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.

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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.

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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! 

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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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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