nuriyev/lichess-elite

Lichess Elite Database

A curated collection of high-level chess games from Lichess.org, extracted from the Lichess Elite Database by nikonoel.

Dataset Description

This dataset contains 26.3 million games played by strong players on Lichess, filtered to include only:

• White player: rated 2400+ (2500+ from Dec 2021)
• Black player: rated 2200+ (2300+ from Dec 2021)
• Time controls: Rapid and Blitz (bullet excluded)
• Variant: Standard chess only

Source

Original data compiled by nikonoel from the Lichess Open Database.

Dataset Structure

Column	Type	Description
event	string	Game event (e.g., "Rated Blitz game")
site	string	Lichess game URL
white	string	White player username
black	string	Black player username
result	string	Game result: 1-0, 0-1, 1/2-1/2
utcdate	string	Game date (YYYY.MM.DD)
utctime	string	Game start time (HH:MM:SS)
whiteelo	int	White player's rating
blackelo	int	Black player's rating
whiteratingdiff	string	White's rating change
blackratingdiff	string	Black's rating change
eco	string	ECO opening code
opening	string	Opening name
timecontrol	string	Time control (e.g., "180+0", "600+0")
termination	string	How game ended (Normal, Time forfeit, etc.)
moves	string	Full game in SAN notation

Use Cases

• Opening preparation: Study how strong players handle specific openings
• Chess engine training: Train or fine-tune chess models
• Game analysis: Statistical analysis of high-level play
• Move prediction: Sequence modeling for next-move prediction
• Style analysis: Study playing patterns of titled players

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("nuriyev/lichess-elite")

# Filter by opening
sicilian = dataset["train"].filter(lambda x: x["eco"].startswith("B"))

# Filter by rating
super_gm = dataset["train"].filter(lambda x: x["whiteelo"] >= 2700)

Citation

If you use this dataset, please credit the original source:

@misc{lichess_elite_database,
  author = {nikonoel},
  title = {Lichess Elite Database},
  year = {2020-2025},
  url = {https://database.nikonoel.fr/}
}

License

The original Lichess game data is released under CC0 1.0.

Acknowledgments

• nikonoel for curating and maintaining the Lichess Elite Database
• Lichess.org for making game data freely available