What Are Leagues?

Earn Trophies

You already play a lot on Chess.com( I hope )The main way to track your progress has been your rating, but sometimes you need a different kind of motivation.

 You can be rewarded for playing, regardless of your rating. You still have to win (or draw), but the strength of the opposition does not matter. Just keep playing the games you already play!

And how do you accumulate trophies to advance? By playing, and by playing well! All that matters is how many rated wins and draws you score against random challengers. Under this system, you don't have to worry about higher-rated players shutting you out from advancing, but you also can't lose every game to move up! Nor do you have to worry about someone challenging many lower-rated players to unrated games to spam points.

You can also gain trophies more quickly by scoring wins and draws in Arena tournaments which already run regularly on the site! Each point you score during an Arena is worth one extra trophy on top of the trophies earned during the tournament. (For example, if you score 12 Arena points and earn 17 trophies, you receive 29 trophies in total.)

We've also included a few rules that make the league experience more exciting and fair for everyone. You won't receive trophies for games that last less than 10 moves or after your third win against the same opponent. You also won't get trophies for games played in non-standard time controls, like Hyperbullet. Finally, you can earn trophies by drawing or winning Chess960 games, but other variants or simuls do not give you trophies.

Get Promoted

And what do these trophies get you? Well, each week you and 49 other players are grouped into a division, and at the end of the week, the top players in each division advance to the next one.

 Any attempt to “game the system” may result in your trophy count being reset or your account being closed. These include: throwing games, lowering your rating, sandbagging, intentionally only playing lower-rated opponents, playing multiple games simultaneously, etc. And No, I didn't learn from experience.

Everyone starts their first week in the Wood League. Can you make it to Legend?

In the lowest division, the top 20 players out of 50 advance each week. As you move up, however, it gets harder, and by the end, only the winner of the Champion League joins the Legends!

Once you advance to a higher league, you can't fall back down. So if you must take a quick break, you don't have to worry about losing progress.