NEW FEATURES OF SEASON 2

Hey everybody! Welcome back to the Live Chess Tour! Season 2 starts on Friday, October 4, at 8:00 EST. (This is early Saturday morning for those in Europe and Asia.) We're introducing some new features and changing some rules for Season 2, altho the format will remain mostly the same; you earn points by playing in club tournaments over the course of a season. It's that simple XD. 

MINOR EVENTS. We're officially introducing Minor Events (the weekly weekend events being Major Events) in Season 2. Minor Events will give half as many points as the major weekend events, so they won't be as important. Thus, they will be in the middle of the week, and will rotate around the clock similarily to the major events. These events will be scheduled every week as planned, but if they are canceled for lack of participation, they will not be made up. There are 11 Minor Evevnts scheduled. In them we're also introducing....

VARIANTS. Many of the Minor Events will be variants. King of the Hill, 3-Check, Chess960 (of course), Crazyhouse, Hyperbullet, etc. 

PRIZE POINTS. Last year the prize for winning the Rapid events was 50 LCT points (!), while the Bullets only gave 10 points to first place. This year (and into the foreseeable future) all major events will give 30 points to first place, 15 for second, 9 to third, 6 to fourth and fifth, and 3 for sixth through tenth. (This was the scheme used for most of the blitz events.)

ARENAS. All events other than the two Rapid events will be arena format tournaments. We made this change midway through last year temporarily and will permanently solidify it for the future. Also, all arenas will be 90 minutes long, regardless of time control. 

TIMING. Weeks 2-6 will again all be at 2:00 UTC / 10:00pm EST the preceding day to facilitate players making it. 

View the schedule here. Let's go! LCT SEASON 2!