The lichess team has been working hard this month, and awesome stuff is coming off the presses!

New Variant: King of the Hill

Chess is a never ending source of fun, but variants can bring novelty to the game of kings. From now on, not only we can play Chess 960 on lichess, but also King of the Hill! (or KotH for short) This intense variant adds a simple rule to the game: bring your king to the center of the board, you win immediately.

Should you rush immediately for the hill, or try to checkmate your opponent while they try to do it? Think twice, this variant is tougher than it seems!

Read more about King of the Hill

New Tournaments: Swiss System

Big thanks go to psuter who developed Swiss tournaments for lichess. Read up what they are about on the Swiss tournament help page.

Former tournaments are renamed to Arena, and you can choose which kind of tournament you want when creating a new one on //lichess.org/tournament/new.

Swiss tournaments are a work in progress, so expect improvements soon.

New Ratings and Charts

Today all ratings have been recalculated from scratch. This has been done for a number of reasons and has several benefits.

Firstly, all games played with cheaters who have been caught (before today) are not counted.

Secondly, all rating histories are now saved for chess variants and different clock controls (bullet, blitz, classical). This allows us to display awesome rating charts on user profiles.

Finally, to lower confusion, some changes have been made:

1. The Global rating has been replaced with Standard. Global was a rating calculated from all games and all variants. This was confusing as most players only played Standard games (the normal rules of chess). Furthermore, Chess960 and KotH games ONLY count towards your Chess960 and KotH ratings respectively.
2. Black and White ratings have been dropped.
3. Pool games now count towards your main Standard rating. Previously games played in the pool would not count towards your main rating and would only count towards your Pool rating.
4. Ratings are displayed differently. Previously, in (for example) a blitz game, only your Global rating would appear. This has been changed so your Blitz rating is the main rating shown. This will be updated later to be more self-explanatory, but for now:

• In Standard games, the rating specific to the time control is shown (Bullet, Blitz, Classical).
• In Variants (Chess960, KotH), the variant rating is shown.
• In Pool games (1+0, 3+0, 5+0, and 5+5 Pools), the pool rating is shown.

Keep on loving!

We'd like to thank all lichessers for their support. We're working harder than ever to make this place the very best chess site on the Internet, so expect exciting new features soon!

Update - 31 July: now the "Three-check" variant is available too! Check it out!