classical chess online

A search of teams on lichess turns up a fair number dedicated to classical play. Many are unfortunately inactive as the enthusiasm that organizers dedicate to them seems to decline over time. It requires more time and energy to get players to commit to regular play than it does to get a short blitz tournament going. When tournaments are set up, no-shows are unfortunately impossible to manage with the current lichess tournament tools. I have organised tournaments in which the majority of players who make the effort to show up for a round find themselves spending an hour waiting for an opponent who never turns up when they could be playing one of the other participants who is in the same position. Moritex has made an excellent suggestion to the programmers as to how to deal with this problem but so far it has not been taken up by Thibault and his colleagues.

Here are a few teams that are currently organising and promoting classical play on lichess. If you are involved with or know of others, please let me know and I will add them here.

The Hemmingford Chess Club is my own club and so it tops the list :) We organise regular classical and other events on Thursday evenings at 7pm EST (midnight UTC). Find us here or contact datasmith

The Monday Night Classical Club does much the same thing and meets Mondays at 6:30 EST (23:30 UTC). Contact organizer BigData1969. The club is on a temporary holiday at the moment but is planning a tournament in early 2022.

Classical Weekend is a European-based team that despite its name organises both weekend and weekday tournaments and is run by Moritex The weekend tournaments typically take place at times that make it possible for players from the Americas to participate as well. The club seems to be currently focussed on participating in team arena events and is doing so very successfully.

The Slow Chess League organises weekend tournaments at a time that can work for most time zones except those in Asia. Organizer: SirIvanhoe

Todo Mundo is another classical team currently very active in arena team tournaments. Kurt_rohrer56 is the team leader.

In addition to the events organised by these teams there are regular classical events on lichess, usually in the form of arena tournaments such as the Monthly Classical Arena. This is a six hour marathon of games played at 20+10. This tournament qualifies as classical chess insofar as your results will be reflected in your classical rating but I will leave you to judge whether this qualifies as classical chess :) In addition to this monthly tournament, there are classical team tournaments being organised recently (usually for a solid 12 hour block on a weekend) using a time control of 30+20. You will need to be a member of a team such as Classical Weekend or Todo Mundo to take part.

This list is far from complete so if you know of any other places on lichess to find classical play, please let me know so I can improve this page.