Whatever chess tournament format you like? Arenas are better. They just are. If you think I’m wrong your confusion is probably tied to a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of chess tournaments. It is not to deterministically and rigorously prove who is the best player, something that swiss, round robin and knockout tournaments can’t achieve in any case. The purpose of chess is to have fun, and if you find playing chess fun then maximizing playing time and minimizing non-playing time is vitally important. No format yet discovered does that better than arenas.

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Along with the vast majority of the world, Lichess has been watching the war waged by Russia and Belarus against Ukraine with shock and complete dismay.

As a chess website, commenting on geopolitical situations is outside of our usual remit. But, such is the seriousness of this war of aggression that we feel compelled to make our position clear. Lichess has always advocated vocally for freedom, openness and mutual collaboration. We will always promote and defend these values against those who promote subjugation, opacity, and hostility.   

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The March Lichess Blitz Titled Arena was won by GM Shant Sargsyan, a young Armenian superGM who is a former World U16 champion. In what was one of the closest Titled Arenas ever, Sargsyan was only really able to clinch the tournament in the final few minutes as he won two games back-to-back. Two other young and rising stars, GM Mahammad Muradli and Aravindh Chithambaram Veerappan, finished in second and third place, respectively. The anonymous GM BMWHero came in fourth while GM Vahap Sanal took fifth place.

Under 10 Arena points separated 1st place from 5th place. Thus, in the final few minutes, it was all a battle of nerves! Sargsyan had the best nerves as he amassed nine points out of his last four games, though he did get some cement to build his lead. Muradli, instead, only got seven points out of his last four games, while Veerappan got six, and BMWHero and Sanal only got three.

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Vietnamese Super-IM Minh Le won his 7th Titled Arena, amassing a total of 162 points in a two-hour-long bullet format. 18 points behind him with the silver trophy was 18-year-old GM Brandon Jacobson, a student at Columbia University. GM Dmitry Andreikin took the bronze trophy with 130 points.

Andreikin was leading the arena for a period of time, not losing any of his first 18 games (16 of which were victories). Minh, however, was able to overtake Andreikin’s early lead with a 15-game winning streak, even scoring 6.5-3.5 against Andreikin in their 10 games against each other.  

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GM Oleksandr Bortnyk won the Lichess 960 Titled Arena on Saturday, 4 points ahead of second place GM Dimitry Andreikin. The event's time control (3+2) and initial scrambled pieces seem especially ill-suited to berserking which gives an extra point for halving your own available time, and also, relevant for this event removes any increment. With 960 chess you also can't count on a few moves at the beginning of each game being “freebies,” played from memory without having to figure anything out at the board. Nevertheless, Bortnyk berserked 91% of his games. Andreikin only berserked 3 of his 36 games, while Third place NM Jasugi99 was also a heavy berserker. He halved his time in every single game played in the event.

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The January Lichess Bullet Titled Arena was won by GM Daniel Naroditsky, one of the world's leading bullet specialists and well-known chess commentator and streamer. Naroditsky, in fact, put up a stunning performance that got him close to beating the all-time Titled Arena points record, which stands at 199 points (Naroditsky's 193 puts him third behind GM Andrew Tang's 196 points. The anonymous variants beast, GM FeegLood, and super-IM Minh Le finished in second and third place, respectively. Two rising young players, popular streamer GM Hans Niemann and 17-year-old IM Mahel Boyer, finished in the money in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

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GM Oleksandr Bortnyk won the first Lichess Blitz Titled Arena of the new year on Saturday. He finished with a 14-point lead over GM Vladislav Artemiev who took second on tiebreaks over third place GM Nihal Sarin. Bortnyk took the lead 30 minutes into the three hour event and held it until he was overtaken by Sarin for a while around the half-way mark. Bortnyk then surged back into first and led comfortably until the end. 

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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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2021 has been another big year for Lichess - with continued growth, tons of new features, and a fair bit of structural change as an organisation. Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

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