Fair play
Every game in the league is played on Lichess, under Lichess’ own fair-play rules. This page explains what that means for a league result, and what the league does about it.
The short version
- Play your own games, with your own account, unassisted.
- One person, one account. Never play on somebody else’s.
- Play to win every game, including the ones that no longer matter to you.
- If you suspect something, report it — do not accuse anybody in public.
What counts as cheating
Engine assistance. Consulting a chess engine, an opening book beyond what Lichess allows in that format, another board, or another person during a game.
Account sharing and multiple accounts. Your league identity is the Lichess account you signed in with. Playing a league arena on a second account, letting somebody else play on yours, or having somebody stronger play a match for you is the most serious thing on this page, because it corrupts every result that account touched.
Sandbagging and result fixing. Deliberately losing, agreeing a result in advance, or arranging quick draws to farm arena points. A club that gains from it is treated the same as the player who did it.
Abusing the arena format. Stalling a lost position to deny an opponent their next pairing, and letting a clock run out on purpose to control who plays whom.
Losing badly is not cheating. Neither is a big upset, a fast game, or a player who has improved since their last rating. Strength is not evidence.
Who decides
Lichess decides whether cheating happened. Its detection sees things nobody here can — how a move was chosen, not just which move it was — and the league does not second-guess it, in either direction. The league does not run its own engine analysis and will not adjudicate a game on the strength of the moves alone.
The league decides what a result is worth. When Lichess marks an account for fair-play violations, the league removes that player’s scores from the arenas in question, recalculates the clubs’ totals, and republishes the table. Ladder positions are recomputed from the corrected results rather than adjusted by hand.
Everything else on this page — sandbagging, result fixing, stalling, conduct — is the league’s alone to judge, because Lichess has no way of knowing what a result meant to a league table.
What happens to a result
A marked player’s points are removed from every affected arena and the match is rescored without them. Their club keeps what its other players earned; a club is not punished for one member unless it knew.
Corrections are made as soon as the league learns of them, which may be days or weeks after a match — Lichess marks accounts when its evidence is settled, not immediately. A table can therefore change after the fact, and it is corrected rather than left standing.
Consequences
- Results voided for the arenas involved, always.
- Removal from the league for engine assistance or account sharing. This is not a warning offence.
- A club penalty — points deducted, or exclusion from the season — where a captain arranged it or knew and said nothing.
- A season ban for repeated sandbagging or stalling after a warning.
A Lichess account that is unmarked on appeal has its league results restored, including its ladder position.
Reporting something
Use Help & Support and choose Conduct report. Say which arena, which player and what you saw. You do not need to prove anything — that is not your job — and you do not need an account to report.
Reports are handled privately. The league does not publish who reported whom, and it does not confirm or deny an investigation to anybody except the people involved. Accusing somebody publicly, in a chat or on the site, is itself a conduct matter, however right you turn out to be.
If you believe an account has been engine-assisted, report it to Lichess as well. That is the report that leads to a mark, and the mark is what the league acts on.
If it is you
A player removed from the league is told which arenas were affected and why. If Lichess marked the account, the appeal is with Lichess — the league cannot overturn it and will not try. Once Lichess restores an account, tell the league and the record is put back.