Leela Odds Challenges on Lichess: Second iteration of the queen odds bullet challenge

During the last months, a multitude of minor improvements has been made to improve the Leela piece odds bots on Lichess, and it is time for another challenge – this time it will be queen odds at 1’+0".

In addition to the Leela Odds challenges published in this blog post 3 months ago, there also was a queen odds bullet challenge with a similar “first participant to get a positive score with at least 10 wins” format, which was claimed rather quickly by GM Awonder Liang. To showcase the improvements made over the last months, we’re now announcing another queen odds bullet challenge with a slightly different format:

Instead of the first participant to make a positive score, we’re interested in the best possible scores achieved within a 2 week window, with the following format:

• A 10 game warm-up period is allowed which doesn’t count towards the challenge in order to avoid playing these warm-up games under a different account. Participants don’t have to declare in advance whether the warm-up period is used; for each player participating in the challenge, we’ll calculate the score with and without the first 10 games and take the better result.
• Matches go until one side has won 20 games at 1’+0"; draws don’t count, and games Leela loses due to potential technical problems are ignored.
• The challenge is open to all titled players LM and above (GM, IM, FM, NM, LM) with a 2700+ Lichess bullet rating (50+ games) and their identity revealed, with possible extensions after personal request to [Hissha]https://lichess.org/@/Hissha via Lichess or in the Lc0 Discord.
• And of course, evidence of engine use during the games will lead to a disqualification from the challenge.

We hope that this challenge will not only provide a lot of interesting and entertaining games, but will also give us a better estimate on the performance of LeelaQueenOdds and the rating required to achieve a positive score at bullet TC.

Summary of the challenge conditions:

• LeelaQueenOdds plays white with its queen removed lc0.org/Q
• time control is 1’+0"
• challenge is open to all titled players LM and above (GM, IM, FM, NM, LM) with a 2700+ Lichess bullet rating (50+ games) and their identity revealed, with possible extensions after personal request (see above)
• the challenge will run from 2026-06-18 00:00 UTC until 30th of June 23:59:59 UTC
• matches go until either side has accumulated 20 wins, with a possible 10 game warm-up phase not counting towards the match
• the two participants with the best scores (starting 2026-06-18 00:00 UTC) will win the challenge and receive a $200 (best score) resp. $100 (second best) prize