Honest Chess Leagues (Summer Season) - Updated!

My Dear Chess Friends!

I'm glad to announce that we start our Honest Chess Leagues Summer Season Tournament. I'm sure that with all the measures I took, I will prevent cheating in this tournament again. Anyways, I want to ask you play FAIR!

Honest Chess League is a round-robin tournament. 2 games a week with the same opponent. Time control is 30'+20". Parties of all participants without exception will be checked for cheating. 

There will be 3 Leagues, only Premiere League will have cash prizes. The 2 first places of 1the 1^st League can move up to the Premiere League and 2 first places of the 2^nd League can move up to the 1^st League.

Prizes and distribution (for Premier League only)

1st prize: $75 (USD)

2nd prize: $25 + 1 hour training session with FM Victor Neustroev

3rd prize: 3 Chess courses devoted to 3 groups of tactical motifs (about 5.5 hours of educational video) 

Playing procedure

1) I make pairings and publish them in our chess.com group & Facebook page

2) During the week your task is to negotiate with your opponent, schedule 2 games (with white and black pieces) and play them on lichess.org or chess.com (30'+20")

3) Send me the link to these games (I have to check them for cheating)

Premier League

Pairings for Premier League

League 1

Pairings for League 1

League 2

Pairings for League 2

You can reach your opponent to schedule the game sending him a private message on Chess.com and Lichess.org. In special cases I can provide you with his/her e-mail or skype (ask me if needed).

The following is the procedure that needs to be followed to properly schedule the game between opponents.

1) The weekly pairings will be released on Monday at 12:00 am EST. Both players are responsible for checking their messages on chess.com, to make sure they have received the pairings. If the participating player does not receive the pairing message, it is their responsibility to reach out to the tournament director. The games must be completed by Sunday at 10:00 pm EST.

2) It is both players' responsibility to reach out to each other within the first 48 hours after the pairings were released (i.e., Wednesday at 12:00am EST). When making an offer to your opponent, try to be considerate towards each other's time zones and provide a wide range of potential days and times. Players who are found to be inflexible on a weekly basis will not be invited to the future tournaments.

3) After the first player makes a contact with suggested times, the responding player must accept or make a counteroffer within 24 hours. Let the tournament director know if you did not receive a response after 24 hours. If there is no response by Friday at 12:00am EST, the player that made the offer can set day and time convenient for them, by sending it to the tournament director.

4) Upon completion of the game, it is recommended that both players contact the director with the result, however, it is the winning player's responsibility to provide the tournament director with the result of the match. In the event of a draw, both players must provide the tournament director with the result. The message sent to the tournament director must include a link to the game. If the tournament director does not receive the result of the game by Sunday at 10:00 pm EST, both players will receive 0 scores.

5) If a player fails to schedule a game or does not show up for the agreed upon time. The first time the player will receive a warning(i.e. yellow card), the second time the player will be removed from the tournament (i.e., red card).

If for some reason your opponent doesn't respond, please, e-mail me ASAP.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them here!

Good luck!
FM Victor Neustroev