, to emit light, power machines, play video games, and now to communicate with other humans anywhere on earth without anyone leaving their house. Admittedly, not leaving the house has complicated the original eating and mating aspects of multicellular life, but modern makeshift solutions have been devised.

One particularly pointless and strange activity that has increased in popularity due to not leaving one's house is chess. For us chess players, the miracle of the internet should continually amaze us on a daily basis, for we can now witness the greatest chess player ever play, in real time, for free. In contrast, if we wished to know what, say, Capablanca was up to at the height of his powers in, say, early 1923, we would need to wait over a year for a newspaper report of the 1924 New York Tournament because apparently Capablanca didn't actually play a single publicly recorded game in 1923. In contrast, Magnus Carlsen has played 467 games on https://lichess.org alone this year and over ten thousand(!) total on this site.

Though all this may mean we are currently reveling in the glories of Caissa's new golden age it must be admitted that there are some inherent limitations to the wonders we are witnessing via this magical medium. Carlsen has yet to play a single Classical or even Rapid game on Lichess, and the vast majority of his games (currently 8,944) are of the "bullet" variety. One gets the feeling Capablanca would have probably preferred a regular bullet than to play such a debauched mockery of the Royal Game, but there's no denying the entertainment value of watching the greatest among us reduced to a mouse-twitching blundering mess.

Speaking of which, the November Titled Arena featured its share of mishaps befalling the cyberspace titans of the chess world, including Magnus Carlsen himself playing as "DrNykterstein". The eventual winner of the topsy-turvey affair was Grandmaster Oleksandr Bortnyk ("Night-King96") who has an uncanny knack for winning these events. Most recently, Bortnyk was the victor of the September 1+0 Titled Arena, a time control he is clearly comfortable in given his 76% berserk rate throughout this tournament, allowing him significantly more games (42 total) throughout the two hour contest than many of his illustrious rivals (Carlsen, by contrast, played 33 games).

In any event where a favorite such as Carlsen does not win, it is tempting to rubberneck any and all disasters befalling our hero. Let's give into that temptation for a moment by looking at few of his most human moments:

https://lichess.org/study/FkRG5wgV/PH1Gw2Ns#73

https://lichess.org/study/FkRG5wgV/Spreg1Ij#1

https://lichess.org/study/FkRG5wgV/zz9GTIjJ#43

It should probably be again mentioned that the above miscues are due in no small part to the prevalence of berserking in these events, thus reducing the stately 3+2 time control of this event into, essentially a "bullet" affair. That said, there were some attractive games in spite of the aforementioned constraints. Here's Grandmaster Bortnyk creating a nice 960 "miniature":

https://lichess.org/study/FkRG5wgV/Yzbu0X3c#1

Finally, if readers will forgive the indulgence, here's, from a sporting perspective, an utterly insignificant game of mine from this event. However, from an entertainment perspective, perhaps it's worth a mention:

https://lichess.org/study/FkRG5wgV/Ew1gYO6t#1

In any event, congratulations once again to Grandmaster Bortnyk on winning yet another Titled Area. We look forward to seeing him and many more (including Magnus of course, whom we are all deeply indebted to for so often gracing our server) next month for another 1+0 Rumble of the Routers on https://lichess.org.

Women Candidates Pool B Kicks Off in Khiva, Uzbekistan

2022-11-29T00:00:00.000+03:00

PHOTO: FIDE/Timur Sattarov

Four players, two games, two draws, the first day of Women’s Candidate’s Pool B was concluded. The event is taking place from 29 November to 11 December, and the winner qualifies to the Candidates finals, facing Pool A winner, Lei Tingjie, for the right to participate in the Women’s World Championship Match against Wenjun Ju.

During yesterday’s opening ceremony, the highest rated player of each pair, chose between boxes containing either a white or a black queen; Both Aleksandra Goryachkina and Kateryna Lagno chose the one containing a black, giving the white pieces to their opponents for the 1st and 3rd game of their matches.

The Event Format

For the Women Candidates 2023, an 8 players knockout tournament format was adopted by the FIDE Council, played in 2 separate pools of 4 players - with the winners of each meeting in the final match, fighting for the world championship spot.

According to the event regulations, the first two rounds shall be played with 4 games matches, while the final with a 6 games match.

In case the match is tied, four games of 15 minutes plus 10 seconds increment shall be played;
In case the match is still tied, two games of 5 minutes plus 3 seconds increment shall be played;
In case the match is still tied, a game of 3 minutes plus 2 seconds increment shall be played until a player wins, with colors alternating.

For more details, you can read the tournament regulations.

The total prize fund is 250,000 euros, with 60,000 going to the winner.

The Pool’s Lineup

Pool B is going to treat us with a much-anticipated match, between Aleksandra Goryachkina, the runner-up of 2020 Women’s World Championship match and 2nd highest rated woman since November 2020 rating list, versus Alexandra Kosteniuk, the 2008-2010 Women’s World Champion and 2021 Women’s World Cup winner.

The second match of the pool features yet another former World Women’s Champion, Tan Zhongyi, holding the title for 2017-18, facing Kateryna Lagno, former women’s Blitz and Rapid chess Champion, and two times European Women Champion.

With four highly experienced and competitive players, exciting games and close matches are definitely to be expected - let us know whom you are rooting for in the comments!

Round 1 Game 1

Alexandra Kosteniuk v Aleksandra Goryachkina

PHOTO: FIDE/Timur Sattarov

With the Berlin Defence played, the players had deviated from the main lines already by move 9; Kosteniuk played Kh1 preparing a Ng1 – Ne2 maneuver, keeping the options of f4 or Ng3 aiming for the f5 square, depending on her opponent’s play. Goryachkina replied with the fairly flexible 9…b6. By move 16, the two players had reached an equal on first sight position, however Kosteniuk’s g3 allowed Goryachkina to execute a new plan, rerouting her knight all the way from f4 to the queenside — winning a tempo in most steps!

https://lichess.org/study/embed/td4camFK/89uruy04#33

Indeed, she began with 17… Nh3 18. Rf1 Ng5 19. Qe2 Nf7 20. b3 Nd6 21. Nh4 Nb5 (threatening Bd4 – Nc3!) In the resulting position, white had the option to play f4 exf4 gxf4 and postpone c3 until her opponent played f5, with a still complicated game and good chances, however she decided to play c3 first. After retreating her knight, Goryachkina played the a4 - a5 pawn break and soon managed to paralyze her opponent’s position. Black played f5; keeping up the tension, activating her queen on h5 and later playing b4 to further weaken white’s kingside and trying to invade with her pieces would be better. Goryachkina indeed managed to create an isolated f5 pawn for her opponent that was proven insufficient (she also had to keep in mind her own doubled c pawns), and the two players agreed a draw after move 40.

Zhongyi Tan v Kateryna Lagno

PHOTO: FIDE/Timur Sattarov

For the first time in their games against each other, the two players explored a fairly solid line of the Queen’s Gambit Declined. Lagno tried to gain an advantage on the queenside with 11..a5 followed by Na6 - b5-b4. Tan’s 18. axb4 allowed black to gain the bishop pair with Nxb4 (she however decided to give her own lightsquared bishop for her opponent’s knight later in the game).

https://lichess.org/study/embed/td4camFK/ymfsXSJ3#41

However, the two players kept the game quite balanced and not managing to gain any substantial advantage, they simplified into an equal endgame and agreed a draw on move 40.

Lichess Coverage

Daily, Lichess will be providing a broadcast of the games played in real-time. Stay tuned on our social media and blog for more chess content in the coming days!

Settlement Reached in Stockfish v ChessBase

2022-11-21T00:00:00.000+03:00

In July of 2021 we reported that legal proceedings had begun between the developers of Stockfish, the world’s strongest chess engine, and Chessbase GmbH, developers of various popular chess software. After more than a year of wrangling, that lawsuit has now come to an end with the parties agreeing to a settlement.

Per the agreement, Chessbase concedes they used Stockfish in violation of its license in two of their products, Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6. They had previously asserted for years that Houdini was an original creation. They will be prevented from distributing Stockfish in modified or unmodified form for a period of one year, with the exception of re-downloads of already purchased products. This would seem to mean that their big holiday-season product ChessBase 17, which will be released in on November 23rd, will not come packaged with the strongest chess engine available, nor will it contain any of the Stockfish-derived engines that ChessBase has sold in the past.

Furthermore, ChessBase agrees that any future public comparisons they make between their engines and Stockfish will be truthful and use the strongest version of Stockfish. Chessbase had previously published comparisons between Fat Fritz 2, using the newest version of Stockfish, against an older version of Stockfish to try and demonstrate that Fat Fritz was stronger.

Chessbase will also be required to post notices on all web pages connected to Fat Fritz 2 or Houdini 6 making clear that those products come from Stockfish. The YouTube interview where Fat Fritz 2 “head coach” Albert Silver talks about developing Fat Fritz “almost from scratch” now awkwardly contains a notice mentioning the use of Stockfish and its license with the comments section closed. A ChessBase blog promoting that video has now apparently been deleted.

The agreement also includes the necessity to hire a Free Software Compliance Officer to assure that further violations do not occur. Critically, the agreement includes no financial compensation for the Stockfish team, not even legal fees. There are fines for violating the settlement, but they would be paid to the Free Software Foundation Europe and not the Stockfish team.

Announcement on the Official Stockfish Blog

KontraJako narrowly wins TA Arena ahead of mutdpro, MatthewG-p4p

2022-11-08T00:00:00.000+03:00

And why Sergei Zhigalko's epic near-comeback might have been the story of the tournament

The anonymous Grandmaster "Kontrajako" edged out mutdpro (GM Minh Le Tuan) in last Saturday's Titled Arena with MatthewG-p4p (IM Matvey Galchenko) coming in third (an auspicious result for the young Russian International Master). The top two places were decided in the final minute when kontraJako prevailed against MahammadMuradli2003 whilst mutdpro lost to fourth-place finisher Zhigalko_Sergei.

To 'zerk or not to 'zerk

One interesting aspect of the Lichess Titled Arena is the "berserk" feature and the different approaches participants take to it - some "zerk" rarely (or only against much lower-rated opponents), some "zerk" situationally, and a handful, such as mutdpro, seem to berserk practically every game as a matter of principle. The hows and whys of when to berserk can play a major role in who ultimately wins these events and is worth a closer look. For instance, let's examine the games of our fourth place finisher, Sergei Zhigalko. Why Sergei? Well, mainly because GM Zhigalko streams practically all of his online games on Youtube but also because Sergei's epic (and highly entertaining) tilt and recovery midway through this tournament had a major effect upon the ultimate standings.

Anatomy of a Tilt

Perhaps the most important ingredient in a good disaster story is a promising beginning, such as Zhigalko's first dozen games in this tournament in which he went undefeated, emerging as the tournament leader. Among those games was a critical win against mutdpro:

https://lichess.org/study/BtCgti67/5l3yR0Ry#45

However, in round 13, our hero finally meets his nemesis in the form of the mysterious kontraJako who, as we shall see later, specializes in spirited defense:

https://lichess.org/study/BtCgti67/R8Hy4jf5#34

Perhaps disheartened by losing this pawn-up endgame, Sergei then drops a game to (the well named) drop_stone but quickly rights the ship with two berserking victories in a row only to encounter kontraJako for a second time. Sergei sensibly refrains from berserking this game and what results is quite possibly the game of the tournament:

https://lichess.org/study/BtCgti67/qgbVAEmY#22

After this second loss, our intrepid Zhigalko, recognizing the need for drastic measures to erase kontraJako's increasingly large tournament lead, begins a topsy-turvey run of berserking wins and losses to more or less keep pace. However, after a loss against PaulfromSPb, Sergei runs into the "Jako" one last time:

https://lichess.org/study/BtCgti67/h6EgAjFE#81

This third and arguably worst loss against the tournament leader (and eventual winner) officially begins poor Sergei's descent into Tilt-Town, population him. Five more losses, all whilst berserking, follow, leading to a dramatic pause in his YouTube stream.

One might wonder why Zhigalko continued to berserk throughout all of these defeats. The answer isn't simple, but perhaps partly has to do with delicate nature of how berserking functions in top lichess events. In some ways, berserking is a sort of chess version of the "Prisoners Dilemna".

markdown

---

| **Prisoner's Dilemma** | Prisoner A snitches | Prisoner A remains silent |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Prisoner B snitches | two years jail for both | three years jail for A |
| Prisoner B remains silent | three years yail for B | one year jail for both |

---

| **Berserker's Dilemma** | White doesn't berserk | White berserks |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Black doesn't berserk | No advantage | Advantage for Black |
| Black berserks | Advantage for White | Minor advantage for both |

---

Of course a big difference between the two is that the second player to berserk is aware of the first player's irrevocable choice. This would trivialize "Prisoner's Dilemma", as presumably few prisoners, knowing that the other has already chosen to remain silent, would also choose to remain silent when they can "win" by snitching. Interestingly, this doesn't hold for Berserker's Dilemma for two main reasons. First, and probably foremost, berserking isn't necessarily a bad thing as it offers several advantages regardless of what your opponent chooses to do: it increases the reward for winning, it shortens the game (a major factor in online arena events), and the disadvantage of having less time than your opponent is mitigated by the fact you can think on your opponent's time and, moreover, your opponent cannot think on your (nonexistent) time. Second, the decision to berserk exists not in the vacuum of a single game but throughout the entirety of the tournament. What this means in practical terms is that your opponent may decide that they stand to gain more by "encouraging" you to berserk in the future by berserking back since, after all, once you've berserked, all outcomes are now more positive from their perspective than if you hadn't. Thus, it could be that Grandmaster Zhigalko had, during his seven game skid, hoped for more "cooperation" from his opponents, but alas, instead fell victim to his own prowess at bullet chess, for none save the fearless mutdpro was willing to accept Sergei's invitations to dance.

In any event, our saga does not end here, for Zhigalko, being the indefatigable fighter he is, now picks himself up, stops beserking, and embarks on an incredible run of 9(!) consecutive wins, culminating in dashing mutdpro's last-minute hopes of snatching the tournament away from kontraJako:

https://lichess.org/study/BtCgti67/uO2TcPtF

To sum up - the tournament winner not only went 3-0 vs Zhigalko, but also tilted him to the point where Sergei eventually, like some sort of incredible chess hulk, began demolishing all of kontraJako's rivals throughout the crucial last half-hour of the event. Well played, Jako. Well played.

Lichess Recruits Full-Time Mobile Developer

2022-11-05T00:00:00.000+03:00

In some our recent updates, we shared Lichess' future plans. With an eye on our future, we have exciting news!

Because of our community's generosity, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve hired a full-time mobile developer to work on the Lichess mobile applications available on iOS and Android, starting from 1 November 2022.

The number of users who access Lichess via the mobile app has only increased year on year for several years, and we expect this number to continue growing.

The original Lichess mobile app was written as a hobby project, and maintained on a voluntary basis — but with the growth of Lichess over the last few years it requires more time and commitment than the volunteer community (amazing as it is) can provide alone.

Similarly, for several years, improving the mobile app has been one of the most common pieces of feedback we receive in emails, the forums, on reddit and other social media. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, we are in a position to begin making that a reality.

Plus, while not everyone may own a PC or laptop, on a global level they usually will own some kind of smartphone instead. As a result, a light mobile app which is technologically accessible will be key to Lichess’s charitable objectives to promote and encourage the play and study of chess, and the use of free open source software, globally.

With the mobile app becoming so important to Lichess and its users, it was a no-brainer (once resources were available) to hire a permanent employee to focus on it, and we hope this is the first of many. Without further ado, meet veloce, and some more detail in the plans for the mobile app below.

First of all, can you tell us some of your plans for the mobile app?

The mobile app will be completely rebuilt from the ground. We’ll use Flutter, an UI toolkit that will allow us to achieve a much better quality than with the current application.

The main focus will be the user experience, I’d like the new app to be more intuitive and easy to use.

[ed. the current mobile app, lichobile, will be maintained but receive no new features while the new mobile app is being built.]

That sounds awesome – what do you think your milestones for the mobile app will be, and where will users be able to follow your progress?

The first feature that I will implement are puzzles. They’re a good fit on mobile and the current app doesn’t have the latest version of puzzles. It also misses puzzle streak, puzzle storm and puzzle racer. Adding this will bring a lot of value immediately to the new app.

The main place where things will happen is on Github. If you have a technical background you can follow the progress there. We will also aim to communicate about the progress.

It’s too soon to have a roadmap, but we will certainly have one in the future and give an update. It’s hard to estimate a release date, but I hope to have a first release of the new app out in the first half of 2023.

Can you share a bit of your technical background with the community? How did you get into mobile app developing? Any interesting previous clients?

I didn’t study computer science. I taught myself how to build websites when I was working for the head of research at the Aeronautics school ISAE-SUPAERO in Toulouse.

Then I worked a little as a PHP developer, but I realized there were better languages. So I switched to Scala and Typescript.

I got into mobile app development at my work in Paris when I was given a project for a bank to handle their factoring services. Since then I have worked mainly as a non-mobile dev. Anyway, it’s after that particular project that I decided to start developing the first Lichess mobile application, back in 2014!

You’ve had an account on Lichess since 2010 – that’s a long time! Do you have a particularly favourite Lichess memory, or experience?

I have witnessed Lichess steadily grow and improve since that time and I am still amazed by the progression. If I have to name one memory, that would be the first time Magnus Carlsen joined the platform to play a tournament. What an achievement!

Critical question. 1. e4 or 1. d4?

1. e4 of course!

That’s fortunate – 1. d4 would have made you a pariah within the team. Outside of chess and coding, what other activities do you enjoy?

I enjoy traveling by bike a lot. My longest trip was 7500 km in Norway, Denmark and Germany, it was amazing! More recently I got into sailing, and I tried land sailing too, this is a really fun activity! I enjoy singing too, in a modern choir.

Thanks for the chat!

Taking Lichess to the Next Level

2022-10-28T00:00:00.000+03:00

Our current setup and our future plans

Last month, we published a blog about Lichess’s charity nonprofit status. In this post, we want to dive deeper into Lichess’s history, how we’re currently set up, and our plans for the future.

Between 2010 and 2016, virtually all of Lichess’s costs were covered by Lichess’s founder and main developer Thibault Duplessis. Lichess at the time was an association de fait, a basic association type that doesn’t require a formal legal structure.

However, even as early as 2015 it was obvious that this wasn't sustainable, as by that point the site’s monthly operating costs had grown to thousands of dollars per month.

(Photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash)

Therefore, in 2016, Lichess was formally registered under French law as an association loi 1901. This type of association applies to groups with clearly defined purposes that benefit the public, similar to charities. However, it’s quite easy to form one - the total number in France is over 1.5 million!

Like all French associations, Lichess has a formal charter that sets out how it works for the public benefit. Our official purpose is “to promote and encourage the teaching and practice of the game of chess and its variants” (“promouvoir et favoriser l'enseignement et la pratique du jeu d'échecs et de ses variantes”).

Lichess’s association status gives us legal recognition, access to banking services, and the ability to employ staff and rent or own property. We also have to pay our fair share of employer taxes and social security contributions for our three salaried employees with permanent contracts, one of whom is Thibault. We also pay some additional team members for their work in key areas such as development, content/community, general operations and site moderation, but they are technically contractors, not employees; in total our budget covers the equivalent of around seven full-time positions.

In terms of overall governance, the Lichess association currently has two trustees who are responsible for ensuring all its legal requirements are met. These are broadly similar to charity requirements in other countries. For instance, it’s important that Lichess only uses its resources to support its stated charitable purposes; no other use is permitted.

The last few years have seen significant developments in how Lichess is run as an organisation. We’ve retained the services of a French accountancy firm to help us manage our finances, whereas previously we relied on internal bookkeeping. Our accountants are responsible for compiling and signing off our annual accounts, which are then reviewed by an independent auditor. While we need to do this to satisfy the requirements for a higher charity designation (explained below), it also provides important oversight and reassurance, demonstrating that everything we receive goes to support our objectives.

(Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash)

Recently, we've also strengthened our internal processes by, for example, conducting internal mini-audits using reputable checklists to identify areas where we already conform with best practice but also areas where we can strive to do better. A small group within the team meets regularly to discuss financial matters, and similar groups and fora exist to discuss other important topics such as site moderation and strategy. Committees, terms of reference, agendas, minutes… Sure, it all may sound rather boring and dare we say “corporate”, but good governance isn’t just essential to our future, it also serves the best interests of our users, and so we need to do things properly.

In addition to being an association loi 1901, Lichess is eligible to be in a slightly higher tier known as an association d’intérêt général (“association [charity] of general interest”) - and in fact we’re currently completing the paperwork for it. The label applies to organisations that work for a broad public interest - broader than a typical community sports club or local charity. General interest associations also need to have at least 200 members and at least €46,000 deposited in the bank. That’s not an issue for us, as that’s around what it costs to run Lichess each month!

There's actually an even higher charity designation available in France: the association reconnue d'utilité publique (“recognised association of public utility”). This is for charities with a truly international scope that can credibly claim to benefit the wider public, such as Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and the Red Cross. Ultimately, this is what we’re aiming for.

What’s the point of the different tiers? Well, a charity’s designation demonstrates high levels of responsibility and transparency, and the higher designations also provide further benefits to donors. For example, once we become an association of general interest, our French donors will be able to make tax-deductible donations, meaning they can reduce their individual tax burden through supporting us. In theory, this should also apply to donors who are citizens of other EU countries, but the last bit of legislation supporting EU-wide application was passed in 2009 and we’re still waiting for it to be cleanly implemented. Classic EU.

(Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash - Sorry EU, we appreciate you, really, even if you are a bit slow...)

We’ve also been looking into options to set up a charitable presence in the United States, by either partnering with an existing charity or helping to set up a new independent 501(c)(3) organisation to support free open source software/technology in chess. This would allow US donors to make tax-deductible donations, and it might also help boost the global profile of our mission and activities. It will take a lot of work though, and we’ve only started the journey. Hopefully we’ll be able to say more about this soon!

We know that it won’t be easy to achieve these ambitions. We know that we’ll need to talk to awesome accountants and lovely lawyers, especially for the 501(c)(3) initiative. We know we’ll probably need to complete forms and produce reports, including annual end of year reports (which is something we want to do anyway). We know that all of this will increase our admin costs.

But we also see this as an exciting opportunity to make Lichess stronger. After all, we want to remove barriers that prevent people from playing chess, studying chess, learning chess and discovering free open source software (FOSS). We believe that what we’ve built – the fruits of centuries of collective collaboration – should be free for anyone to access. And by ‘free’, we mean free both as in freedom (libre) and also as in price (gratis). No trackers. No ads. We want to equitably support the chess community (players, content creators, professionals, etc) as well as the wider FOSS ecosystem. We understand that this stuff might not be as exciting as talking about a new feature, but we hope that our community and our supporters can appreciate its importance.

In fact, if you’ve managed to get this far, you might be just the sort of person we’re looking for – someone who’s clearly passionate about all things Lichess, even the minutiae. As we grow, we’re going to need more help from our community, and especially from skilled professionals who aren’t necessarily developers. Would you like to help? Do you have experience or skills in finance/accounting, law, nonprofit administration, communications, or something else that we could use? If so, we invite you to complete this short survey: https://forms.gle/TAAja3MqnbJRGgea9 (closes at 2359 CEST on Sunday 13 November).

To quote Lester Freamon, “We’re building something, here, detective, we’re building it from scratch. All the pieces matter.”

(Title image by Stable Diffusion, licensed under CC0 1.0)

Bortnyk victorious after NM ZugAddict somehow fails to win October TA

2022-10-16T00:00:00.000+03:00

Dozens of followers distraught

In a month full of surprises and controversy in the world of chess, yet another bombshell failed to occur when National Master John Chernoff (ZugAddict on https://lichess.org) was at no point a significant factor in yesterday's Titled Arena, finishing 141st out of 366 participants. When asked by absolutely no one to explain his unremarkable performance, Mr. Chernoff mumbled something about his mouse and bullet chess being an undignified activity to base a serious chess tournament on and left to turn on the bathtub faucet for his cat, "Bear".

With the field left wide open by the completely expected series of losses by NM Chernoff, two actual Grandmasters vied for first - Oleksandr Bortnyk ("Night-King96") and Daniel Naroditsky ("RebeccaHarris"), both managing to outpace their most famous rival, World #4 Alireza Firouzja ("alireza2003") after Firouzja stumbled near the end of the tournament with four successive losses. Narodisky's performance was arguably the most impressive of all, as he played only about an hour of the two hour long event and beserked an astonishing 56% of his games. Here in puzzle form is one of Naroditsky's wins against the tournament winner:

https://lichess.org/study/qgfmWWPm/HjdD8Ol1#48

In all fairness to the obviousness of that last "puzzle", it should be noted that profound combinations are not the most common feature of bullet games. The most common feature of bullet games are things like this:

https://lichess.org/study/qgfmWWPm/dhoLndxU#110

Finally, lest we consider GM Bortnyk only a strategic bullet genius, here's an attractive finish to one of his other games:

https://lichess.org/study/qgfmWWPm/JIgYjJEJ#40

After this victory, Night-King96 rattled off seven more to finally surge ahead of the competition and win the event. When pressed for comments afterwards, GM Bortnyk said nothing because I just messaged him a second ago and he's probably sleeping or something.

The next Titled Arena will be on November 5th.

- Zug

EDIT: Oleksandr Bortnyk writes back! His succinct summary: "always hard to play , too many good players , last 15 minutes have been stressful". Oleksandr also has just provided an exclusive insight into his favorite music to listen to while playing in these tournaments: "disco music , or deephouse , but when I am losing to many games or can't win 2-3 games in a row , then Show Must Go On". Many thanks and congratulations once more to the October https://lichess.org Titled Arena Champion, Grandmaster Bortnyk!

Lichess Qualifiers Send Nakamura and Abdusattorov to World Fischer Random Championship

2022-10-07T00:00:00.000+03:00

306,296 games. 20,171,017 moves. 73,000+ entries to the Lichess qualifiers. Two winners — GM Hikaru Nakamura and GM Nodirbek Abdusattorov.

Both Hikaru Nakamura and Nodirbek Abdusattorov were players awarded wildcards from co-organisers; Nakamura’s from the Charlotte Chess Center and North American Corporate Chess League and Abdusattorov’s wildcard was from Offerspill Sjakklubb.

Try our custom puzzle set made from the later games of the tournament:
https://lichess.org/study/XGCz40gk

As the seeding for the knockout stages were directly affected by their results in the previous Swiss stage, both tournaments had some fiery match-ups in the final 16. Anish Giri overpowered Richard Rapport in fast fashion, a feat echoed by Nodirbek Abdusattorov in his games against Le Quang Liem. Giri was forced to blitz tiebreaks by Eric Hansen, before continuing smoothly against Georg Meier to make it to the final. Meanwhile, Abdusattorov dispatched Johan-Sebastian Christiansen before having his first wobble against Nijat Abasov. Forced to the blitz tiebreak for the first time, Abdusattorov bested a tilted Abasov to make it to the final.

With a Giri versus Abdusattorov final, Lichess commentators FM Gauri Shankar and WGM Sabina Foisor polled users to determine who the community thought would be the finalist. With more than 70% voting for Giri, the community’s prediction was clear. But Abdusattorov forced Giri onto the back foot from the first rapid game of four, yet this wasn’t Giri’s first rodeo and he stopped the bleeding and stabilised with two draws. Going into the fourth rapid game, Giri needed a win on demand to stay in contention — and got it!

https://lichess.org/study/embed/a4FOM1iM/AQoVW5Kc#0

With both players on 2 points out of 4, the knockout went to blitz tiebreaks. Abdusattorov, seemingly in unstoppable form in the blitz stages — having only won every blitz tiebreak game in the knockout stage — repeated this against Giri, defeating him 2–0 in the blitz portion.

At 18 years old, Abdusattorov is one of the most promising youngsters of the next generation. At 17 years old, he won the World Rapid Chess Championship 2021, defeating Magnus Carlsen on the way. This achievement made him the youngest World Champion in Rapid, and in any of the three FIDE recognised time controls. Most recently, the world number 30 played board 1 for Uzbekistan at the 44th Chess Olympiad in Chennai, where he halted a seemingly unstoppable run by Gukesh D. This effort propelled Uzbekistan to team gold, but Abdusattorov also took an individual silver for his results on board 1 (+7 -1 =3) and a performance rating of 2803. By several years, Abdusattorov will be the youngest player in the field at Reykjavik.

Abdusattorov in 2019 (photo: Wikipedia)

Georg Meier won in straight sets against Abasov to take 3rd place. Meier’s achievement is especially notable as he came the furthest in the entire competition without any wildcard, and also balancing a full time career out of chess. The Offerspill Qualifier also hosted an untitled amateur player, Vignesh B — who made it the furthest of any player without a title (although with a 2382 FIDE rating he is eligible to be titled), before being eliminated by GM Guillermo Vazquez. Vignesh B shared with Lichess that:

“The Swiss Phase 2 especially was a great experience for me, getting to play against some top GMs like Moussard, Zhamsaran, etc, and various other strong players. I was elated that I had somehow managed to squeeze into the top 15. The knockouts were interesting, but the first game was extremely poor from me (maybe a bit overwhelmed by the big stage), and I couldn't convert a better position in the second game. Though unhappy with my performance in the Knockouts, I was happy for the opportunity on the whole.

I'd like to thank Lichess for giving numerous opportunities for players like me to face some of the most renowned players of the world, through tournaments like this. And I look forward to taking part in more of these events. Also, this whole event has made me love the 960 format a lot more, I'd certainly love to play more 960 events too.”

Meanwhile, the Charlotte Chess Center and North American Corporate Chess League was almost entirely dominated by US players, with 1st, 3rd and 4th place all going to those under the US flag.

The FIDE-flagged Andrey Esipenko bested the beloved king of ultra fast time controls, Andrew Tang (aka, penguingm1). No slouch in rapid and blitz chess himself (the jury is out on bullet and ultrabullet), Esipenko had plenty of time in the rapid stages, winning both games. Doing so, Esipenko faced charismatic compatriot Alexander Grischuk (who had defeated Jeffery Xiong). Overcoming Grischuk in the blitz tiebreaks, Esipenko then met Gata Kamsky (who had defeated the NYT chess columnist and well-known commentator, Daniel Naroditsky). Winning one rapid game each, and then one blitz game each, the only Armageddon game of either knockout tournament was seen — with Esipenko getting the point and becoming the finalist to meet Hikaru Nakamura.

Nakamura had to knock out several of his compatriots in his route to the final. First came IM Andy Woodward — at 12 years old, the youngest of all players within the final 16. Woodward was kind enough to share a brief tournament report for us, which is given in full at the end of this article. He describes the match-up as a “David and Goliath story”:

“Right before the knockout games started, my opponent was changed to Hikaru (the top one seed). I started being nervous at first. Then I knew I didn't have much chance. I decided to forget about the results. Just play for experience. The first game was up and down. I was better but blundered away in time trouble. I kind of bluffed in the second game because I needed a win to have a chance. I had an advantage at one point but wasn't able to keep it.

Overall, it was a great, fun experience! I really appreciate the organizer for giving me this opportunity to play against many strong and experienced players!’

Nakamura had this comment to say of his experience against Woodward:

“I was impressed by the play of the young Andy Woodward who at the age of 12 is exhibiting some signs of a player who has a very bright future ahead of him.”

Nakamura went on to defeat another compatriot and prodigy, Awonder Liang, repeating this feat against another compatriot and prodigy — Sam Sevian. Looking unstoppable, Nakamura breezed to the finals, winning against Esipenko 2.5 / 4 with a game to spare.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/8WZ7Y6K7/kQlEdUE9#0

Nakamura was the only player to play four knockout rounds, without going to a single blitz tiebreak. Meanwhile, in third place, Gata Kamsky defeated compatriot Sam Sevian.

At 34 years old, Hikaru Nakamura will be the oldest player in the field at Reykjavik. Currently the world number 6, Nakamura’s accomplishments within chess and corollary to it are well-known. First breaking into the top 10 in 2010, he had a peak rating of 2816 in 2015 and was the world number 2. Holding 5 US Championship titles, a participant in two Candidates Tournaments (most recently in Madrid 2022), and two bronze medals in Rapid World Championships, Nakamura will certainly be one of the favourites. Off the board, he is well-known as a social media influencer and chess personality, with nearly 1.5m followers on Twitch, and over 1.3m followers on YouTube.

Nakamura in 2016 (photo: Wikipedia)

IM Andy Woodward’s event report

I got the invitation to play in the FIDE CCC & NACCL online qualifier second stage tournament right before I left for a norm tournament in Seattle. I was very excited but didn't have time to think about it until I came home a week later. I didn't have experience playing the chess960 games. So I started looking up positions and briefly went through Wesley So's Chessable course on chess960 (Thanks to a friend). I only had time to look at around 250 positions. But I found myself liking chess960 games a lot (maybe because it doesn't require much opening preparations?)

I didn't have any expectations when I played in the qualification stage because there were so many top Grandmasters. I was very lucky that my opponent made a mistake in the last round and quickly lost. I realized that I had a chance although quite a few games were still going on. I said a quick prayer and left the rest to God. I couldn't believe that I was placed 15th place and made it to the knockout stage in the end!

I was just so thankful to have the opportunity to play against the top players. I was also nervous. My mom reminded me of the David and Goliath story. I was ready to practice more and do my best. But right before the knockout games started, my opponent was changed to Hikaru (the top one seed). I started being nervous at first. Then I knew I didn't have much of a chance. I decided to forget about the results. Just play for experience. The first game was up and down. I was better but blundered away in time trouble. I kind of bluffed in the second game because I needed a win to have a chance. I had an advantage at one point but wasn't able to keep it.

Overall, it was a great, fun experience! I really appreciate the organizer for giving me this opportunity to play against many strong and experienced players! I seldom participated in the online tournaments or the chess960 tournaments in the past because my parents rarely paid attention to them. This experience was beyond my expectations, both in smooth organization and in the strong field. I need to brush up my chess960 skills and hopefully get better next year! Thank you again for organizing this and for introducing Chess960 to me!

- Andy

Charity? Non-profit? No profit?

2022-09-29T00:00:00.000+03:00

A treatise on "business models"

We’ve spoken before about Lichess’s ethical stance and how we do “business”. Indeed, at the bottom of this and every other of our blog posts there is a short explanation:

Lichess is a charity and entirely free/libre open source software.
All operating costs, development, and content are funded solely by user donations.

We aren’t going to focus on that aspect again (at least not today), but instead clarify what it means to be a non-profit or a charity, as it’s clearly a message that needs to get out there more:

FIDE Director General Emil Sutovsky said in an interview that FIDE is the only non-profit chess body.

Surely it was an honest mistake, but Lichess, the second largest chess website in the world with more than 5 million games played daily, is a registered French non-profit. pic.twitter.com/yIHItfonRg
— Lichess.org (@lichess) September 26, 2022

Stick with us through the definitions!

Non-profit: no net profit (income beyond expenses) will benefit any individual.

This is in contrast to most businesses where either private owners or public shareholders gain financial benefits from the profits of the business.

Charity: an organisation with philanthropic goals, aiming to improve a community in some way.

Of course, precise legal definitions will vary by country, and technically Lichess is a French association — which encompasses non-profit status and charitable status — with a goal to “promote and encourage the teaching and practice of the game of chess and its variants”.

Definitions over, onto the main article!

A common misconception we see is that our non-profit status means Lichess is barely surviving. After all, an organisation without profit is a bad organisation, right? No!

Profit is a mechanism where individuals (owners or shareholders) syphon off value from an organisation for their personal gain. For a non-profit, we can generate the same income as a for-profit company, but the key difference is that all of that income goes back into the organisation, to keep it growing, keep making it better, and in our case keep it free.

There is a lot of rhetoric about how businesses can do more for the community, by virtue of being for profit. But in reality, a non-profit is putting 100% of its income back into the community. The absolute amounts may be different, since a smaller percentage of a larger total income can still be more overall, however for equivalent income a non-profit is by definition doing more (or at least should be!).

Lichess also generates (almost) all our income from donations, but in theory, a non-profit could have a subscription/paywall model and possibly generate much more income (don’t worry, we won’t). The reason we do not use that kind of business model is not that a charity could not use it. Instead it is because we think it is a bad model for achieving our goal of promoting chess.

The final wrinkle in the definitions is that it is possible to be a non-profit but, like FIFA, still take money out of an organisation in other ways. Rule-abiding non-profits (such as Lichess) also pay salaries to employees. We publicise these at https://lichess.org/costs so you can see whether these are in line with market rates and reasonable.

Lichess has plans to become a higher category of charity within France - and some of what we've done over the year is to research and begin that multi-year process. We will give an update on that, and our charity's plans, later this year.

Thanks for listening to our TED talk!

Midway Through The World Fischer Random Championship Qualifiers on Lichess

2022-09-09T00:00:00.000+03:00

With the open and invitational arena stage over, we now move to the first Swiss stages marking the midpoint of the qualifiers on Lichess.

At the Swiss stages, eligible players can only take part in the groups they’ve been sorted into. Eligible players and the groups they’ve been sorted into can be found here.

All the Swiss groups of the FIDE Offerspill World Fischer Random Championship Qualifiers begin at 1400 UTC on 10th September. All the Swiss groups of the FIDE CCC and NACCL World Fischer Random Championship Qualifiers begin at 1700 UTC on 10th September.

The top 18 players of each group go through, where they will meet on 11th September (with the same start times), and be met by 10 wildcards. In total, up to 100 players will compete in the second Swiss stage to determine the final 16 who go through to the KO stages.

Starting from the second Swiss stage, players who are asked will be required to join an online call 30 minutes before the round starts, with arbiters present to conduct relevant checks. Failure to join the call or comply with arbiters instructions may result in a player’s withdrawal from the tournament. More information will be sent directly to players; therefore players should carefully check their Lichess inboxes and notifications.

Wildcards of the second Swiss stage are as follows, to date:

markdown
| Offerspill Qualifiers|CCC & NACCL Qualifiers|
|-------------------------------------|---------------------------|
|Le Quang Liem (2728)                | Hikaru Nakamura (2768)|
|Nodirbek Abdusattorov (2713)| Alexander Grischuk (2745)|
|Jules Moussard (2686)               | Ray Robson (2690)         |
|David Howell (2667)            | Jeffery Xiong (2690)      |
|Aryan Tari (2656)               | Andrey Esipenko (2678)    |
|Nijat Abasov (2646)| Gata Kamsky (2666)        |
| Vasif Durarbayli (2628)             | Christopher Yoo (2563)    |
|    Eric Hansen (2613)                   | Brandon Jacobson (2551)|
|Johan-Sebastian Christiansen (2583) | Andrew Tang (2539)|
|      TBC                     | Andy Woodward (2465)|

Titled Arena Announcement(s)

2022-08-29T00:00:00.000+03:00

Announcing our schedule for upcoming Titled Arenas!

We're pleased to announce a schedule for our upcoming Titled Arenas!

All events will be preceded by a warm-up arena open to all players with a minimum of 20 rated games in the relevant time control (excluding 960 warm-up, where the minimum rated games are 10).

Prizes unless otherwise stated:

1. $ 500, 2. $ 250, 3. $ 125, 4. $ 75, 5. $ 50.

Participation requirement: Verified FIDE or NM title (see below)

markdown 
| Event                   | Date                | Link                                    | Warm-up |
|-------------------------|---------------------|------------------------------|----------|
| September 2022 Blitz TA | 3rd September 2022  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep22bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep22bua) |
| September 2022 TA       | 17th September 2022 | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep22lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/sep22wua) |
| October 2022 Blitz TA     | 1st October 2022    | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct22bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct22bua) |
| October 2022 TA         | 15th October 2022   | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct22lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/oct22wua) |
| November 2022 Blitz TA  | 5th November 2022   | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov22bta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov22bua) |
| November 2022 TA        | 19th November 2022  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov22lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/nov22wua) |
| December 2022 960 TA  | 3rd December 2022   | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/960dec22) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/96wdec22) |
| December 2022 TA        | 24th December 2022  | [Event](https://lichess.org/tournament/dec22lta) | [Warm-up](https://lichess.org/tournament/dec22wua) |

Practical Information

Title Verification

Streaming

Daniel Naroditsky With a Back-to-Back Titled Arena win!

2022-08-28T00:00:00.000+03:00

Naroditsky with pure domination comes in first, with Minh Le in second and kontraJako in third place behind him.

GM Daniel Naroditsky secured himself the first place in this Saturday's Titled Arena with an absolute dominating lead of 26 points to the second place, taken by IM Minh Le. The third place was taken by GM kontraJako.

Naroditsky, who already won the August Chess960 Titled Arena, had a perfect start with an 8-game win streak right at the beginning, but struggled a bit against other top Bullet-players like Andrew Tang or Minh Le which resulted in him losing his flame streak multiple times. Still, he managed to secure the first place with a really impressive performance rating of 3245.

Speaking of GM Andrew Tang, to the delight of many, the Bullet Legend was back to playing and streaming the Titled Arena! While he was in first and then in second place for most of the time during the tournament, he couldn't keep his cool and ultimately slipped down to 5th place. Still 128 points and a 3122 performance rating is an impressive achievement!

Another well-known 10x Titled Arena Champion got unlucky - GM Oleksandr Bortnyk got fourth with only 3 points difference to GM kontraJako on the third - although Bortnyk was even first for a while.

Also to be appreciated is Nihal Sarin's performance, who took 6th place with only 41 (significantly fewer games than the other top 10 placed, which all had about 60 games) - and that with a 100% Berserk rate!

The next Titled Arena is on September 3rd, you can find the full schedule here.

FIDE World Fischer Random Championship – Update

2022-08-26T00:00:00.000+03:00

The halfway mark of the open qualification process for the FIDE World Fischer Random Championships - have you qualified yet?

The Lichess paths to qualify into the FIDE World Fischer Random Championship – to be held in Reykjavik from 25 - 30 October later this year – are well underway.

-> See if you qualified already.
-> Find an event in the calendar that you can take part in.
-> Enjoying Chess960? Join the official Lichess Chess960 team, and access all learning resources for free.

We’re now just over halfway through the open arena stages where anyone can take part. The top 50 eligible players from each open arena qualify through to two invitational arenas. The top 500 players from each invitational arena will progress to the Swiss stage.

Titled players will automatically be seeded in to the invitational arenas; they do not need to qualify through an open arena. Players who qualified through an open arena can play either invitational arena (or both) to try and make it to the top 500. If a player plays in both invitational arenas and qualifies in both, whichever invitational arena they first made the top 500 in, will be the path they must stick with at the Swiss stage and onwards.

One invitational arena, co-organised with Offerspill Sjakklubb, will be held on 3rd September 2022 from 14:00 - 18:00 UTC.

One invitational arena, co-organised with Charlotte Chess Center and the North American Corporate Chess League, will be held on 4th September 2022 from 17:00 - 21:00 UTC.

Bear in mind that these times will most likely be the same, or similar, for the Swiss stage and beyond.

At the halfway mark, what are some of the statistics from the tournaments?*

52,706 players across all arenas**
158,458 games played across all arenas
10,340,407 moves made across all arenas

* as of 2359 UTC 2022-08-26
** raw figure, not adjusted for same players in multiple events

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

I’m a titled chess player and my name isn’t appearing on the list of players who have qualified to the invitational arena. Why is my name not appearing?

All players that Lichess has recognised as holding a FIDE title earned in OTB events, and certain national titles, are automatically qualified to the invitational arenas. You do not need to play the open arenas, but we recommend the additional practice they may give you!

You can ask Lichess to recognise your title, if we haven’t already.
A titled player took part in our arena, and I came 51st. Will I still qualify anyway?

Yes. A titled player finishing in the top 50 will simply be ignored, as they have already qualified. The next highest finisher who is eligible will be selected in their place. For example, if five titled players took part and finished in the top 50, players ranked 51 - 55 would qualify, assuming other conditions for eligibility were met (e.g., fair play, compliance with rules on flags, etc).
Someone who already qualified has played again and made it to the top 50. Have they taken a qualifier space away from someone else?

No. Once you have qualified, you cannot qualify again. You will just be playing for fun, and for practice. Much like a titled player playing, they will not take another player’s qualifier spot either. It will pass on to the next highest ranked eligible player.
I’m not titled, but still not appearing in the list of qualified players - what could cause this?

Your account may not be in good standing, or allowed to take part in prize events on Lichess. Also, remember that in accordance with FIDE's rules, accounts that display the official Russian or Belarussian flags on their profile page won't be allowed to advance to the next stage. So if this applies to your account and you want to take part, make sure you change your profile flag to something else as soon as possible. Otherwise your account won't appear in the list.
How will we know to access the invitational arenas? Where can I find them?

You have to do nothing once you have qualified. When we have the final player lists, you will be automatically added to a team. Only those players in the invitational arena will be able to access this team. You will receive a Lichess message giving you the link to the invitational arena, so keep an eye on your Lichess inbox. It will also be on the invitational arena team page, and the tournament calendar. It will also be shown on the Lichess homepage 24 hours before the arena is due to start.
Is the qualifier list final?

The qualifier list is not final until the invitational arenas have started. Until then, ongoing eligibility checks will be carried out, which may change the qualifier list. Where possible, we will add the next highest placed finisher from the relevant arena to the qualifier list, but we cannot guarantee this in all circumstances.
Can I only play in one invitational arena?

As long as you have come top 50 in an open arena, or are a titled player, you can play in either or both invitational arenas to make it to the top 500 and progress to the next stage. However, if you do make it to the top 500 in the invitational arena, you will be committed to either the Offerspill dates and timings for the next stages, or to the Charlotte Chess Center and North American Corporate Chess League dates and timings.

Play in a Chess World Championship

2022-08-18T00:00:00.000+03:00

Take part in a World Championship qualifier held on Lichess for free, and take your shot at eternal glory – and part of a $400,000 prize fund

Lichess announces global entry paths to the FIDE World Fischer Random Finals, with anyone eligible for entry, entirely for free

The 2022 edition of the FIDE World Fischer Random Championship will take place this October in Reykjavik, Iceland. Three years ago, Wesley So beat Magnus Carlsen to become the first ever official Fischer Random World Champion; both players will be competing again for the crown this autumn, alongside six other contenders…and one of them could be you!

Starting this Friday (19 August), Lichess and its co-organisers Charlotte Chess Center, the North American Corporate Chess League, and Offerspill Sjakklubb are hosting two official qualifier events, with the winner of each earning an invitation to Reykjavik. Anyone can enter. All you need to do is win!

Format

The qualifiers will follow the multi-stage format outlined in the graphic below:

Stage 1 (19 August - 4 September) involves two phases. First, multiple open-entry 3+2 arenas will be held over the next two weeks. These are where anyone – titled or untitled, rated or unrated, professional or amateur – can start their journey to Reykjavik. The top 50 finishers in each arena will qualify for the second phase: a single 3+2 arena per qualifier, from which 500 players will advance to the next stage, per qualifier.

Stage 2 (10-11 September) will also comprise two phases. First, the players will be divided into groups to play an 11-round, 5+2, Swiss tournament. The top 18 finishers in each group will join each other and 10 wildcard players - watch out for some big names! - to play a 9-round, 10+2, Swiss, from which the top 15 will advance to the final stage.

In the final stage (17-25 September), the players will duel each other in knockout matches to determine who will be invited to play in the over-the-board finals in Reykjavik (and a share of the $400,000 prize fund). Those who progress to this stage will also receive a share of a $2,500 prize fund, per qualifier.

The full qualifier regulations can be found here. You must agree to comply with them to participate, so please take the time to review them (and note in particular the requirements for identity verification and fair play). Entry into a qualifier assumes you have read them and agreed with them.

Note that due to FIDE / IOC restrictions, Russian and Belarusian players will not be eligible to qualify if their Lichess profile displays a Russian or Belarusian flag. Flags can be changed in user settings (we recommend the Lichess flag!)

Chess.com will also be hosting two qualifiers, solely for titled players at the end of August. Bear in mind that our tournament regulations have some differences to theirs, so if you compete in both be sure to read both sets of regulations with care.

Although it’s not required for participation in the qualifiers, those who want the latest official tournament updates should join FIDE’s official team page on Lichess.

Arena Calendar

What is Fischer Random Chess?

Developed and refined by the 11th World Champion GM Bobby Fischer, Fischer Random - aka Chess960 (as on Lichess) or shuffle chess (originally) - is the only chess variant recognised and governed by FIDE. It follows the same rules and has the same pieces as standard chess, except the starting positions of the backrank pieces for both colours are symmetrically randomised.

An example Chess960 starting position
A few commonalities with standard chess are retained, such as the requirement for both sides to have opposite colour bishops and the right to castle on either side of the board. As a result, there are 960 unique and valid starting positions for a Chess960 game.

Thus opening theory, computer analysis and memorisation play a far less important role in Chess960 compared to standard chess, and Chess960 games are often good tests of chess intuition and creativity.

Many Chess960 tournaments have been held across the world, but the first FIDE-recognised World Championship for the variant only took place three years ago. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Wesley So all played – with Wesley So defeating all opposition to become the first (and reigning) Fischer Random World Champion.

For more information on Chess960, check out the resources compiled by the official Lichess Chess960 team to help players improve their skills. As you would expect, they’re free to access, so there’s really no excuse not to participate!

About our co-organisers

These qualifiers wouldn’t be possible without the support and expertise provided by our co-organisers, all of whom share with us a philosophy of making chess accessible, inclusive, and available to all.

Charlotte Chess Center / charlottechesscenter.org

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, with roots dating back to 2007, Charlotte Chess Center aims to provide chess enthusiasts a place to play the game (casually and in tournaments), develop chess friendships, and develop the chess community - both locally and globally. In recent years, CCC has gone from strength to strength. With years of experience, the CCC has expanded to a staff of more than 20 chess professionals, and now runs massive school enrichment programmes, academy classes, and also the largest OTB tournaments in the Southeast U.S.. With a wealth of experience organising online and OTB championship tournaments, the Center is committed to the success of the Lichess CCC & NACCL FIDE World Fischer Random Qualifiers.

Contact: events@charlottechesscenter.org

North American Corporate Chess League / nacorporatechess.com

Founded in 2020, the North American Corporate Chess League is an online recreational chess league for companies headquartered in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. It is the largest corporate chess league in the world, with over 40 teams and 450 players competing each season. An inclusive and engaging online chess league, the NACCL features friendly competition and team building amongst professionals from dozens of industries across the continent.

Contact: info@nacorporatechess.com

Offerspill Sjakklubb / offerspill.com

A non-profit, Offerspill Sjakklubb (Offerspill translates as “sacrificial play”) was founded in 2019 by World Champion Magnus Carlsen, who still chairs the club. Norway’s largest chess club by membership, Offerspill aims to make chess a low threshold activity, accessible to all - especially internet players - while also encouraging the development of talented players and allowing them to pursue their chess dreams. Offerspill offers various training camps, educational materials, tournaments and other content to both its members and the broader chess community, often featuring some of the world’s best players. Offerspill also offers its members the chance to play in an online league to win prizes and virtual awards.

Contact: offerspill@gmail.com

Lichess Half-Year Update & New Feature Sneak Preview

2022-08-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

August is the perfect time for a June update :)

As we move into August the Lichess team started to curate the improvements, new features, and work your donations and support has allowed us to do. In only the six months from January to June, we have already accomplished so much this year! Read on to see some of the work we’re most excited about, plus an early look into an exciting new feature.

If you want to find out more about what we’ve done in the last six months, you can find our (rather lengthy!) changelog, here.

8. Email Notifications for Correspondence Games

Correspondence games give the players anywhere from 24 hours to 14 days to make a move before ending on time. Naturally, this can result in some people forgetting to make their move and losing on time.

To improve that experience, players can now opt-in to email notifications listing their correspondence games, to help them keep track of the games they’re playing.

If you’re interested in applying this setting, you can find it in your preferences here.

7. New Machine Learning, Neural Network, Anti-Cheat Assistant

We’ve historically been quiet about what we do from an anti-cheat perspective (security via obfuscation!), so we can’t share a huge amount about our new ML assistant, Kaladin, as proud as we are of it.

Kaladin supports the work that our existing AI, Irwin, does to protect Lichess. Kaladin is a neural network that considers different information than Irwin does to detect suspicious patterns in online play, and crucially doesn’t need to do an engine analysis on a sample of games to spot those patterns.

This helps save a lot of time, and allows more games (and players) to be quickly reviewed by Kaladin. As with Irwin, games which appear suspicious are sent to further review by human moderators, except for very obvious cases which Irwin or Kaladin can handle themselves (although appeals are always reviewed by humans).

Kaladin is a great example of what can be achieved with community will, and a motivation to improve online chess for everyone. Kaladin was developed primarily by moderator volunteers with professional careers or backgrounds in programming, computer science, and data science. Their work now also directly helps to support the team of around 100 industrious and dedicated Lichess moderators who maintain the chess-side of Lichess and keep it a fun place to play.

6. Improvements for Visually Impaired Users

As far as we know, Lichess was the first major chess playing server to enable screen-reader support and allow blind and visually impaired users to play online chess. As far as we know, we’re still the only major chess playing server to allow accessibility for blind and visually impaired users to play online chess. Chess is a fulfilling and cognitive sport and we strongly believe that no one, regardless of disability or any other reason, should struggle to access chess.

Driven by that philosophy, Lichess has improved the user experience for visually impaired users. Recently, we’ve ensured that premoves can be completed for those using the screen reader support function. Additionally, smaller tweaks like how PGN is copied in blind-mode, and bigger tweaks like optimising screen-reader support on post-game analysis and Lichess studies, are now supported.

Users who read on will see some cross-over in accessibility here and in our updates to puzzles, too - with keyboard support (including braille keyboards) also now offered to puzzles.

5. Changes to Broadcasts

Giving visibility and supporting the over-the-board chess world (aka “IRLichess”) where Lichess can is important to growing the ecosystem of chess as a whole. The eagle-eyed will have undoubtedly noted we have made some small, but significant changes to our PGN broadcasts.

Critically, many of our PGN broadcasts from major tournaments will now also show the tournament standings, making it easier to keep track of which player is leading, and what results mean for the field as a whole.

Broadcasts can also now be set up 12 months before the date of the event is due. This has allowed Lichess to be able to create a tournament calendar with linked broadcasts for all major chess events. In no small part, this is due to another small army of fantastic volunteers and the community as a whole who help us source PGN broadcasts, set them up on Lichess, and ensure any bugs or glitches from the PGN source is swiftly corrected - also guaranteeing we can post more events up than before, too.

4. Official Teams for Variants

Did you know that Lichess’ official charitable objective is translated into English as “to promote and encourage the teaching and practice of chess and its variants”?

The variant community has always been a vibrant and passionate part of Lichess as a whole, with many in our team having been active in informally organising for the variant community in the past – such as non-FIDE recognised variant Lichess World Championships, and Lichess World Cups.

Now, Lichess has official teams with the aim of supporting each variant community more closely. Additional resources and learning materials can also be found within each of the official teams – so now there’s no excuse for not trying a new variant.

The official teams:
Antichess
Atomic
Chess960
Crazyhouse
Horde
King of the Hill
Racing Kings
Three Check

3. Additional Translations and more Language Support

In addition to our amazing moderators, Lichess also has literally thousands of passionate volunteers who help to translate the site into other languages via CrowdIn.

With many core aspects of Lichess having been 100% translated into dozens of languages, additional parts of the site are now ready for translation – including /class and /practice (which has improved translations) – helping to make chess more accessible to all.

In addition, support has now been added for right-to-left written languages (like Arabic).

2. Supporting External Chess Engines for Analysis

With this update, users can analyse games with any engine that they have access to, likely faster than the Lichess analysis would be able to analyse it. Different engines have different programming (well, potentially except for Fat Fritz 2 and Houdini 6…) which means they will often make different suggestions and give humans different ideas to explore.

This new feature is technically still in alpha, meaning changes are still possible to happen. But, the intrepid are fully welcome to test it out as long as they have some technical proficiency. When polished, it should be relatively easy to set up and require no special knowledge.

1. Updates to Puzzles

In early 2021, we produced a large update to puzzles, such as the puzzle dashboard which at a glance suggests your tactical weaknesses and strengths.

Additionally, puzzles were sorted into themes and motifs – allowing you to practice a particular type of puzzle.

Over the course of 2021 and this year, work on puzzles has been one of our forefronts. Smaller quality of life changes like allowing keyboard input of solutions, or navigating puzzles by keyboard, allows puzzles to now be more accessible than before. New assessments of your strengths and improvement areas are now suggested to you.

Critically, a major update recently in 2022 is that puzzles have now also been sorted by opening – meaning that you can now practice against specific structures and opening positions you’re likely to encounter in your pet lines.

And combined with a new feature we’re currently working on, it has potential to really help you find weaknesses in your game and become a more well-rounded player overall, entirely for free.

Bonus – New Feature Preview: Lichess Tutor

Thibault and the team have been working on a new feature: Lichess Tutor. It’s still in very early stages of development – meaning we can’t be clear when it will be publicly released, and that the UI and concept may undergo several revisions.

At its core, Lichess Tutor has sliced users ratings into small segments, roughly 30 rating points per slice. You’re then compared to your rating peers within your particular slice. For example, if you had a 1515 rating, you would be compared just against other players in the 1500 - 1530 category, to help you determine where you’re better than average against your competition, and where you need to put in some more work.

Lichess Tutor will then aim to help you improve if you wish, by guiding you to free (always free!) resources to help you improve. For example, if the user from the screenshot looked deeper into their openings category, Lichess Tutor currently shows how the player performs against their peers in the specific openings they play as white and black. Drilling down into that, Lichess Tutor currently recommends puzzles from those frequently played opening structures, at the player’s opening level, to practice.

Lichess Tutor is a big project, with a lot of new moving parts to develop. For example, to help make the most of Lichess Tutor, players need access to good quality educational resources. This takes time to develop. Something many would consider simple – opening pages – first of all required creation of a new lightweight PGN viewer, developed to be used on any other website. In addition, with around 3,000 openings, that’s a lot of new content for the community and team to source and create (and eventually translate). Combine this with other areas Lichess Tutor could be linked to, such as Lichess Studies, Lichess Videos, and the scale of the project quickly becomes apparent – and why we can’t share a public release date!

The ambition is also to go beyond openings, of course. Consistently missed middlegame motifs and themes could be highlighted to the player. Likewise, recurring mistakes in common endgame patterns could also be spotted by Lichess Tutor. And just like with openings, specific educational resources, puzzles, and trainers could then be recommended to the player.

Where would you like to see Tutor go next? Let us know in the comments!

A first time Grandmaster Titled Arena winner and Nakamura's forbidden platform

2022-07-25T00:00:00.000+03:00

Sometimes arenas can be cruel. The second place score in Saturday’s Bullet Titled Arena would have been enough to win June’s bullet arena by 19 points. Instead, it was enough to lose to IM Minh Le by 24 points. Minh was absolutely dominant, starting out by winning an incredible 22 games in a row. From there, he cruised to an easy victory. Le has recently completed his third GM norm and should be officially named a GM at the next FIDE congress barring any norm shenanigans, which, unfortunately given the FIDE norm process, cannot be totally barred. Le has been over 2500 for a while now, and was probably an easy pick for the “strongest IM” title. The GM title would be a well deserved honor for a player who is clearly not in over his head against even the very best online blitz and bullet players in the world.

Our second place player almost didn’t play at all. GM Hikaru Nakamura was streaming live on Twitch and had just finished his last round in the week 22 Chess.com Rapid Championships qualifier. He was watching some other player’s game without much interest when a viewer suggested a different activity: Play in the Lichess Titled Arena. Naka suddenly became very quiet. “Is it bullet? Let me think about it…” The stream fell into an awkward near silence for more than a minute while Nakamura deeply pondered what to do. Finally he decided, “Alright, let's do it” A moment later he added “Why not? Who cares? It’s content”

For those not in the know, it may seem strange that Naka’s decision to play or not would evoke such soul-searching. The comments in the chat give a clue as to the cause. “The forbidden platform!” “Danny Rensch in shambles!” “Are you allowed to play on Lichess?!” Among Naka’s fans it's understood that playing on Lichess is not appreciated by the bosses. Midway through the event a Slack private message sound could be heard. Nakamura glanced to the side, presumably at another monitor and a dour look appeared on his face. “Oh look. What a shocker, I guess somebody noticed I was playing in this event”. Chess.com uses Slack for their internal communications. Nakamura seemed annoyed. “Ridiculous, [you] try and play a bullet arena and… you heard Slack.”

Nakamura’s viewers have a little fun with a poll during the event.

So what’s going on here? Is Nakamura allowed to play on Lichess? In the past, Nakamura has described getting in trouble for associating with dangerous free software terrorists. In September 2020, He played in the “Champions Showdown 9LX,” an online Chess960 event organized by the St. Louis Chess Club with games played on Lichess. The event was rebroadcast on his Twitch stream using Chess.com software. From a glance at the stream, there was no way to know the games were being played on Lichess. On his stream, Nakamura recounted being scolded by Chess.com Chief Chess Officer Daniel Rensch while the event was ongoing. “I lose this tough first game to Shahk,(Mamedyarov) … apparently the St. Louis Broadcast was on Lichess. In between games, I went to my second, you know, he's sitting in the cafe by the playing hall. I went over there and spoke to him. Of course I wasn't happy. I looked at my phone, and my phone was completely blowing up. Basically, what had happened was in between the games, Danny had written this really long message, basically just yelling at me, ‘we can never have Lichess on Chess.com,’ ‘you can't do this’ All these different things. In between the first and second game. That just basically tilted me completely, where I lost the next two games.”

Rensch addressed the question directly in a tweet from May of 2020.

Who says Hikaru can’t play on Lichess!? I didn’t! Nor does his contract... Chesscom sponsors him, but Hikaru is free to play where he wants. He played in C24’s #magnusinvite didn’t he? 😉 He plays wherever he deems — but a Chesscom guy by choice! #FactsMatter
— Daniel Rensch (@DanielRensch) May 8, 2020

Much later, Nakamura was shown this tweet while streaming, and reacted in a way that is hard to interpret. “I’m going to flat out say it, this isn’t true. I will tell you flat out, as far as the contract goes, I am not allowed…” Nakamura then suddenly realized that the tweet was not recent and reversed course. “Oh no, it's from May 2020? You guys jebaited me? Ok, good one…” Has something changed since 2020? If there is an answer I certainly don’t have it.

It seems that Nakamura is not the only high-profile streamer that must carefully consider who will be angered by playing in a Lichess Titled Arena. GM Eric Hansen also played in Saturday’s event, and even streamed it, from a mostly-unknown alternate Twitch account instead of his main Twitch Channel with 54 million total views. GM Daniel Naroditsky is a regular winner of Lichess events, but they almost never appear on his Twitch channel. When he does stream Titled Arenas a chat command is enabled that informs his viewers that Chess.com has graciously given him permission to play.

I must admit to being ambivalent about writing this article. Mostly, I don’t want to get these guys in professional trouble. I’m also quite happy having them play in our events, even if they have to keep a low profile. I’m sure I will also be accused of trying to knock down a “competitor,” although it's a ridiculous thing to say. Lichess is a charity, charities don’t have competitors. Do you think that UNICEF and the World Wildlife Fund are sworn to destroy each other?

However, I realized that Nakamura's stream viewers probably outnumber my blog readers by a significant margin. If he isn’t afraid to talk about it then it doesn’t make much sense for me to be. I didn’t decide to write this article to defend Lichess’ besmirched honor, we will be perfectly fine whoever plays in Titled Arenas. The same is not true of the average professional chess player, chess coach, or chess content creator. Making a living playing chess is hard enough, and it's only made harder when another chess site doesn’t want you to play or make content on others. It’s one thing to require exclusivity of a full-time employee with full health and retirement benefits, it's another to require it of contractors or even people that aren’t paid at all - and in much of the world, potentially unenforceable or even illegal. A company with tens, if not hundreds of millions in revenue can surely loosen the reins a bit and let chess players find their salary or create their content wherever they can.

The next Titled Arena is on August 13th. It will be a chess960 format.

Stockfish vs ChessBase, Round 1

2022-07-22T00:00:00.000+03:00

On July 4th this year, after a lot of waiting, Stockfish and Chessbase finally got their first day in court. The battle between the two software makers began when ChessBase released a chess engine called “Fat Fritz 2” that was allegedly a repackaged version of Stockfish. This led to some significant recrimination, including on this very website. The case was of interest to free software advocates and chess players everywhere, so we sent a Lichess developer to the courtroom in Munich to witness events firsthand and report on them. We also spoke with ChessBase CEO Matthias Wüllenweber. (Full text of the interview)

The nature of this dispute can be difficult to explain to those that are not familiar with the Free Software design process. This process not only produced Stockfish and Lichess, but other popular software like VLC, Firefox, and the Linux OS that probably runs the servers of all your favorite websites.

Unlike proprietary software, the code from free software can be used free of charge in any other project, but you must fulfill other non-financial requirements of the license. In the case of the “GPLv3” license that Stockfish uses, that means you must inform users clearly that the software they are using is free software, and make the source code, with any modifications you’ve made, publicly available to use in the same way that the original is. In this case, neither the Fat Fritz 2 code nor the license text was made available.

Shortly after Fat Fritz 2 was released, the Stockfish team sent a cease and desist letter to ChessBase asking that they fulfill the requirements of their license for Fat Fritz 2, and, very importantly, also fulfill the license for any other ChessBase products that might contain Stockfish code. After receiving the letter, Chessbase released a new product “Fat Fritz 2 SE”, packaged with a copy of the GPLv3 license and a copy of the source code with what appears to be a different, and weaker, neural net. The code for the original Fat Fritz 2 has yet to be released.

ChessBase admits they violated the license, although by mistake, and only briefly. According to Wüllenweber: “With Stockfish we did not fulfill the GPLv3 requirements and frantically scrambled to fix this within days of the first publication. The fault that most annoyed me was that the original version somehow entangled the new neural network in a way with the engine that made it unusable in any other context. A clear violation. We fixed it immediately, but it was [in]correctly perceived as bad intention. Once in your life, you have this project where everything that can go wrong goes wrong.”

In addition to the missing legal requirements, ChessBase also did not give Stockfish much public recognition for their contribution either. The ChessBase homepage called Fat Fritz 2 “the new #1” engine.” Presumably, supplanting the now “inferior” Stockfish. Fat Fritz 2 creator Albert Silver did interviews where he discussed what it was like to “start almost completely from scratch.” These things caused significant resentment among the Stockfish team. According to Wüllenweber; “In the publication process of Fat Fritz 2, I made several mistakes. Consequently, the Stockfish authors are now quite angry at us, and I can fully understand this. The most serious error was to not describe the project to them beforehand. If they had objected, we would have canceled it. Another error was to do overzealous boasting about Fat Fritz on our web site. While we believed that the new neural net was original and valuable, this marketing downplayed Stockfish in an unacceptable manner. Those articles were naturally read and quoted widely, while nobody saw the official advertising and packaging which always said “Based on the open-source engine Stockfish” as the very first claim.

The back of the packaging of a physical copy of Fat Fritz 2

The Stockfish team was similarly unflattering in their communication about the issue. On the official Stockfish blog Joost VandeVondele wrote: “ChessBase’s communication on Fat Fritz 2, claiming originality where there is none, has shocked our community. Furthermore, the engine Fat Fritz 2 fails to convince on independent rating lists, casting doubt on the usefulness of those modifications. Indeed, we feel that customers buying Fat Fritz 2 get very little added value for money. Claims to the contrary appear misleading.”

The cease and desist letter would not be the end of the legal wrangling. While some steps had been taken to bring Fat Fritz 2 into compliance, there was still a problem with another ChessBase product. “Houdini 6” is another older engine that ChessBase has been selling since 2017. What was claimed to be source code for Houdini, acquired by unclear methods, was posted anonymously on GitHub, and it bore a striking resemblance to Stockfish code. Six weeks after the first cease and desist letter, the Stockfish team prepared another for Houdini, and this one would carry a different demand that would become the key issue in the upcoming lawsuit; GPLv3 license termination.

Any license has to have some teeth; a specific penalty for not following its requirements. The GPLv3 wouldn’t be worth much if the only penalty for violating it was to shrug, apologize, and do the same thing again later. To this end, the second Stockfish cease and desist letter did not demand fulfillment of the license requirements for Houdini, it informed ChessBase that due to repeated violations, their license to use Stockfish code had been revoked and they must cease distributing any Stockfish derived software permanently. When ChessBase refused, the Stockfish team decided to enforce their license termination with a lawsuit.

We asked a Lichess dev to inspect the alleged Houdini code that the Stockfish team submitted to the German court and his opinion was clear. According to him: “It's not a complete 1-to-1 copy. He (Robert Houdart, The Houdini developer) added custom parts, and modified some parts, but large and significant parts of the code, definitely more than 1000 lines, are plainly and obviously the same as Stockfish code. It also contains 1-to-1 copied and very specific comments which in parts even reference Stockfish (e.g. "To compile stockfish…" in the Makefile) and Glaurung (the Stockfish predecessor)”

Nevertheless, Wüllenweber insists that there is something original in Houdini “A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the code samples demonstrated by the plaintiffs. I assume that from Stockfish’s viewpoint they provided the stuff that concerned them most. To me it seemed clear that both programs use the same ideas in those code snippets. Ideas of originality and value. To me it also seemed clear that Houdart expressed those ideas in his own words, where his implementation was sometimes quite efficient or at least different from the Stockfish sample.”

A code comparison between Stockfish and alleged Houdini from the Stockfish team’s court submissions. They also included evidence that the compiled program behaves in practice like the commercially released Houdini binary.

A German civil court is a far more casual affair than you may expect, there are no soaring Hollywood speeches, or witnesses cracking under a shrewd lawyer’s interrogation. Instead, the two parties in a lawsuit meet with the judge in a quiet room to discuss the case. She asks questions to both parties, and after the meeting is over she will either make a ruling or request further evidence. Although the judge in this case made no formal ruling, she did clearly state her opinion on certain specific questions. It’s also possible to make highly educated guesses on her view of things from the lines of questioning she chooses and the subjects she finds the most relevant. According to our on-site reporter, the judge in this case is convinced that Houdini comes from Stockfish and explicitly put the responsibility to prove otherwise on ChessBase. She also seemed to agree that multiple license violations took place, and that revocation was not only valid in general, but a reasonable outcome in this particular case as well.

A German civil courtroom looks more like a classroom.

Her main concern seems to be the exact scope of any potential revocation. A German court ruling needs to be defined in a way that a bailiff can understand well enough to enforce, and with a Stockfish codebase that is constantly growing and changing this could be difficult to do. The Stockfish team seemed happy with the result of the first hearing. According to VandeVondele on the Stockfish Discord: “I think generally we're quite happy about how it went. The judge was very knowledgeable and understood our arguments and evidence pretty well. The burden of proof has been reversed for Houdini, and we understand that termination by few copyright holders is possible. The scope of termination is something that needs further work (which versions, which code, etc). The alternative would be to settle, with terms that we need to reflect on, and in particular also discuss with Tord. (Romstad, a Stockfish Developer)“

German civil courts strongly encourage the parties to find a settlement, and the judge in this case was no exception. She spoke to both parties to push them in that direction. However, it seems that a settlement will not be easy to arrange. When asked why not simply agree to no longer sell Stockfish-derived software if he regrets doing it in the first place, Wüllenweber admitted that there was some bad blood on his side too: “Stockfish’s public reaction to Fat Fritz 2 was quite painful and hurt us. Maybe we deserved some punishment. However, now singling us out while competitors drive many monetization schemes based on Stockfish feels like something one should stand up to.”

The court will meet again on March 20th, 2023 unless a settlement is reached first. If a ruling is made there could be appeals afterwards. Altogether, this case could take years to resolve. Stay tuned to all the standard Lichess communication channels for updates on this case as it develops further.

Candidates Day 14: Nakamura and Ding battle for... possibly nothing?

2022-07-05T00:00:00.000+03:00

The Candidates Tournament 2022 concluded yesterday with the last round. It was a day full of action and three decisive results out of for. Ian Nepomniachtchi, having already won the tournament, secured a draw and an impressive 9.5/14 overall score. Ding Liren seized the coveted second place spot at the finish line.

Nepomniachtchi joins an elite club of players who have won the Candidates consecutive times, and will get a second shot at the World Championship. We will have to wait for Carlsen’s decision to see if Ding’s run for the 2nd place spot will yield him something more than an increased prize and glory.

Daily, Lichess is providing a broadcast of the games played in real-time. We also have a selection of annotated games by GM Ulvi Bajarani and video recaps by WGM-elect Jesse February.

Liren Ding - Hikaru Nakamura 1 - 0

Magnus really did us a favor when you think about it.

If he was definitely going to play there wouldn’t be much to see this round. Nepomniachtchi would have already clinched the only spot that matters, and we’d only be playing chess because they already sold tickets to 14 rounds. Instead, there was still a (potential) World Championship spot on the line! If Naka holds the draw it goes to him, if Ding can win he gets it! What (potential) excitement!

Like many must-win games, the opening was not cut and thrust. The player who needs a draw has obvious reasons for preferring calm waters. The player that needs to win often doesn’t play sharply either. First of all, many sharp openings have instant forced draws lurking in the corners. Secondly, an unreasonable commitment to sharpness often just leads to worse positions, the sort that are even harder to win than even ones.

Early on, Nakamura was able to get the queens exchanged off the board, something that often helps the player aiming for a draw, but all of the other pieces were still on the board, which left Ding something to work with at least. Nakamura’s plan of exchanging bishops on d5 was not the best, and after it was executed Ding seemed to have a small advantage. His rooks were organized on the c-file and ready for action while Black’s d-file was not similarly exciting. Ding managed to get a pawn to h5, which can be hard to evaluate, but the fact that it lived to the end of the game suggests that Nakamura perhaps should have prevented it.

The first real clear error of the game came on move 35 with Nakamura’s 35 Bd8, although Ding quickly returned the favor with 38 e4. Unfortunately for him, Nakamura had a second favor ready to go immediately and it would be the game’s last. 38… f3 would have kept hope alive but it remained unplayed, and things quickly went downhill. Nakamura resigned on move 58.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/Ffd9TM5n#28

Jan-Krzysztof Duda - Ian Nepomniachtchi ½ - ½

Perhaps Magnus Carlsen, or other potential World Championship participants were closely watching this game, to see how Nepomniachtchi’s Petroff held up. Duda tried the 3. d4 line and the Petroff seemed to hold up reasonably well. Nepomniachtchi missed a chance to take some initiative with 15…d4. He played it a few moves later, but by then it had lost its punch. Nepomniachtchi then grabbed a spicy pawn, leaving Duda to take advantage of the time wasted as compensation. Duda then sacrificed a piece, but the excitement was short-lived as the game arrived quickly to a drawn endgame. It was formally agreed to be drawn on move 48.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/mM8x3644#9

Richard Rapport - Teimour Radjabov 0 - 1

For a round that 75% “didn’t matter” we sure got to see some good games! We had another non-drawn Berlin opening in this game, although this one will hardly hurt the opening’s reputation. White’s 9 Na5 looks strange, but it’s been played before, and with good effect. White is a little bit better in that position. The advantage was carried all the way to move 19 until Rapport gave it away with a dubious piece sacrifice. Radjabov missed his first chance to take a big advantage with 20.. Bxc4, but didn’t miss the second and outplayed Rapport over the next few moves. He resigned on move 33. Perhaps Radjabov is the sort of player who won’t start a fight but is perfectly capable of finishing one if it arrives via the other player.

Radjabov was something of a charity case for this event as he didn’t qualify via the normal means. Instead he was gifted a spot as penance for how poorly he was treated in the previous candidates tournament when he correctly predicted that trying to run the tournament during a pandemic was a bad idea, several months before FIDE non-voluntarily figured it out themselves.

You might be forgiven for thinking he wasn’t quite up to the same level of the other players, but nothing in his games would suggest that, quite the opposite in fact. With today’s victory he took third in the event, significantly ahead of many players that qualified by non-bad-idea-predicting methods.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/cKbcqNhZ#16

Fabiano Caruana - Alireza Firouzja 0 - 1

One day when all the hard edges have been sanded off of Alireza, and he’s traded in his Najdorf for the Petroff like Nepomniachtchi has, we may miss this younger version of him. It is such a joy to watch Super Grandmasters before they figure out that they can’t just try to win every game against every player forever.

Caruana’s famous preparation served him well in this one, as he was clearly a bit better out of the opening. However, as the game continued, it slowly turned to Firouzja’s favor. He secured an endgame that was close to winning and while Caruana possibly could have successfully defended himself, 60 Ne4 put an end to things quickly.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/MJTnRmAx#18

Candidates Day Thirteen: Nepomniachtchi triumphant

2022-07-03T00:00:00.000+03:00

Credits: Stev Bonhage / FIDE

The twelfth round of the Candidates Tournament in Madrid has concluded. Ian Nepomniachtchi clinched his tournament victory today, and will soon play a World Championship match, although his opponent remains to be decided. In clear second place after a victory today is Hikaru Nakamura. He sits a half point ahead of Ding Liren in third. Very conveniently, Nakamura and Liren will play each other in the final round, meaning tie-breaks will not play any role. If Liren wins he is cleanly past Nakamura, any other result means that Nakamura takes second.

Daily, Lichess is providing a broadcast of the games played in real-time. We also have a selection of annotated games by GM Ulvi Bajarani and video recaps by WGM-elect Jesse February.

Ian Nepomniachtchi - Richard Rapport ½ - ½

Rapport did us all a favor by playing a Sicilian in the tournament’s decisive game. That's not to say the game featured much excitement. White maintained a very small advantage before trading down to a fairly safe endgame. The final position was one that Nepomniachtchi, under other circumstances, would have surely continued to try to win, but sitting a half-point away from a world championship match, he saw an opportunity to make a threefold repetition and didn’t hesitate to take it.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/oIi8sTms/VeE7teZl

Credits: Stev Bonhage / FIDE

Hikaru Nakamura - Jan-Krzysztof Duda 1 - 0

No need to take a poll to find the game of the day from this one. Nakamura and Duda played a barnburner. Nakamura’s novelty 11 Nh4 in a Najdor Sicilian seemed to have good effect, as he took a small advantage out of the opening. From there, Nakamura stumbled a bit and let the advantage slip. After Duda’s subtle 22… Nh7 he is winning a pawn by force, but in a sharp position where Nakamura has lots of counterplay. Initially Duda held up well and was even close to winning after finding 32…b5.

Unfortunately for Duda, he gave the advantage back a move later after blundering with 33…d5. The position was then hanging by a thread as Nakamura sacrificed an exchange to get a dangerous passed pawn. Duda reacted passively and his position eventually became untenable. Duda resigned on move 52.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/SKqGUnYw#21

Credits: Stev Bonhage / FIDE

Alireza Firouzja - Liren Ding ½ - ½

If you check your database software, the opening path in this game is well traveled, and almost entirely drawn. Ding seemed to want to keep alive hopes of playing for the full point and sacrificed material to straighten out, and centralize his pawns. Unfortunately for Ding, and for the crowd, the position quickly became closed up and unsuitable for the sort of sudden dynamic changes that a decisive chess game usually needs. Nevertheless, Alireza found a way to sacrifice a piece for 2 pawns and liven things up. The fun didn’t last very long, and a few moves later the game was drawn by repetition.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/oIi8sTms/YjOXYwxY

Credits: Stev Bonhage / FIDE

Teimour Radjabov - Fabiano Caruana ½ - ½

Caruana still had something to play for at the beginning of this game. A victory would have brought him up to second if there were no other decisive games. (There was) He sacrificed a pawn in a sharp Catalan for counterplay against the unprepared white pieces, but it was one of those positions that has precisely enough counterplay for the material, not one molecule more or less. The position then very logically exchanged material for piece activation again, this time in reverse, and the players found themselves in a drawn endgame.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/OYrpy2IE#25

Candidates Day Twelve: Nepomniachtchi almost home

2022-07-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

The twelfth round of the Candidates Tournament in Madrid has concluded. Ian Nepomniachtchi has all but mathematically sealed the win in this tournament with an easy draw today. He sits 2 points ahead of the field with 2 rounds remaining. The fight for second place, and the possibility of a hand-me-down World Championship spot from Magnus is nowhere near as resolved. Hikaru Nakamura and Ding Liren are currently tied for second place with Fabiano Caruana and Teimour Radjabov only a half-point behind.

Daily, Lichess is providing a broadcast of the games played in real-time. We also have a selection of annotated games by GM Ulvi Bajarani and video recaps by WGM-elect Jesse February.

Ian Nepomniachtchi - Hikaru Nakamura ½ – ½

You can’t blame them, can you? Can you?!

This game was the now infamous fast Berlin draw. The pinnacle of GM draw technology, designed to be Sofia-rules resistant. I don’t argue that this sort of thing is good for the event or for chess in general, I simply don’t blame the players. Nepomniachtchi is now centimeters from qualifying for a World Championship match, and one more easy draw after this will put him through. Nakamura could have tried to win and still caught Nepomniachtchi in first place, but his better chances seem to be in aiming for second place and an apathetic Magnus. Wins are helpful for that goal too, but he may prefer to try to win against players who aren’t currently dominating the tournament.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/ZfmMC2Gh/QwFlpGLA#28

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

Liren Ding - Teimour Radjabov 0 - 1

The Nimzo-Indian isn’t generally the sort of opening that gives you chances to blow your opponent off the board quickly, but it's the nature of the game that you’re never too far from disaster, and a disaster this game was for Ding Liren. He seemed unprepared for the 8..Na6 line that Radjabov chose, and already had some problems around move 15. Ding put off castling to try and deal with those problems and eventually had to give up on the possibility entirely. Radjabov finished the game off in style with 21… Rxe3 and Ding resigned as soon as the game could no longer be called a “miniature,” on move 26.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/2SAAyeil#15

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

Richard Rapport - Fabiano Caruana ½ – ½

This game was another long maneuvering Berlin, which seems to be the most popular sort of game in this tournament. Rapport was getting the better of things but Caruana didn’t crack and managed to find a tactical sequence that traded down to a drawn endgame.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/lb35XbW6#18

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

Jan-Krzysztof Duda - Alireza Firouzja ½ – ½

The only 2 players who are probably already eliminated from winning anything useful played each other in a bit of anti-serendipity. The opening was superficially exciting until you realize that the sacrifice played on move 17 has been played many times before and is generally agreed to be a draw. Firouzja broke away from theory on move 22 and probably regrets it. It all seemed like a callback to Firouzja’s game vs Nepomniachtchi where dubious kingside lunges only poked holes in his own position. However, Duda didn’t manage the wild tactical positions that followed quite as well, and let the full point slip away. The players agreed to a draw on move 41.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/wPdP4KOM#43

Candidates Day Eleven: Hyper-Bullet, the Breakfast of Champions

2022-07-01T00:00:00.000+03:00

The eleventh round of the Candidates Tournament in Madrid has concluded. Ian Nepomniachtchi extended his lead to an almost insurmountable 1.5 points with 3 rounds remaining by beating Alireza Firouzja, who prepared for the game in an unusual way.

Daily, Lichess is providing a broadcast of the games played in real-time. We also have a selection of annotated games by GM Ulvi Bajarani and video recaps by WGM-elect Jesse February.

Alireza Firouzja - Ian Nepomniachtchi 0 - 1

The discussion of this game begins some 14 hours before it started. Around that time Alireza logged onto Lichess and began playing 30-second games with GM Daniel Naroditsky who was also in Madrid as a commentator. The match continued for some 5 hours, with Naroditsky coming out on top 142–108. Many of the chess commentariat understandably questioned if this was the ideal pre-game evening/morning for a chess player playing in the biggest tournament of his life.

Personally, I would agree that this sort of thing is sub-optimal, but it's not clear at all how much effect it had in the end. Alireza was having a disappointing tournament long before hyper-bullet games were involved, and the math just barely checks out for him to have gotten a perfectly reasonable amount of sleep anyway.

The game itself went south for Alireza quickly. Nepomniachtchi played the Petroff against 1. e4 which now seems to be his go-to weapon. In a fairly even position, Alireza lashed out with 16. g4 and 17 h4. Unfortunately for him, the king-side pawn storm had very little effect. Nepomniachtchi's pieces were pushed away by the wave of pawns, but only to arrive at better squares than they sat on before. The position remained muddy for a few moves, but that's well within the calculation abilities of a Super GM and on move 35 Alireza resigned.

Nepomniachtchi sits on an incredible +5 score, or 8/11. This is in an event where +2 or +3 is often enough to win.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/YyOJdg9x#14

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

Fabiano Caruana - Liren Ding 0 - 1

A Ruy Lopez seemed to be going in Fabi’s direction, even arriving at positions that our esteemed GM annotator would call winning. Unfortunately, the advantage slipped away and Ding arrived to a position that he wouldn’t fear defending. Maybe this game could have been quickly drawn under other circumstances, but with the tournament situation being what it is, draws weren’t enough to bring the two players back into contention. So the game continued on, and not to Caruana’s benefit. As we arrived to move 70 of this marathon affair, Ding had a solid advantage, which he managed to push through to a full point after Caruana blundered with 75 Bc7.

The win is Ding's 3rd straight and put him into clear second place on +2, just a point short of Nepomniachtchi’s winning score in the last Candidates Tournament. However, the standards are a bit higher this time. Meanwhile, Caruana has now tail-spinned to gaining 0.5 points in his last 4 games and has fallen all the way down to fourth place.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/8U25aytV#29

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

Hikaru Nakamura - Richard Rapport ½ – ½

The first big surprise arrived on move 1; A Sicilian! I almost thought they’d abolished that opening given how little it’s been played in this event. Perhaps such flights of fancy aren’t appropriate for serious grown-up candidates chess.

The line they played perhaps gave away why the opening has dropped in popularity as they arrived to move 15 with many previous Grandmaster games having the same position. Move 17 was the first “novelty,” and not one that is likely to catch on. Nakamura won a pawn while allowing his opponent lots of activity and the 2 bishops. The same exchange was quickly executed in reverse, and although the game limped on for 94 moves, there was never any significant advantage for either player.

https://lichess.org/study/GOhAdjoj/ef1PKVqi#32

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

Teimour Radjabov - Jan-Krzysztof Duda ½ – ½

The competitive perfection of the double round-robin format can be easily overrated, and this game is a prime example. If you put two GMs in a competitive situation where they both need to win, you are likely to see a very interesting game. If you put them in a situation where neither one will see much point in fighting for a win, they will dutifully conserve their energies for a moment when they do.

This game was exactly the sort of game you’d expect from two players hanging around the bottom of the table, safely beyond any strong possibility of winning.

https://lichess.org/study/embed/16iH8elQ/l3A3n5q9#0

Credits: FIDE/Stev Bonhage

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Lichess: Year in Review 2023

Growth in contributions

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Lichess crossed 100 languages

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Your chance to qualify to the Kazakhstan Cup, costs covered – with a $50,000 prize fund!

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Another high-profile case

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Ju Wenjun is Womens World Champion

Women's World Chess Championship: Half way done

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Andreikin wins the Uralsk Qualifier!

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About the Kazakhstan Cup

Thrilling final sends Savchenko flying to Aktobe for the $50,000 Kazakhstan Cup

Your chance to qualify to the Kazakhstan Cup, costs covered – with a $50,000 prize fund!

Prize fund

Schedule and regulations

About the Kazakhstan Cup

World Chess Championship 2023: Reactions, Statistics, and Impressions

Titled Arena Announcement(s)

Practical Information

Title Verification

Streaming

World Chess Championship: Game 14 and Tiebreaks

Game 14

Rapid Tiebreak Game 1

Rapid Tiebreak Game 2

Rapid Tiebreak Game 3

Rapid Tiebreak Game 4

World Chess Championship: Games 12 and 13 - Ding's Third Comeback: Chaos in the Colle!

Game 12

Game 13

Snap verdict

World Chess Championship: Games 10 and 11 - Business as Usual?

At a Glance

Game 10

Game 11

Snap verdict

World Chess Championship: Games 7, 8 and 9 - Ding’s Prep Discovered?

Game 7

Game 8

Game 9

Snap verdict

World Chess Championship: Games 5 and 6 - A Slugfest

Game 5

Game 6

Snap verdict