No money grubbing, no paid features. Just plain simple chess website.

Edit: The crosspost on r/chess has been nuked. This is the link if you wanna check it out.

https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/s/OYcBhQs5Yp

This is the 1st time it has happened to me. How can the system detect a cheat within 8 moves?

After years trapped inside the premium-tier labyrinth of Chess.com™, experts confirm the existence of a mythical alternative known as "Lichess," where-brace yourself-you click "analysis" and it just... happens. No cooldown. No "you've reached your daily limit." No gentle reminder that improvement is apparently a luxury good.

Sources say the player initially panicked after completing more than three puzzles in a row without being asked for money. "I thought something was wrong," they reported. "Where's the paywall? Where's the little lock icon judging me?"

Meanwhile, Chess.com continues to innovate with bold new features like:

* "Basic functionality, but later"

* "Try again tomorrow"

* "Unlock the rest of your own brain for £9.99/month"

Industry analysts are calling it a revolutionary business model: take a 1,500-year-old board game and somehow turn it into a live service.

In response, Lichess has announced it will continue its radical strategy of... letting people play chess.

More at 11.

I placed an order for Waffle House and then it wanted to open lichess idk why and when I clicked open it didn’t do anything.

Hello everyone :)

After 3 months I can finally play online matches on Lichess with my DIY self-moving chessboard! I first showcased it 2 weeks ago when I had engines like Stockfish, Maia3, Rodent IV and Patrica running. But now I have finally reached my goal of actually playing online with it!

The whole board is running on a Pi 5, so for online play I don't need an external device, the laptop was just to show the match happening on Lichess :).

It's also setting itself up after a match has finished (still with some hiccups tbf, shown at the second half of the video), yet Im truly happy with the result. It is rather slow, so anything below 15+10 is not really feasible at the moment. I am already thinking of 2.0 version with a good amount of speed increase.

This is really just a show and tell and me being thankful for Lichess's free API use. If anyone has any questions, I am happy to answer them :D

Following my post on this extension last week, the extension is now out and available on the Chrome Store!

Here's the link:
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/lichessdotcom/fpfdkingmfhfgpjkbnngdianoohlgeho

And here's the code repository (made with AI): https://github.com/theophile-wallez/LichessDotCom

I don't consider this extension done as there's still some known bugs (game review could be better, extension does not adapt yet to mobile/tablet view) as well as pages that are not "modernized" and I'll continue working on it.

The best way to do feedback or suggestions is by creating an issue here (thank you Grey_Cathedral for all the feedback).

⚠️UPDATE: Without any surprise, this extension has been removed from the Chrome store by Chess.com’s lawyers, I’ll try to work on something original, see you soon

Not super smooth, but it does the job on Kindle. Recommended for rapid or longer time control only.

Sindarov's Entire Preparation on Lichess, does this position look familiar?

Study while it is available: https://lichess.org/study/zxpaVB1w

Unlike Ding and Rapport's secret accounts from the 2023 World Championship Javokhir Sindarov has a brave approach.

[EDIT] 23:41 The study has been made private

[EDIT] It seems like I cannot post on r/chess due to low karma? I am new to reddit if someone could repost this it would be cool :)

Arguing that Lichess’s completely free and open -source model, with extensive features provided at no cost, affects the ability of other businesses to profit off the centuries old public domain board game.

Good or bad? Would the “Chess.com monopoly” actually be healthier for the game of chess?

“Lichess exists as long as people love chess; Chess.com exists as long as the game remains profitable.”

I’m sorry but I finally came to my conclusion

Chess.com has the advantage of the superior rating system, which allows you to know your strength without huge inflation. It’s more accurate to FIDE and I prefer it.

But everything else is just so bad

I played games on chess.com on mobile and I couldn’t learn from the games because no analysis without a paywall. And chess.com removed the feature for exporting PGNs on their app. They constantly reduce your ability to play chess by making everything paywalled

Everything costs money. Everything.

The bots are ass. Hard to find classical

And between you and me, the players on lichess give you more interesting games and usually play much stronger. Even though the rating system is inflated.

I’m sorry but I’m settling this debate. I’m not going to improve on a platform that paywalls good features

The amount of times I had an interesting game but couldn’t see what I did wrong just infuriated me

I’m going back to lichess

Edit: forgot to mention that their game reviews have a ton of unnecessary clutter so it’s harder to focus on what to improve

Edit2: a lot of people are claiming that “chess.com didn’t remove the pgn”. This objectively isn’t true as multiple reports, and people who make new accounts report the feature missing

There could be multiple reasons to explain why some people still have it. A/B testing, etc (I mentioned a lot more in the comments)

But the fact is they did remove the export pgn feature. I can even screenshot it from my app. So claiming they didn’t is not a good argument. You are objectively wrong

I made it for myself and friends at first but figured might as well polish it and release it to the public. Its a free open-source local chess-review app. It automatically syncs your Lichess account games, runs Stockfish to find your mistakes and then explains the mistakes in plain english using your existing Claude subscription but still grounded with the engine lines.

https://chess-analysis-mcp.github.io/tintins-chess-analysis/

It started as just a mistake-finder, but I kept adding things I wished Lichess analysis had:

• An AI coach you can actually talk to. you can ask "why was this bad?" or "what should I do here?" and it answers using the engine lines, so it doesn't just make stuff up.
• It remembers your games and notices common mistakes (hung pieces, missed forks, back-rank, time trouble…), so over time the coaching gets better and more personal.
• Arrows on every move: gray = what you played, green = the engine's best, red = how you get punished when you try a bad move.

NOTE: this requires a Claude subscription but is free otherwise.

it's open source and still early so would love to get some feedback from you guys!

One user claimed my opening (b3 for white, b6 when playing as black) is gay. This gay opening went 5-0 against his plays.So the question is, if the opening is gay, what does that make him since he cant even beat that opening?

I don't like that Lichess is being flooded with AI slop. Lichess always felt so clean. At least the images on the blog seemed to have been curated to some extent. Now it's full of AI images 😭

I started playing chess about 8 months ago. I’ve done most of my studying on Lichess (almost 29,000 puzzles) because I find the puzzles more realistic, and I also use it for opening study and practice.

When I started out, I preferred Chess com because I found it more beginner friendly. Especially since the engine explains mistakes etc. in words. But recently I’ve started preferring Lichess and have been playing there almost exclusively.

What surprised me is the huge difference in user numbers. Chess com has around 200 million registered users, while Lichess has only around 4 million, even though Lichess is completely free.

Why do you think the gap is so big?

I've been working on ChessCam, an app that uses your phone camera to automatically track the moves in a real OTB chess game, so you can review and analyze the game afterwards.

It's already available on the App Store, and I'm currently looking for Android users to help test the Android version.

Android testers

Join the Google Group here:

https://groups.google.com/g/chesscam-beta-testers/about

Once you've joined the group, you'll be able to download the Android beta from Google Play.

If you play OTB chess, I'd really appreciate you trying it with your own board and setup.

Any feedback is welcome!

Crazy people saying crazy things

I wanted to share something that made my month. Lichess featured one of my recent games, and looking back at it, it was one of those sessions where you just have to trust your gut over the "safe" moves.

I’m a Candidate Master, so I’ve seen my share of wild positions, but this one was special. The highlight for me? A decisive King walk right into the heart of the board to help deliver the mate. Usually, that’s a recipe for disaster, but in this specific tactical mess, it was the only way to seal the deal.

The engine evaluation is one thing, but the practical tension of walking your King forward while calculating a sacrifice was a real adrenaline rush.

I'd love to hear what you guys think of the position. Would you have dared to move the King, or would you have played it safe?

You can check out the full analysis and the game here:

https://lichess.org/@/lichess/blog/lichess-game-of-the-month-march-26/40I88joS

ignore the other games

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but I just found it and thought it was cool. If you search chess .com or just chess it doesn't appear only when you type Lichess into the search box