2022 IAF Open European Antichess Event

At the end of 2020 @BBLGL send me a message on Lichess if I was interested in organizing a small antichess tournament. His idea was met with great enthusiasm on my behalve and soon we were brainstorming about how we would shape the tournament. At the time we were thinking about a small venue for a select group of players from The Netherlands and have ourselves a great day and that was it. The end.

Luckily it wasn’t. We got in touch with the International Antichess Federation and asked if they were interested if we would organize an international antichess event in their name. Our ideas were again met with great enthusiasm and the foundation for the IAF’s first live event was built: The Amsterdam Open European Antichess Event 2022!

With one and a half year of preparation ahead of us we got in touch with chessclub De Raadsheer and they lent us their facility to host this event. Many obstacles had to be overcome, until that day arrived: 11th of June 2022! It was amazing to finally see the faces of all the lichess players for the first time.

Stories were shared and friendships were made. It was a joy to see everyone enjoying themselves throughout the weekend. After a total of 26 rounds of antichess and a total of 221 antichess games played. It was @NeverSmartEnough (Brainthinker22 on chess.com) who claimed victory after a dominant performance over the weekend. Second and third place became a very close call between the players @Bertfighter and @knight-killer, but Bertfighter kept his cool in the end and won his last game to secure second place. If he had not it would have been a draw and a nerve-wracking sudden death game of 1+5 would have to be played between the two. Knight-killer had a strong second day were he outperformed @Kex09 , @Chessdemon989 and @Firebatprime, who had settle for a position just outside of the top 3.

Front: AlfredDuffyer vs. Xiped Back: RealNP vs. knight-killer

Left: Firebatprime vs. AlfredDuffyer Right: NeverSmartEnough vs. Bertfighter

The 2-day event was an enormous success. Chessclub De Raadsheer was amazed by the games that antichess delivered over the weekend. They had the chance to play a few casual games between the rounds to witness the charm that this variant of chess has to offer. After the award ceremony they stated that they want to continue the collaboration with @BBLGL and @Between2Sevens to make this a yearly event. To make the event an even bigger success: they also offered to write an article to get in touch with the KNSB (Dutch National Chess Federation) so that this event gets more known throughout the Netherlands as well as the world itself.
The attendees themselves also enjoyed the entire weekend. Whether winning or not. It was the ambiance, experience and stories shared that made it an event worth revisiting.

A total awesome event that was made possible by the thriving lichess antichess community!

Lichess players from left to right. Front row: @MarcelBrouette, @Firebatprime, @Between2Sevens
Middle row: @Xiped, @AlfredDuffyer, @RealNP, @marcelj, @Bertfigter, @knight-killer, @Cupcake125, @NeverSmartEnough,
Back row: first two are audience, then come @Chessdemon989, @BBLGL, @marc47, @Kex09, @Stephiv

See you all next year!