TL;DR: What? 24h 3+2 tournament. When? Monday the 28th of December, 12:00AM (GMT). Where? lichess.org/tournament/winter15

As 2015 slowly draws to its close and the new year lazily approaches, many folks are beginning to wind down and relax over the holiday period for some well earned peace and quiet. Not lichess though, for us the end of the year means only one thing: the ultimate test of chess endurance otherwise known as the 24-hour Winter Marathon Tournament.

The Winter Marathon Tournament is the next in our growing tradition of seasonal 24-hour arena tournaments, and this season we've made some big changes that we think you're going to love. Many of you will remember that we recently held a poll for what you felt the next time control for this tournament should be, and as a result we decided to host our first ever marathon tournament with an increment! That's right, each game will be played using a 3+2 Blitz time control, so you won't have to worry about trying to finish games in crazy time scrambles.

And before you ask, yes you can go berserk in arena tournaments that have an increment. But not only will berserkers lose half their time, they'll also be further handicapped by not getting any time increment per move, diminishing the chances of even the most menacing players who overestimate their ability!

And in case you were wondering, you are not required to play for all 24-hours if you don't want to, you can take breaks at any time by withdrawing and re-joining the tournament and you won't lose any of your points. But even if you think that you're not quite good enough to earn the top spot, there's still a chance that you could win a glorious shiny trophy. Not only will the top 10 and top 50 places receive a trophy for their efforts, but the top 100 finalists will be rewarded with a trophy as well (although they won't be as marvelous). This means that even if you only play in the tournament for a few hours theres still a chance of coming out with a reward.

Don't miss all the action! Even if you don't wish to compete, many regular lichess streamers will be making their appearance once again to prove their worth and entertain their fans. If you want to catch the best streamers be sure to check out the main page of lichess, we've even recently added support for YouTube livestreams for those that wish to stream on that platform.

The Winter Marathon Tournament kicks off at 12:00AM (GMT) on Monday the 28th of December, you can join all the action by following this link!

See you there! ^_^

Hey, did I just switch it on? OK, we are on air.

Welcome back, Uni here. And we have this just in: The Winter Marathon Tournament is dead.

It's really bad. The server burned up. I gave it a quick reboot, it worked fine for several more minutes, and now everything is upset again. While the tournament stood proud and brave for 18 hours, having to deal with over 400 pages of standings and pairings of over 600 active players was just too much, the heavy load wrecked it entirely. I'm not sure what to do. I'm sure a lot of you players out there are confused as well.

Like the first marathon, I know the best course of action would be to shut down the marathon tournament. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as I expected, so that's my priority for now. Until that happens, do stand by.

I'm very sorry about that, really. I know so many of you were looking forward to this tournament and was having so much fun until it stopped working, and so did I.

Even if it were to refresh again, it'd just crash all over. It's even happening right now. Please, go get some rest.

See you next time. Hopefully when the server is more prepared.