We’re pleased to announce the general release of the new personal opening explorer. It has long been one of the most popular feature requests - and for good reason: being able to investigate your personal strengths and weaknesses in various lines and openings is really useful for learning! Through the analysis board you can now see your win/draw/loss statistics for the moves played in any position - as well as easily compare your choices to the rest of the Lichess user base, and our Masters database, through the tabs. The personal explorer is filterable by time control, rated/casual, and date range.

You can also choose the personal explorer of any other Lichess user, through the cog menu, so you can see what lines your favourite players choose, or prepare against an upcoming opponent.

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FIDE announced on Thursday that the Grand Swiss and Women’s Grand Swiss tournaments will proceed as planned despite a strict lockdown order from the host country of Latvia. The Lockdown order includes shutting down all schools, stores and other places where people might gather. Between the hours of 20:00 and 05:00 all people are required to be in their place of residence. The Grand Swiss is one of the 30 events that will be allowed to proceed, although there will be no spectators - only the players, staff and a small number of journalists. Players will also be tested for Covid on-site. FIDE Managing Director WGM Dana Reizniece-Ozola was a former Latvian finance minister and may have had some useful contacts in the effort to gain an exception. 

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The October Lichess Bullet Titled Arena was won on Saturday by IM Minh Le from Vietnam. A very solid performance put him 9 points clear of US Grandmaster Andrew Tang, who is a legend for his bullet and hyper bullet speed. In the end, Tang was just one point ahead of former European Blitz champion GM Sergei Zhigalko of Belarus, who won 3rd on tiebreak with FM Dinçer Taşdöğen.

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The October Lichess Chess960 Titled Arena was won on Saturday by anonymous IM "Mlchael". They were only 2 points ahead of GM Rasmus Svane in 2nd, and 3 points ahead of GM Nihal Sarin in 3rd. Sarin started the 3 hour event 2 hours late and still almost won it by amassing an incredible score.

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Last year, the FIDE Council decided that 2022 would be the “Year of Women in Chess”. And a few months before this banner year, they announced their sponsorship deal with a “global medical technology company” - words carefully chosen, presumably, so as not to have to type out the words “a company specialising in breast implants”. It seems incongruous that FIDE would appoint 2022 as the year to celebrate women in chess, and to then choose a sponsor whose business model is reliant on female insecurities: 92% of cosmetic procedures are performed on women [1]. There are few sponsorships that seem, at first glance, less appropriate. 

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The September edition of the Streamers Team Battle with all of Lichess' top streamers ended the day before yesterday with a surprising and close victory for the Spanish team Sparrow Chess with 1106 team points and its 167 team players. For every team, the best 20 player results of each team counted for the final team ranking.

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GM Nihal Sarin won the Lichess Bullet Titled Arena on Saturday, his second overall Titled Arena victory. With so many promising Indian juniors it can be hard to remember that Nihal is at the top of the “next generation,” and with Anand still sitting at #1 it could be said that there is more than one generation in front of him. The 17-year-old Sarin is currently the highest rated Indian under the age of 25 and #5 overall, although the 23-year-old S.L Narayanan is only 20 points behind. India has 16 players Sarin’s age or younger with a rating above 2400 so a challenge to his place could come from various directions. 

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Norway Chess, the closed invitational which takes place in Norway’s third largest city - Stavanger - started at 17:00 local time today. The tournament has been played annually since 2013, and has quickly developed a reputation for being one of the strongest tournaments on the elite circuit. In 2019, Norway Chess hosted seven of the world’s top 10 players - giving an average tournament rating of 2784, a record it still holds.

Follow the games live, daily from 1500 UTC on the Lichess broadcast page - (Title image credit: Lennart Ootes / Norway Chess)

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The anonymous GM Arka50 won the September Lichess Blitz Titled Arena on Saturday by a comfortable 9 point margin. Another anonymous GM, Feeglood finished in 2nd. Arka50 took the leader’s position 30 minutes into the three hour event, and with an hour left their lead had grown to 20 points. They faltered slightly in the last hour, but not enough to ruin anything. Notably the #1 and #2 players in this event are avid chess variants players, with thousands of games played in all the variants available on Lichess. Arka50 was the Atomic Chess World Champion in 2017, 2018, and 2020.

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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).

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