(Fun!) Changes to the Weekly Thematic Tournament

For the last year, we've been doing weekly thematic tournaments right after our Wednesday broadcast lesson for members of our online chess club. In a thematic tournament, all the games are played in the same opening, so that participants get to try it as both white and black. This has been a popular activity for our intermediate and advanced students. We will be continuing these tournaments but will be moving to the (free) lichess.org platform.

Lichess allows us to set the starting position for a game, which will make the thematic tournament work more smoothly - there's no risk one player chooses not to play the right opening, or forgets the first couple of moves. There are nice options available on lichess and we plan to use this alternative platform for certain special events, like a "simul," where a master plays many challengers simultaneously. Our regular club wide tournaments on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays will continue to take place on ChessKid.

To participate in our lichess tournaments, your child will need a lichess account. We recommend enabling the "kid mode" feature for all student accounts, to limit the potential for unfriendly messages. Once your child has an account, they will need to join the Magnus Academy team. When you request admission to the Silver Knights team on lichess, please include both your child’s name and their Chesskid username so that we can verify that they are a Silver Knights member. Only Silver Knights students, coaches, and our special guests can be part of this team and only members of this team can participate in our lichess tournaments. Please be aware that while our lichess team and tournaments are restricted, other aspects of lichess are generally open to adults.