We will have 2 online (Lichess.org) tournaments a week on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5:00 p.m.

The time control will be 7 minutes per side with a 5 second increment per move.

The platform where the tournament will take place is called Lichess.org.  In order for your child to play in the tournament tomorrow (and future online tournaments), they will first need to create a Lichess.org account.

My recommendation would be to not use your real name.  Upon creating a Lichess.org account, to join the “HOT Chess Team”, please visit this link here…

– https://lichess.org/team/hot-chess

Several important notes…

1)  You will need to be an approved “HOT Chess Team” to compete in the online HOT Chess Tournaments via the Lichess.org platform.  If I am not familiar with you (current or previous student), your request will likely be denied.  This is for the safety and consideration of the HOT Chess students.  Please submit your full name (first and last) when requesting to join the team.

***IMPORTANT*** When attempting to join the “HOT Chess Team”, there is a “captcha” at the bottom of the page where students will have to make a checkmating move to submit their request to joint the “HOT Chess Team”.  Please do not forget to do this before submitting your request to join the “HOT Chess Team”.

2.  It appears that I can only schedule events one to two days in advance.  Please check the day of a tournament (I am planning to have them on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5:00 p.m. going forward, with perhaps more added later) for the link on the HOT Chess Team Page to join the tournament once it has been posted.

3.  All events will only be “Lichess” rated.  They ARE NOT USCF Rated.  Total playing time will likely be 1 hour for each event.  Time controls may vary and will be all speed chess (7 minutes per side with a 5 second increment per move) for the time being.  This may change in the future though and/or we may add in more events.

4.  For details about how the tournament will run, please visit here.

5.  Good sportsmanship is a must.  I highly recommend that parents whom are concerned with internet safety set their child’s Lichess.org settings to Kid Mode because this turns off “chat”.  If you do not want to enable Kid Mode, I would encourage students to disable any chat windows.

6.  There have been some issues with using the Lichess.org app, as opposed to the Lichess.org website, so the Lichess.org website is recommended over the app.