> Lichess is developed and managed mostly by one guy wow! is this realy true?!
going based off the github insights, yep seems mostly true, and it's the case for a surprising number of large projects.
Chess.com vs. Lichess
21–30 of 221 posts
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lichess uses Stockfish 14+ NNUE compiled with WASM, so it should be essentially as fast as running it locally on your own machine. They don't expose as many of the tuning options, but that's not an enormous difference for most people. So no, it is just just some Javascript program. And as far as I know, essentially every modern chess engine uses a hashtable of positions such that transpositions are essentially free.…
Except Stockfish has some hand-written x86-specific bits, such as PEXT / PDEP, or BMI2 instructions. I'm talking hand-tuned assembly here, really good stuff and very high performance. Running Stockfish 30% to 40% slower for no reason at all, and with far less RAM / resources means that you'll get weaker analysis at slower speeds. And those "tuning options" include tablebases, which would provably play perfectly (and…
> Running Stockfish 30% to 40% slower for no reason at all, and with far less RAM / resources means that you'll get weaker analysis at slower speeds.
Even if 100% true, this is a complete non-issue. Absolutely nobody reading this comment is going to notice a meaningful difference or benefit from running their games against a 3550 Elo engine running hand-optimized x86 instructions versus a 3200 Elo engine running in WASM in the browser.
The extreme convenience of pressing one button to receive high-quality analysis (and ongoing live analysis powered by a WASM engine) beats the annoyance of exporting your games to PGN and importing them into an external UI just for the sake of analyzing your games even farther past the horizon that humans will ever truly be able to understand. If you're a competitive GM or Super GM? Sure, maybe that level of analysis will help you find unexplored lines for your preparation. Fro anyone else? It's completely irrelevant.
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
PEXT is mostly for magic bitboards, right? So it’s more of a one time cost. But still, I’d be amazed if it weren’t much slower in the browser now and forever.
No. Magic Bitboards are what you use if you don't have PEXT available. EDIT: I expect the WASM version to use magic-bitboards (which is just a "magical" multiply instruction + a lookup). Every single sliding piece (ie: Rooks, Bishops, and Queens) use PEXT (or magic-bitboards if the PEXT code is unavailable) to determine where to go. Its a fundamental calculation to determine very, very quickly which moves are legal o…
Yeah, that’s all I meant, PEXT does the same job as magic bitboards where it’s available. But my point was that either way it’s run once (I seem to remember it’s even a constexpr in recent Stockfishes) so I’d be surprised if it were a major performance hit.
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Magic Bitboards are what you use if you don't have PEXT available. EDIT: I expect the WASM version to use magic-bitboards (which is just a "magical" multiply instruction + a lookup). Every single sliding piece (ie: Rooks, Bishops, and Queens) use PEXT (or magic-bitboards if the PEXT code is unavailable) to determine where to go. Its a fundamental calculation to determine very, very quickly which moves are legal o…
Yeah, that’s all I meant, PEXT does the same job as magic bitboards where it’s available. But my point was that either way it’s run once (I seem to remember it’s even a constexpr in recent Stockfishes) so I’d be surprised if it were a major performance hit.
> But my point was that either way it’s run once
Both Magic Bitboards and PEXT are run every single time Stockfish thinks of a Queen, Bishop, or Rook. Literally every, single, time.
Stockfish does something like 10-million positions per second or something. That's a lot of times the "where can the Queen move" analysis is run. Speeding that routine up by 50% or something (PEXT vs Magic Bitboards) really does make a difference in the great scheme of speed.
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Unless you're playing some fantasy-version of Chess (or maybe some extreme endgame where all pawns, queens, bishops, and rooks are dead... pawns because they might promote into a queen/bishop/rook), you'll be benefiting from selecting that PEXT version if you're on an Intel or Zen3 processor.
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#25> Lichess is developed and managed mostly by one guy wow! is this realy true?!
It is true! He also occasionally streams development of lichess live on twitch.
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Magic Bitboards are what you use if you don't have PEXT available. EDIT: I expect the WASM version to use magic-bitboards (which is just a "magical" multiply instruction + a lookup). Every single sliding piece (ie: Rooks, Bishops, and Queens) use PEXT (or magic-bitboards if the PEXT code is unavailable) to determine where to go. Its a fundamental calculation to determine very, very quickly which moves are legal o…
Yeah, that’s all I meant, PEXT does the same job as magic bitboards where it’s available. But my point was that either way it’s run once (I seem to remember it’s even a constexpr in recent Stockfishes) so I’d be surprised if it were a major performance hit.
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Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#27I spent a lot of time on chess.com (including paying for membership) but recently switched to lichess, because simply it feels a better, more polished, product. Love the fact it does not have ads ( https://lichess.org/blog/YF-ZORQAACAA89PI/why-lichess-will-a... . ) unlike chess.com which is ad-infested. Lichess is very customizable. Love the everyday tournaments and the community there as well. Would pay for it. The…
Ever heard about En Passant?
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#28Lichess is much, much better. It's free. Chess.com is a bloated mess and it won't change.. they think they are facebook.
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except Stockfish has some hand-written x86-specific bits, such as PEXT / PDEP, or BMI2 instructions. I'm talking hand-tuned assembly here, really good stuff and very high performance. Running Stockfish 30% to 40% slower for no reason at all, and with far less RAM / resources means that you'll get weaker analysis at slower speeds. And those "tuning options" include tablebases, which would provably play perfectly (and…
> Running Stockfish 30% to 40% slower for no reason at all, and with far less RAM / resources means that you'll get weaker analysis at slower speeds. Even if 100% true, this is a complete non-issue. Absolutely nobody reading this comment is going to notice a meaningful difference or benefit from running their games against a 3550 Elo engine running hand-optimized x86 instructions versus a 3200 Elo engine running in W…
> The extreme convenience of pressing one button to receive high-quality analysis (and ongoing live analysis powered by a WASM engine) beats the annoyance of exporting your games to PGN and importing them into an external UI just for the sake of analyzing your games even farther past the horizon that humans will ever truly be able to understand. If you're a competitive GM or Super GM? Sure, maybe that level of analysis will help you find unexplored lines for your preparation. Fro anyone else? It's completely irrelevant.
Its one button click for me.
"Download .PGN" button -> open with SCID vs PC (which I setup as the default app for PGNs).
I hit "F2" and bam, analysis is going on already. Sure, you have to set it up so that the F2 engine is Stockfish / tuned parameters as appropriate, but in the long run, having control of this is clearly beneficial. Especially if you're going to be using computer analysis to teach yourself more advanced tactics.
Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess
#30Lichess is so much better. It's free. chess.com thinks its facebook and it looks really childish (they probably copied things from chesskid). They have like a billion developers (why? its chess.. and already done). Lichess is like 1 guy (who I think used to work for chesscom until the ceo was a dick or something)