In recent years it has become popular among chess servers to offer chess with lower and lower time controls. It is with great pride that I announce that lichess has once and forever won this race by implementing a time control that is literally impossible to undercut. “Instant Chess” or chess played with a time control of 0+0 is now here on lichess.org!

Some may wonder how this is possible? Won’t players just flag and lose the game after 1 move? Not at all! On lichess premoves are registered as taking 0 seconds so if a player is fast enough with their mouse or good enough at anticipating their opponent's moves it is possible to play surprisingly long games.

Just premove it all, and you will be fine!

This playmode will be unveiled with a marathon-style tournament beginning soon! However instead of the standard 24 hours the marathon will last 168! That’s right! A full week-long marathon! As always, players are permitted to withdraw and re-enter as often as they want. So, It’s not necessary to play for the full week but obviously playing more will give a significant advantage.

Legal disclaimer: Certain risks are inherent with this activity, including but not limited to psychological breakdown, hallucinations, and/or death. By participating in this tournament the participant and/or parent/guardian acknowledges and assumes all responsibility for such risk.

But that’s not all! Lichess will also be adding a few accompanying features to set the atmosphere for Instant Chess. A new sound mode will be available that will not only make game sounds but play the best in open-source nightcore music to get your pulse racing. Berserking instant chess will be possible and will cause a lichess mod to come to your house and yell at you to go faster!

The Instant chess champion will get a special “Greg Shahade” trophy named after the patron saint of faster chess, who we hope will consider what we’ve done to be the crystalline perfection of our ancient game. Players whose total rated games are more than 95% instant chess will get a special “Chesstosterone” trophy for doing their part to move chess away from its slow pensive past and into its lightning fast future.

We here at lichess think this new feature will revolutionize chess. We’ve managed to squeeze chess down to its essential form, shaving away all the excessive thinking and ruminating and only the excitement remains! Perhaps this new time control will catch on and maybe one day we will see a World Championship decided by Instant Chess!

EDIT: After consultation with the lichess legal team we have decided to cancel the implementation of instant chess. There is apparently some physical danger associated with playing chess at high speeds. Research shows that the minimum amount of time that an online chess game can be played in is 15 seconds; therefore a 15 seconds time control has been added to lichess instead of 0+0. This is for real.