Slow & Serious
Team leader: 
Manifesto
We are Slow & Serious (S&S) Snails. We believe that blitz is the fast food of chess. We primarily play Swiss tournaments with 25+10 time control (or similar), which is relatively dynamic but also offers players a bit of time to think carefully.
If you are interested in faster time controls, such as 10+5 or 5+4, consider joining the Daily Tourneys club.
Current schedule
- Frivolous Fridays (5x 5+20) occasionally, usually at 10:20 or 14:20
- Saturdays (5x 15+10)
- Sundays (4x 25+10)
- Serious Monday Practice (3x 10+60) at 3 pm roughly every 3 or 4 weeks (often adjusted to UK/US bank holidays). Not to be continued beyond August.
- Semi-Serious (30+20), Serious (45+15) or Super-Serious events (1 round/day). These have not proven popular, so nothing is planned for now; maybe better times will come.
Saturday and Sunday tournaments are held in a 4-week cycle based on ISO week numbers.
| week | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 14:15 | 9:15 |
| 2 | 9:15 | 19:15 |
| 3 | 19:15 | 14:15 |
| 4 | 9:15 | 19:15 |
All times listed in GMT/BST (London), which is UTC in winter and UTC+1 in summer.
No early joining!! Please adhere to Swiss tournament rules! (see below).
Rules
Joining Swiss tournaments
Many people who join Swiss tournaments on Lichess are unfortunately unaware of how those tournaments work, which causes a lot of frustration for others.
Please remember that if you have joined a tournament, but you are offline when the tournament is happening, you get paired anyway, and your opponent is waiting for you in vain. To avoid that, follow these rules:
- If you join a tournament in advance, please show up at the exact time and play your games!!
- If you have joined and can no longer play, please withdraw ASAP.
- It's recommended to join only a few minutes before the tournament starts, i.e. when you already know you will be able to play.
- Some tournaments might be blocked with a password. This is to prevent people from joining early and forgetting to play. The blockade needs to be removed manually by an admin (usually not later than half an hour before the tournament).
- It's OK to join late, i.e. when the tournament is already being played (much better than joining in advance and not showing up on time), although Lichess has a limit on the number of rounds you may miss.
- If you are playing and need to stop, finish your current game (or resign) and then click the withdraw button ASAP! Withdrawing is essential; just closing your browser or app is NOT enough!
- In tournaments with long breaks, i.e. with rounds taking place daily or weekly, you are strongly encouraged always to press the withdraw button after playing each round, and then to re-join the tournament just before the next round starts (just in case something pops up and you cannot play).
Fair-play & friendship
- You play online but behave as if it were an OTB game.
- Do not use computer analysis, opening books or any personal notes during your games.
- Be online on time and make your moves. Take your time to think, but do not be idle and do not make your opponent wait more than necessary.
- Be friendly and kind!
- Please make this club known to your chess friends who are interested in slowplay chess.
Prizes
There are no prizes apart from the joy of playing good chess.
Penalties
- If you fail to play your game in a Swiss tournament (withdrawing is fine), you may be expelled from this club.
- If you cheat during your games, you risk your account being suspended or closed, according to Lichess' policies. Before that happens, you may be expelled from this club.