Results of the Atomic Chess League Season 2

The first Atomic Chess League (ACL) was launched in July 2025. The initial idea was to create a team tournament, but where each board would be played on a different time control, in an effort to accomodate all preferences and bring the whole community together. And it worked pretty well!

This new edition, called ACL Season 2, gathered 36 players, in 8 teams, across two leagues, the Elite league (for ~2200+ players) and the Challenger league (for U~2200 players). The most notable difference with Season 1 is that instead of counting match results as either 1-0 or 1/2-1/2, players would now win points for their team based on their win rate. And so every game mattered, as winning a match 16-2 or 15.5-14.5 was now an entirely different thing. The winning team would be the team with the overall higher win rate.
Two months have passed and it's now time to look at the final standings, which you can also find with full details on the ACL S2 Results spreadsheet.

Elite league results

1 - Hyper Addicts with 3 wins!
Round 1: Win (52%) / Round 2: Win (61%) / Round 3: Win (61%)
2 - The JBTEAM with 2 wins.
Round 1: Win (61%) / Round 2: Loss (39%) / Round 3: Win (52%)
3 - Natso and random 2200s with 1 win.
Round 1: Loss (39%) / Round 2: Win (56%) / Round 3: Loss (39%)
4 - Team Death with no win.
Round 1: Loss (48%) / Round 2: Loss (44%) / Round 3: Loss (48%)

Congratulations to @JakeStateFarm, @RKROUNIT, @Maracker and @StUdIeB for their victory, and special thanks for Jake who captained the Hyper Addicts, and also covered the tournament with several update videos, while also recording and analyzing his matches. You can find his ACL content on his youtube channel JSF - Atomic Theory.

Some players still performed very well individually: while it was expected from captains to carry their team, and @Natso and @JudeBaeTorrens surely did that, it was also nice to see the return to form of @NitroColoraze, the sudden rise of @StUdIeB and his very important draw against JudeBaeTorrens, or the upset win from @arinor0109 over Rechesster. Often put against tougher opposition, @AtomicBlunder and @HowlinD showed a lot of resiliency and scored important points even in losses (yes, I just praised myself in my own blogpost. Shoutout to the JBTEAM, we did better than everyone expected).

Challenger league results

1 - Orca with 3 wins!
Round 1: Win (51%) / Round 2: Win (55%) / Round 3: Win (54%)
2 - Atomic Storm with 2 wins.
Round 1: Win (57%) / Round 2: Loss (45%) / Round 3: Win (54%)
3 - Pythons with 1 win.
Round 1: Loss (43%) / Round 2: Win (55%) / Round 3: Loss (46%)
4 - Team :cowboy: with no win.
Round 1: Loss (49%) / Round 2: Loss (45%) / Round 3: Loss (46%)

Congratulations to @Orcinus_Orca who captained the team to victory, and @AbsolutelyTrash, @MarcoTheTiger, @KNIGHTBLADE_123, @F55555 and substitute player @I-WIN-00 for their performance! We may see some of those players in the Elite league in the future.
All players from the winning team who played every round will be gifted Patron wings for a month, as a reward, and also to offer extra motivation for future ACL Challengers League winners!

Notable individual performances include @AbsolutelyTrash who smashed every opponent, scoring 90% win rate on average (6-0, 6.5-1.5, 5.5-0.5), @VenusaurBeedrill with a solid performance in 3+2 and a strong upset over the veteran DanDan2016, @imjustanotherbot who was uncontested on the 1/2+0 board, while @Orcinus_Orca and @ArjanZS also did a lot to carry their team.

What now?

If you want more atomic content and competitive events, make sure to check out the Lichess Atomic team, which now includes an often-updated section on the upcoming tournaments, so that you can register in time, or spectate.

Now that Season 2 is over, the ACL will take a break for a while. We hope you'll be back for Season 3! Join The Atomic Chess League team to stay updated.

Feedback

We would welcome all feedback about the Season 2 rule changes. What did you think of the win rate rule compared to simply counting match wins? What would improve your experience? Which change to the format would make it more fun? Also feel free to share what you think was the best moment of this season.