My big problem with lichess is that you are allowed to pick white when you set up your game request and/or if someone starts a match with you and they have black pieces they can cancel game after you make your first move with no penalty. If you query the top players games in blitz or lightning their ratio of white/black games is ridiculous.
Maybe they should display win rates for black and white separately. Or display the midpoint between the two (i.e. counting each color as 50% even if the number of games is different).
> I tested the new feature on my favorite opening: 1.e4 e5 2.f4!, a.k.a. the mighty King Gambit. Stockfish hates it, and asked me to review it like it was a mistake! Yet it's considered playable. Actually Carlsen played it against Arionian in 2015. Not acceptable, Mr Stockfish! Actually, the King's Gambit has been (essentially) solved: https://en.chessbase.com/post/rajlich-busting-the-king-s-gam... There is only one…
The King's Gambit hasn't been solved nor is it likely to be solved any time soon. That article was one of Chessbase's annual April Fools posts. https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-chebase-april-fools-revisi...
I've been under the impression for years that the King's Gambit, despite it being the best variation/opening of all (IMO), was obsolete at the highest levels. A chess master/instructor once assured me of this, despite it being his favorite too. He referred to it as "romantic" and said it was almost never played at GM level.
It was launched in 2016, with a much simpler interface (no accounts iirc), which evolved a lot to come to this day. Its source code is also really interesting, it makes me want to learn Scala.
> It was launched in 2016 It's been around at least as far back as 2010. Here is a 6 year old HN submission about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1927188
Yeah, I borrowed some css for a chess board from it for a (never published) project I was working around 2010 or perhaps slightly earlier!
My big problem with lichess is that you are allowed to pick white when you set up your game request and/or if someone starts a match with you and they have black pieces they can cancel game after you make your first move with no penalty. If you query the top players games in blitz or lightning their ratio of white/black games is ridiculous.
I agree it's annoying. But at least if you use the new "Quick game" pairing system there is no option to choose a color.
So now it's just people who quit half the quick games they start with you?
Gotta ask and I ain't trying to start a flame war here.... how's the community compared to say, ICC? I was a big time user of ICC back in the day simply because the average player was high caliber after FICS started to become a bit of a dead zone for standard players (I like 45 5 or higher timed classic games )
There are more high level players on ICC because that's where the high level players are. Chess.com also has a decent interface, but they particularly excel in chess news, event coverage and community support.
The King's Gambit hasn't been solved nor is it likely to be solved any time soon. That article was one of Chessbase's annual April Fools posts. https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-chebase-april-fools-revisi...
I've been under the impression for years that the King's Gambit, despite it being the best variation/opening of all (IMO), was obsolete at the highest levels. A chess master/instructor once assured me of this, despite it being his favorite too. He referred to it as "romantic" and said it was almost never played at GM level.
It is rather rare at high levels because someone who knows the book lines will equalize fairly easily as black. That said, it isn't losing for white, nor is it particularly easy to play as black if you've never studied it in depth.
It's interesting that even the best chess engines are still worse at analyzing openings than humans.
They're also terrible at recognizing fortress positions. There are many such positions where decent human players immediately recognize a draw but an engine will give a non-zero evaluation. The engine can then be manipulated up to the 50 move rule whereby it might weaken its own position in order to avoid the draw.