Lichess4545 GOTM - May '26: Take my Queen, We are hunting your King!
Welcome to the first official 4545 GOTM blog post!
Each month, we celebrate the most exciting, instructive, and creative games from our different leagues with the Game Of The Month (GOTM) award. This month, the spotlight is on an epic clash between @fwg2 and @tommeketoch !
About the 4545 League
If you've stumbled across this post, you're probably wondering: what exactly is the 4545 League?
The name comes from the time control of our flagship event: 45 minutes with a 45-second increment per move. But the league has grown into much more than that, offering a unique opportunity to play across a variety of time controls and competition formats, meet fellow enthusiasts, and improve alongside a welcoming community.
To get a closer look at the league from the inside, we turned to one of its moderators @M0r1.
Lichess4545 is both the name of the league and of the community of players and moderators behind it. The Lichess4545 league is the oldest and largest league organised within the community. It is a team league that runs for 8 rounds per season, with one game per week. One feature that distinguishes the Lichess4545 League from many other online team chess leagues is its team formation process. Players do not need to find or join a team on their own, instead, all participants are assigned to teams by our team-generation software at the start of each season. To accommodate players' availability, the league maintains a system of alternates who can step in when a player is unavailable or when opponents cannot agree on a suitable playing time.
Sounds exciting so far, right? So we asked M0r1 what it takes to join the league:
There are a few requirements for eligibility. Players must have an established classical rating on Lichess, must not have cheated on any past or present Lichess account, and must comply with Slack’s terms of service, our primary communication platform, including its age requirements (at least 16 years old). Regarding when players can join, it is generally open at almost any time of the year. Since we are currently in the off-season at the time of publishing this blog, registration for the next 4545 Season will begin around June 15th (you can always check our website for any new announcements). This makes it an especially good moment to get involved, as new players will be joining right as teams are being formed.
But the flagship league is only part of the story. Over the years, the community has created a variety of side events and alternative formats for players with different interests.
Indeed, there are several side leagues and regular events organised by different members of the Lichess4545 community. We have the LoneWolf league (an 11-round Swiss tournament for individual players with Open and U1800 sections) and the chess960 league (a 7-round Swiss where players play one chess960 game per week), both of which can be found on our website. We also have other tournaments organised entirely on our Slack workspace: Series (a 90+30 round-robin tournament), the 960 Circuit (the same format, but with chess960), a blindfold league, and a correspondence league. In addition, we regularly organise Blitz Battles (Swiss blitz tournaments), occasional Simultaneous Exhibitions, and off-season quads (single round robins with a 45+45 time control between 4545 seasons).
Community members are free to come up with their own ideas and organise their own side leagues in our Slack workspace, so our side-league landscape can change.
About the GOTM Award
Now that you know a bit about the league, let's talk about why you're reading this post in the first place: the Game of the Month Award.
Every month, memorable games are played across all our competitions. Rather than letting them disappear into the archives, we ask the community to help us find them. Players nominate their favorite games from that month, and after reviewing the submissions, we create a shortlist of the most interesting candidates. The final decision is then handed over to the community, who vote to decide the winner.
To tell us more about the GOTM idea, we spoke with @Mennonite, who is currently the lead moderator of the award.
To be honest, I'm not sure who started it. When I joined the leagues, @tommeketoch was doing a Game of the Week for 4545 league games. Later, @Nairwolf changed it to Game of the Month and opened nominations to anything in the league umbrella. After he had to step away for a while, I started running it, and eventually took over with his blessing.
When it comes to selecting nominees, Mennonite looks for games that leave a lasting impression:
Good candidate games feature good play from both players, and the best ones feature attacks and counterattacks. Games with unusual features like underpromotions, king walks, and unusual material imbalances also catch attention.
What matters most, however, isn't a perfect engine score or a player's rating, but the story the game tells:
I don't look at engine accuracy at all. Some of the most interesting games I've seen in the league have had blunders. When selecting nominations, I do try to provide a balance so that higher boards and lower boards both have a shot, so if you played an interesting game, regardless of your rating, please nominate it! I also want to make sure that the same players don't win month after month and to give all players a chance.
Meet This GOTM's Annotator: FM @rio2018
A great game deserves a great annotation, and we're delighted to have FM @rio2018 guiding us through this month's winner.
Having recently secured the FIDE Master title (which is not yet reflected on his profile at the time of publishing this blog, but is hopefully only a matter of time), Rio has taken on the task of highlighting the critical moments, hidden resources, strategic ideas, and tactical combinations that may not be obvious at first glance.
To make the most of this opportunity and share some additional insights with our readers, we also invited FM @rio2018 to reflect on game annotation, chess improvement, and the experiences that shaped his journey to the FM title. Here are his answers to our questions.
When you sit down to annotate a game, what steps do you follow to break it down effectively?
First, I always write down what I was thinking during a game if it's my game. If it's someone else's, I try to understand their reasoning behind the moves. After that, I run a basic engine eval to see if there were any big blunders. Thirdly, I like to focus on key positions (potential material changes, pawn structure changes, or anything else that could change the characteristics of the position) and consider my plans and ideas there. I don't usually look at the game move by move, but rather at every point I feel like the game either shifted or it was a critical position.
As a recently titled FM, how has your perspective on chess analysis changed compared to earlier in your journey?
I think the biggest change was my appreciation of equal positions and the ways to press them. Before, I was looking at an equal position (let's say an opposite color bishop endgame) and I instantly saw that it's a draw. These days, I also consider how a color could possibly lose the position, either by having a hard time defending a plan or potential psychological edges a side might have. (For example, if one side was winning all game, they might not take threats seriously.)
Which study materials or resources do you credit most for helping you reach the FM level?
I think the main reason for my recent improvement was the 4545 league, actually. Not sure if it's because of the league games (although regular long games help a lot!) but everything that comes with it. I prepared a lot, thus my opening repertoire is much better than before. I'm also going through Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual with some people in the community. I wouldn't have dared to start the book by myself, but with other people it's been really fun, and I think I benefited a lot from it.
Game Review & Players Interviews
The winning game was an exciting 45+45 battle between @fwg2 and @tommeketoch, the respective Board 1 players of the teams Lord of the Files and Obi-Wan Benoni, played in Round 7 of Season 48 of the team league.
Take my Queen, We are hunting your King!
We spoke to both players about their preparation, the dramatic queen trap, the unforgettable king hunt that followed, and their reflections on a game that ultimately earned May's Game of the Month award.
Preparation and the Opening
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fwg2 (White): “For prep, I decided to analyze the symmetrical English variation. I’d seen that he plays only a handful of lines in this variation, which makes preparing for a game somewhat comfortable. My main thoughts during the opening where that I wasn’t quite sure if I'd correctly remembered the prep for the specific line he'd gone into. Up to 6.a3 I was more-or-less sure that I'm recalling everything correctly. However, I had studied this a3-b4 idea for a previous game some weeks earlier in a slightly different position. As a result, I wasn't 100% sure if I was remembering the correct line, but for a DIFFERENT opening! Thankfully, this wasn't the case, though.”
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tommeketoch (Black): “I didn't do that much prep for this game. My main expectation was 1.c4, but the bulk of my opponent's games were 1.d4, so I quickly checked I knew what to play against that. For 1.c4, I had played my previous game vs NM @Twas-A-Trap, also facing the English. I had recently switched to the Reversed Botvinnik and did some work on it after that game, so I felt no further prep was needed. I wasn't really focused in the opening and played 6...Nge7 on autopilot (one of my usual moves in this system), and I realized later that this also strengthens the thematic b4 pawn sacrifice. Starting with d6 is actually better, as it still allows the knight to reach the more active Nf6.”
The Queen Trap
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fwg2 (White): “I had a similar version of this queen trap in my analysis previously, so it didn't come as a total surprise. Concretely, my prep followed the game all the way until 11.Bd6. Afterwards, the game deviates as he plays 11...a6 instead of e4, the latter of which I had in my file. Looking back, I got kind of greedy in this position after a6. I had briefly thought of playing 12.e4. That move looked solid and I would've clearly still been in control. However, when the queen can be taken, it's hard to say no haha. I had seen the sequence of moves that'd come afterwards, so I knew I'd lose 3 pieces. Nevertheless, a small miscalculation did occur on my part. I saw I'd take 2 pawns, but forgot I was a pawn down. As a result, I evaluated the end position a little better than it actually ended up being.”
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tommeketoch (Black): “I started to calculate very heavily. Everything looked very strong for my opponent, mainly around getting 11.Nd6. I didn't even really consider the even stronger Bd6, as I was so focused on that knight that my brain only thought “oh yeah, c7 might be an even stronger square for that knight.” I was not even thinking about the direct 12.Bc7. I analyzed the knight’s variations and played 11...a6. Worth noting, I was streaming live on Twitch (VOD available on YouTube – TheChessRunner), and my reaction was like “Oh noo.. I blundered!”. My opponent took a couple of minutes before playing 12.Bc7, and at that point I realized it wasn’t that simple and that I still had practical chances, though I was unsure about the evaluation for the next few moves.”
The King Hunt
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fwg2 (White): “Before I get to the king hunt, let me briefly remark on the move 21.e4. Here, I was debating between two options. I could either castle, which activates my rook and brings my king to safety. Alternatively, I could play e4 and trap their bishop. Here, the position is too complicated for me to explicitly calculate if they have a mating attack, but I judged it to be defendable. As a result, I got greedy for the second time and went for the free bishop. After playing e4, he actually went for a different line than I had expected. I was expecting 21...Bc3, which looked much more natural and I was quite happy with his alternative approach. I was surprised 25.Bf1 was the losing move, as it looked like an excellent defensive resource. Afterwards, he finished the game like a pro.”
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tommeketoch (Black): “I let my bishop get trapped with 21.e4. Although I quickly realized it wasn't that simple and had foreseen a lot of the counterplay that happened during the game. After 25.Bf1 I started to see all kinds of strong lines for me, and at that point I got more and more excited. I also realized in real time that it could be an amazing game, but I needed to finish it off. That gave extra pressure, which climaxed after I played my favorite move of the game, 28...gxh5. After that I became convinced that the attack would work out, but I was also extremely stressed about messing up. I want to add that my absolute favorite variation of the game was 30...Kg7. I actually considered it during the game, but with the clock ticking down and seeing a safe win, I went for that instead.”
Looking Back
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fwg2 (White): “Overall, this game probably reflects my playing style very well. I am willing to take risks. Here, I was punished for it. I had favorable positions with great chances to convert the win, if I had chosen to go with the more solid move. In solid positions, I feel like I am very hard to beat. However, in double-edge positions, one wrong move can cost you the game. I would like to again congratulate my opponent, who found an impressive mating sequence.”
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tommeketoch (Black): “Lastly, I want to thank my opponent, because without them this game never could have happened. They needed to go for the very double-edged Benko-style pawn sacrifice. I had a lot of fun playing this game. It was really exciting sharing this moment on stream and later on YouTube. I am curious about the readers’ opinion: Can I call this game my immortal?”
Join the Celebration & Share Your Games!
And there you have it, our very first 4545 GOTM blog for May 2026! We hope you enjoyed this deep dive into a thrilling clash between @fwg2 and @tommeketoch. But remember, GOTM is not just about watching games, it's about being part of the story. Whether you play in the classical 45+45 league, try your luck in Chess960, challenge your visualization skills in Blindfold (we nearly missed it, but our blindfold players might not notice anyway...), or enjoy our other side tournaments, every game has the potential to be featured as a future GOTM.
Here's how you can get involved:
- Play your best games in any of our leagues.
- Share your favorite games in our Slack channel: #game-of-the-month.
- Vote in the community polls to help decide next month's GOTM.
- Join the conversation by discussing strategies, tactics, and ideas with other players.
We can't wait to see which games will capture the community’s imagination next. Until then, keep playing, keep learning, and may your next move be your best one!
A Final Word of Thanks
Before wrapping up, I want to dedicate a special thanks to everyone mentioned in this blog for their time, effort, and kindness (no one refused or even hesitated to answer the questions posed). Special thanks also to those who contributed behind the scenes, including @macha1313 for reviewing the blog and helping refine it. A huge thank you as well to @Tranzoo and @fork2020 for their outstanding work on the ledger (definitely worth following for league updates and insights). The way Tranzoo manages and presents it in such an organised and appealing manner, along with the insightful interviews contributed by fork2020, has been truly inspiring.
And to you, dear reader, thank you for making it this far! We hope you enjoyed our first blog. We invite you to share your thoughts and suggestions to help us improve future editions. Before you go, be sure to check out our account, where you'll find a collection of previous Game of the Month in our studies. Until next month, see you all soon!
The 4545 League GOTM: 2024, 2025, 2026.
Lichess4545 is an online chess league for people who like playing long time control games online. Players are assigned to teams and play one game per week with a 45+45 time control. For more information visit our league home page.
LoneWolf is a side league of the Lichess4545 league. It is an 11-round Swiss tournament where players play one game per week with a 30+30 time control. For more information about the LoneWolf tournament visit the LoneWolf homepage.