The titled tuesday tournaments are the only tournaments about which Lichess writes a report. Obviously if you don't know who particpates then such reports make no sense anymore.
I see those reports as the only real publicity lichess has today. It is a poster child for this platform.
Now I am sure many participants only will play if they can do anonymously but I think here you are losing more than you are winning as lichess.
So my advice is that for your flagship anonymous players should be rejected. They can play any other tournament in lichess or what about a new anonymous titled Wednesday serie of tournaments about which no reports are written of course.
B.t.w. did you read my blog about usernames from last week?
schaken-brabo.blogspot.com/2021/06/gebruikersnamen.htmlIts Tal. He figured out a way to be immortal, and know he roams the online chess world, looking for a similarly resurrected Murphy.
Very sad, I was looking forward to hearing those names 😞
It would be great if the identity of titled players are known. If they want to keep anonymous, then perhaps keep the title from their profile. Perhaps Lichess could require them to publish their identity if they want to display their title or enter titled arenas. Keeping them anonymous leads to speculation and ~fake news~ about who they are, too.
this is a disappointing news
The obvious solution is to do both types of tournaments. Lichess could alternate them, so one title tuesday will be anonymous and the next non-anonymous (at least for the top 3 places). See which works better in practice.
PS It's kind of an open secret at this point that FeegLood was Hikaru & Grey Parrot was Alireza....?
Let them remain anonymous.
Anonymity was one of the main features of the early internet and yet it is becoming rare to find sites that allow or encourage it. When Google released GMail, I was surprised to see so many people rushing to make sure they secured realname@gmail.com. 'Who cares about having your real name? Why on earth would you want that?' Then there's Facebook, obviously. In the next tier we have the pseudo-anonymity, found on most sites (here included for the unnamed GMs), wherein we can have a username but are still required to tell the site who we are. reddit is the only, large site I can think of where one can still create an account without even providing an email.
For myself, as a 'consumer' of chess content, in this case as someone who enjoys watching GMs battle each other, I don't need to know who they are. All GMs and IMs are so much better than I am that I benefit from watching any of them. I have an opportunity to learn. Knowing that it's this GM rather than that one doesn't really change anything for me.
More, it's a 'feature' of the big, public tournaments that the commentary always includes personal details on the players. We get context. This can be gratifying, but it can also overshadow the purpose of observing. If I watch a 30 minute match between Carlsen and Nakamura, and get 15 minutes of discussion about their 'rivarly' and characters and so forth, that's 15 minutes of not getting discussion of the game that I'm there to watch.
We lose something important when we make this about celebrity. It should just be about the chess. Allowing anonymity keeps the focus on the games.
On
lichess.org/games you can permanently watch titled players battle it out. It is 24/24 active. Why do you then still need a titled Tuesday for that same purpose? If you don't care about who exactly is playing then the standings of an anonymous tournament won't be relevant either.
