Category: Chess

  • The 2020 Atomic World Championship Rules

    The 2020 Lichess Atomic Chess World Championship 1. Scope 1.1. The Lichess Atomic Chess World Championship for 2020 is to open the registration period on 1 August 2020. The registration period will end at 00:00 UTC on 1 September 2020. The first round of matches will commence at 00:00 UTC on 7 September 2020 and…

  • Rules Template for Running Online World Championships

    After the 2019 Atomic World Championships concluded – I wanted to write up a standard, easily editable template for rules in general. This is the end result of all of that time and work. The 2020 Atomic World Championship is coming up again soon as well. The specific rules for this year’s edition will be…

  • An Atomic Bildungsroman

    I first began my atomic chess pages way back on 21 July 2002 and they were hosted at one of my old websites, wild5.org.  I had actually begun some study of atomic chess prior to that time, but after starting my website, I studied atomic chess a lot more.  The site has transformed itself over…

  • Atomic Chess Pawnless Endgame Mate Studies

    [First Edition : 25 July 2002][Second Edition : 15 March 2005][Second Edition Enhancement: 08 October 2008] An interactive LiChess study of the important critical positions is here. The purpose of atomic mate studies is to discover the smallest amount / combinations of material with which you can mate in atomic. There are several unique positions…

  • Letters from Readers

    I love getting email from readers. Here’s a few of them from over the years. Most of it is about atomic chess, but sometimes it’s about the other sections of the website. Gannet (29-September-2016) Hello,I have read through your atomic chess page several times, and wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it and loved the content….

  • Annotated Atomic Games

    Annotation is not a skill that I naturally have – in fact, I tend to avoid annotating or even examining games for the most part. But if you want to improve, you’ll eventually have to look at some games and understand what went on within them and why the moves were made. As a sample…

  • ICS Interview – Gnejs

    THE ICS INTERVIEWS SERIES – No. 013 – GNEJSInterviewed August 2019First published September 2019 INTERVIEWER Thanks for doing this interview. You played bughouse and crazyhouse on FICS for many years in the 1990s. Then you took a break for a while. What made you come back to playing? GNEJS Well I suppose the question is…

  • 2019 Atomic World Championship Entrants (and Results)

    Ratings subject to change as data comes in or is found. Rankings will all be ‘TBD’ until the list is finalized. For now, these are the order in which people have registered. Prelim Ranks Name Base Rating Performance Rating Seeding Rating 1* onubense 2450¹ (2427, 2828) 2540 2495 2* Xeransis 2300¹ (2404, 2623) 2476 2388…

  • The 2019 Atomic World Championships

    Format: Modified single-knockout with a cut at the top 8, with potential additions beyond this point, transforming to double-knockout. The 2018 Atomic World Championship was a double elimination knockout tournament that was run surprisingly well, but had a number of incidents that the rules have been changed/modified to address. First and foremost, the double knockout…

  • The 2018 Atomic World Championships

    For the third year in a row, tipau organized an Atomic World Championship on lichess, following the successful organization of the 2016 and 2017 editions. Challonge was once again used – as this was a double elimination knockout format. The bracket can be found at: http://challonge.com/atomicwc2018 This year, the entrants list topped out at 65…