Legal
What we check, when we check it, and what we refuse to conclude from it.
In short
Every game counted by Chess4prize is played on lichess.org, under Lichess’s rules and Lichess’s fair-play systems. We do not analyse moves, we do not compare play against engines, we do not measure timing patterns, and we do not operate any detection system of our own.
What we do is read the account standing that Lichess publishes, record what we read, and refuse to pay a prize to an account Lichess has marked. That is a narrow claim and it is the only one we make.
No automated system on this platform decides that somebody cheated, and no language model is involved in any part of the process. Software gathers facts; people draw conclusions.
Four automatic checks run against your linked Lichess account. Each one is recorded, including the ones that find nothing:
What each check reads is the same short list of facts: whether Lichess has marked the account for a terms-of-service violation, whether the account is closed, the rating for the tournament’s category, whether that rating is provisional, how many rated games the account has, and when the account was created.
Most of the harm a fair-play system can do comes from collapsing three different questions into one verdict. We keep them separate everywhere, in the database and on screen:
A check that could not reach Lichess is recorded as inconclusive. It is not a finding, it does not open a case against you, and it never accumulates into one. Missing data is missing data.
Exactly two facts, and both of them come from Lichess rather than from us:
When either is true at the pre-payout check, the prize cannot be approved. This is a hard block in the software, not a warning an administrator can click past.
A prize also cannot be approved when the last pre-payout check could not read Lichess, or is more than a day old. That is not a finding against you — it means we do not currently hold the proof the approval requires, and the answer is to run the check again, not to conclude anything.
Playing well is not a signal. A high rating, a dominant score, a long winning streak, a fast finish, an unexpected result against a stronger opponent — none of these produce a flag, a case, or any consequence whatsoever on this platform. Winning a tournament you entered is what the tournament is for.
Nothing is ever sanctioned on the basis of performance alone. If your play is genuinely suspicious, that is a judgement for Lichess’s fair-play team, who have the games, the history and the expertise. Our own record contains no assessment of how you played.
An API failure or a Lichess outage is never treated as suspicion. When we cannot read your account, our record says we could not read your account.
Some patterns are worth measuring before anybody decides whether they mean anything: a very new account with a high rating, an account with very few rated games, a rating that has moved sharply since it was linked.
These are recorded as observations. An observation does not block your entry, does not block your prize, does not affect your eligibility, and is never communicated to you as an accusation — because it is not one. It exists so that we can find out, over time and against real outcomes, whether the pattern predicts anything at all.
This restraint is built into the software rather than left to policy. Each of these patterns is marked in code as unvalidated, and unvalidated patterns are capped at observation severity no matter what else is configured. A case built only from observations cannot be upheld against a player; the system refuses the action. If a pattern is ever promoted to something we act on, this document will say so and will name what changed.
When a check finds something above the observation level, a case is opened for review. One case per player, not one per check, so a reviewer reads a whole history rather than a stack of tickets.
A reviewer sees:
A case can be closed as no action, as insufficient data, or — only where there is real evidence and only with a written reason — as upheld. The reason is stored permanently.
Resolving a case does not itself punish anybody. It records a decision. Withholding a prize or restricting an account is a separate, deliberate step, so that reviewing and acting can never be the same click.
One Lichess account can be linked to exactly one Chess4prize account. This is enforced by the database, not by a policy someone has to remember: an attempt to link an account that is already claimed is refused with an explanation.
The rule exists because tournaments have rating bands. Without it, one person could enter a 1200–1600 event from a second, weaker account and play it with their real strength. That is the single most damaging thing somebody could do to a rated-band prize event, and it is the reason the link is required before you can pay for anything.
Deliberately entering a tournament from an account that does not represent your strength is grounds for a prize to be withheld and for the account to be restricted. What happens to the entry fee in that situation is covered in the refund policy.
Every tournament states its rating band, the rating category it is judged on, any minimum number of rated games or minimum account age, before you can enter. Those conditions are checked against the rating Lichess reports for your account — never against anything you type.
Where a banded tournament pays prize money, the rating it measures also has to be established. Lichess marks a rating provisional until it has settled, and a provisional rating can sit almost anywhere — which makes it the cheapest way into a band you do not belong in. A minimum number of rated games and a minimum account age cannot catch this on their own: they measure the account, not the rating being used, and a long-held account can still be provisional in a category it has barely played. The check reads Lichess’s own flag for the category being played, and where that flag cannot be read the entry is refused rather than assumed settled: a rating nobody can vouch for is not a milder form of one that is established. Free arenas are not affected, because there is no pool to protect and a new player is welcome in one.
The rating that decides admission is the one on record at the moment you take the seat. Your rating changing afterwards does not retroactively remove you from a tournament you legitimately entered.
A provisional rating is recorded and flagged for review in a banded tournament. A provisional rating is not an accusation of anything; it means Lichess does not yet consider the number reliable, and a band built on an unreliable number is worth a person’s attention before money moves.
See how prizes are paid for the way a prize split is fixed and published before entry opens.
For each check we store: when it ran, what kind it was, whether we got an answer, what we concluded, and the specific account facts the conclusion rested on. We keep the checks that found nothing, because “you were checked and nothing was found” is a materially different statement from “no record exists”.
You can ask us for the fair-play record held about you, and for the reason behind any decision that affected you, by writing to info@chess4prize.com. What we hold and how long it is kept is set out in the privacy policy.
Write to info@chess4prize.com and say which tournament and which decision you are contesting. A second reviewer looks at the record, and the outcome and its reason are added to it.
If the decision rests on a Lichess terms-of-service mark, we cannot lift it — we did not apply it and we have no visibility into why it was applied. That appeal belongs with Lichess. If Lichess removes the mark, tell us and we will re-check the account; our block is derived from their record and follows it.
We have not yet committed to a maximum response time for disputes, and we are not going to state one here that nobody has agreed to meet.
Where a case is upheld on evidence, the possible consequences are: a prize is not approved and not paid; entry to future tournaments is refused; the account is restricted or closed.
Each of these is a separate action taken by a person, recorded against the account with the reason. None of them happens automatically and none of them happens on the basis of an observation.
Whether an entry fee is returned in each of these situations is a question for the refund policy rather than this document.
Chess4prize is not affiliated with Lichess, not endorsed by Lichess, and not operated by Lichess. Lichess is free, open-source software run by a non-profit, and we use its public API as any other developer may.
You play under Lichess’s terms of service on their platform, and under ours on this one. Where they conflict about conduct in a game, theirs governs the game.
These are facts about the operating business rather than about how the platform works, and inventing them would be worse than leaving them out. They are required before Chess4prize charges a live entry fee.
This document is written by the people who built and operate Chess4prize. It has not been reviewed by a lawyer, and it is not legal advice. It describes how the platform actually behaves; where something is undecided it says so rather than guessing.
