Lichess Player, Game & Tournament Scraper

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Scrape player profiles, full game histories (with PGN, clocks, and opening analysis), arena and Swiss tournament listings, and rating time-series from Lichess — the world's largest free, open-source chess server. No API key required.

What It Does

This actor connects directly to the Lichess REST API and returns structured data across four modes:

Why Lichess

Lichess publishes a fully open, anonymous-accessible API with no rate-key requirement and NDJSON streaming for bulk game downloads. It is the canonical open data source for chess research — powering cheat-detection models, opening-theory analysis, and academic chess datasets. Over 5 billion games are available.

Input

Example Input — Player Profiles

{
"mode":"player",
"usernames":["thibault","DrNykterstein","Hikaru"],
"maxItems":10
}

Example Input — Game History

{
"mode":"games",
"usernames":["DrNykterstein"],
"maxItems":50,
"rated":true,
"perfType":"blitz"
}

Example Input — Tournaments

{
"mode":"tournaments",
"maxItems":20
}

Output

Each record has a record_type field indicating its type: player, game, tournament, or rating_history.

Player Record

{
"record_type":"player",
"username":"DrNykterstein",
"title":"GM",
"rating_bullet":3288,
"rating_blitz":3212,
"rating_rapid":3001,
"games_count":85000,
"wins":52000,
"losses":18000,
"draws":15000,
"country":"NO",
"patron":false,
"verified":false
}

Game Record

{
"record_type":"game",
"game_id":"q7ZvsdUF",
"rated":true,
"variant":"standard",
"speed":"blitz",
"status":"resign",
"winner":"white",
"white_user":"DrNykterstein",
"white_rating":3190,
"black_user":"Hikaru",
"black_rating":3120,
"opening_eco":"B12",
"opening_name":"Caro-Kann Defense",
"moves":"e2e4 c7c6 d2d4 ...",
"pgn":"1. e4 c6 2. d4 ...",
"clock_initial":180,
"clock_increment":0
}

Tournament Record

{
"record_type":"tournament",
"tournament_id":"mfZoVuwM",
"tournament_name":"Hourly Blitz Arena",
"tournament_system":"arena",
"tournament_clock":"3+0",
"tournament_variant":"blitz",
"tournament_rated":true,
"tournament_nb_players":217,
"tournament_winner":"penguingim1"
}

Use Cases

• Chess research: Download game databases for machine learning, opening theory, or statistical analysis
• Player tracking: Monitor rating trends and performance across time controls
• Tournament analytics: Track active tournaments, player counts, and results
• Comparative analysis: Benchmark player profiles across the Lichess community

Rate Limits

Lichess rate-limits anonymous API access. This actor automatically handles 429 responses with exponential backoff and adds a 500ms courtesy delay between requests.

Notes

• No API key or Lichess account required for public data
• Games returned newest-first
• rating_history records contain the full time-series as a JSON string
• The moves field uses UCI notation (e.g. e2e4); PGN uses standard algebraic notation