Lichess Antichess World Championship

3rd Edition - Year 2020

The 3rd edition of Lichess Antichess World Championship is organized by Odmwnd and Shiaxou. All games are rated and have 2+5 (2 minutes with 5 seconds increment per move) time control. The championship consists of four stages: Qualification (Swiss), Knock-Out, Candidates (round-robin), and Final (1v1). It was originally intended that the world champion Arimakat, as well as the runner-up Ogul1, be directly included in the 8 candidates. However, Arimakat refused to play under these conditions believing that the world champion did not get enough respect, while Ogul1 closed his account. Thus, all 50 registred players started the cycle from the Qualification in the 8-round Swiss tournament. The first four (ChangeOpenings, Yourself101010, Lo-ol, Azoha) directly qualified for the Candidates, while the four remaining places were reserved for the winners of the Knockout round played by the players until the 12th place. All favorites pass the Knockout round, so we had two round robins of four players. The winners of groups played the grand final, and Caleb Nezol defeated Artyom Andreev and become the new antichess champion.

A general impression is that most of time and resources have been unnecessarily spent on Qualification where players had a luxury of losing three matches and pass to the next stage. Also, the Qualification were paired with a program that used virtual points for players whose match was officially 0-0, while the selection of tie-breaks was poor, and in the end they were calculated manually. On the other hand, in the following stages, no player has the right to make a mistake, while the best players will play a very small number of games among themselves, which will not improve the popularity of Antichess. The complete set of rules you can read here, while the forum is here.

World Championship Match

#		World Championship Match	BP	Perf
1		Caleb Nezol PepsiNGaming	8½	2344
2		Artyom Andreev GrohochetGrom	5½	2192

The 3rd Place Match

#		The 3rd Place Match	BP	Perf
3		ChangeOpening	8	2361
4		Lo-ol	4	2152

The Candidates

Two Round Robins with 4 players each. The winners of groups, GrohochetGrom and PepsiNGaming qualify for the final.

#		Candidates Pool A	1	2	3	4	MP	BP	Perf
1		PepsiNGaming	#	4	7	7	2	18	2260
2		ChangeOpening	6	#	4	7	2	17	2227
3		Azoha	3	6	#	6½	2	15½	2196
4		UltimateSuperPlayer	3	3	3½	#	0	9½	2120

#		Candidates Pool B	1	2	3	4	MP	BP	Perf
1		GrohochetGrom	#	7½	5½	7	3	20	2331
2		Lo-ol	2½	#	6½	7½	2	16½	2253
3		Yourself101010	4½	3½	#	5	½	13	2181
4		Odmwnd	3	2½	5	#	½	10½	2112

The Knockout Round

All favorites won the Knockout round and become candidates.

Qualification

The Qualification started as a 50-player 8-round Swiss tournament for 12 places. After eight weeks of Antichess, the first four reach the Candidates: ChangeOpenings, Yourself101010, Lo-ol, Azoha. The next 8 go to the Knockout Round. The official pairings and results are at Challonge, while the final file is here. We provide all games PGN, full standings, and real performance statistics.

External links

• ACWC Pairings and Match Results (Challonge)
• ACWC Pairings and Match Results (Forum)
• ACWC Rules (2020 edition)