GM Oleksandr Bortnyk received the primary Lichess Blitz Titled Arena of the brand new 12 months on Saturday. He completed with a 14-point lead over GM Vladislav Artemiev who took second on tiebreaks over third place GM Nihal Sarin. Bortnyk took the lead half-hour into the three hour occasion and held it till he was overtaken by Sarin for some time across the half-way mark. Bortnyk then surged again into first and led comfortably till the tip. 

For effectivity causes, maybe the berserk button ought to be changed with a “don’t berserk” button in these occasions. Bortnyk berserked each single sport, as did IM Minh Le who took fourth. Sarin berserked 73% of the time and even the least berserkful of the prize winners, Artemiev, berserked in additional than 1 / 4 of his video games.

The subsequent Titled Arena will likely be on January twenty second, within the meantime, get pleasure from some puzzles from the occasion right here!

https://lichess.org/research/RiyxtsZg

In different information, The Agadmator Christmas Arena is lastly able to restart after server points pressured it to be stopped a couple of weeks in the past. It will restart on January eleventh at 19:00 UTC. We will restart from the final second freed from server issues on the primary day; 20:02 UTC. Unfortunately, we have to restrict the occasion to gamers rated over 2000 to make sure stability.

GM Hikaru Nakamura will begin the occasion with the 11 level lead he had on the finish of the primary day, and the remaining 1 hour and 20 minutes will likely be performed out. We decided the restart second primarily based on when gamers made their final strikes within the earlier occasion. The begin of disruption is proven within the histogram right here