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Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

lichess.org

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Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#61

Post by sireat »

blub wrote: post #59
sireat wrote: post #46

Chess has always had this dichotomy over free/paid services. (a bit not unlike programming tools). I love lichess.org but make no mistake: without the dedication of one talented Scala programmer willing to underpay themselves that site would not exist. Commercial sites can provide more services and offer more opportunities to chess professionals simply due to the funding model. Disclaimer: I've played over 100k onlin…

Don’t you regret wasting so much time? Or do you just suppress these thoughts :-)

Time enjoyed is not wasted :)

Still it is a bit of addiction and I try to limit myself to 4 - 6 games in one sitting.

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#62

Post by synu »

sireat wrote: post #46

Chess has always had this dichotomy over free/paid services. (a bit not unlike programming tools). I love lichess.org but make no mistake: without the dedication of one talented Scala programmer willing to underpay themselves that site would not exist. Commercial sites can provide more services and offer more opportunities to chess professionals simply due to the funding model. Disclaimer: I've played over 100k onlin…

Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it, but I'm not sure what I'm not supposed to be making a mistake about? Can you clarify?

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#63

Post by dalbasal »

bluecalm wrote: post #55
dalbasal wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more reasons, but... At core there is a dichotomy between Chess.com's business-model-ish approach and Lichess' communist approach... to put it in Thibault's own words. No freemium tiers. No subscription plans, ads, etc. Just donations. That approach has been good for keeping the UX lightweight and snapy. Chess.com has been around longer, so Lichess' is still catching up with features. I quite enjoy having t…

I don't think commercial vs communist has anything to do with it. Thibault is just a very good, hard working programmer. If his political views were different then Lichess would still have the best platform and he would have way more money. There is no reason what so over for chess com playing area being as bad as it is other than them not being able to find a programmer as good as Thibault. It's not only about money…

I would agree with you in a lot of cases, especially public administration but...

In Thibault's case, he has consciously and deliberately made it so that his political views do affect choices at all levels. A lot of it is quite direct. If you are "communist^," then you think differently about login, data retention. You make feature decisions differently. You also make hiring/expansion/strategy decisions differently.

Chess.com needs to worry about free-paid conversion rates, crippling features to differentiate subscription plans, analytics people/code to tie it all together. Those require code, infrastructure. They come with performance costs, technical debt. Thibault has explicitly identified these, and deliberately carved advantages out of them. What can you do with much less bloat.

Even just having more money has disadvantages, besides the obvious advantages. You now have teams and senior people responsible for analytics, commercial performance, an extensive (and restrictive) streamer sponsorship program. You have a bigger accounts dept. etc. Modern companies have a lot of bloat, and administrative analogues to technical debt.

That stuff inevitably leads to a difference in product, even if you had the exact same programers. Environments matter. Thibault is trying to win. I like it.

^I'm going to call this ideology "Thibault Communism" to keep it narrow.

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#64

Post by shric »

register wrote: post #57
sireat wrote: post #46

Chess has always had this dichotomy over free/paid services. (a bit not unlike programming tools). I love lichess.org but make no mistake: without the dedication of one talented Scala programmer willing to underpay themselves that site would not exist. Commercial sites can provide more services and offer more opportunities to chess professionals simply due to the funding model. Disclaimer: I've played over 100k onlin…

100K games!!! That's quite an achievement. I am an average club player and I have played about 15K in more than 20 years of playing.

I joined lichess in Nov 2018 and have played 15,269 games. It'll be more by the time most people read this :p

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#65

Post by fragmede »

radarsat1 wrote: post #48
soegaard wrote: post #25

There is plenty of room for all of Chess.com, Chess24 and Lichess to exist. Lichess has the best platform to play on and is free to use. Chess.com is a business. As such they want to earn money. However, without a large, online chess community there will be no subscribers. The amount of effort chess.com has made to sponsor events, streamers etc. is tremendous. Making a living as a chess professional is tough. Streami…

Lichess is a platform though, not an accessory. I think a better comparison would be, would Nike be happy if Ronaldo played in a tournament on a field owned by Adidas, in a world in which Adidas is a nonprofit company giving shoes to anyone who wants them. The answer may very well still be "no, they would not be happy," but I bet the public reaction to being forbidden from a public tournament would be different than…

If we want to use sports analogies we don't have to use Nike and Adidas as stand-ins, golf is undergoing this right now, between the PGA and LIV tournaments, and members with exclusivity clauses in their contracts.

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#66

Post by sireat »

register wrote: post #57
sireat wrote: post #46

Chess has always had this dichotomy over free/paid services. (a bit not unlike programming tools). I love lichess.org but make no mistake: without the dedication of one talented Scala programmer willing to underpay themselves that site would not exist. Commercial sites can provide more services and offer more opportunities to chess professionals simply due to the funding model. Disclaimer: I've played over 100k onlin…

100K games!!! That's quite an achievement. I am an average club player and I have played about 15K in more than 20 years of playing.

It averages about 10 games a day over 30 year.

Takes roughly an hour on 3 0 controls. There are days when I play 20 and some days when I play none.

Is there a corelation between games played and rating? Probably some but you hit diminishing returns at some point. As Botvinnik said - blitz rots your brain.

Over the years I have noticed some rating inflation on online chess sites. My high on lichess is 2670 and 2620 on chess.com. On older services I never broke 2500 and my highest OTB rating as an FM was 2398.

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#67

Post by rimliu »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #39
mythz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their product is simply inferior in every way Completely untrue, I've played on both and the UX + post game Analysis, video content library, etc is far better on chess.com. I do hope lichess.org is able to improve and find better monetization options that's able to pay for more dev + UX resources, championship prizes + GM commentators which makes watching chess far more entertaining.

Some people will always disagree, but it's been my experience that when people try both sites, most people end up preferring Lichess. Certainly when comparing lichess to Chess.com's free tier, there simply is no contest. When people say the opposite, it seems to always be people who have been chess.com customers for years, suggesting a possible post-purchase rationalisation

I play way more on Lichess (because I like their tournaments better), but I still prefer chess.com UX and analysis.

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#68

Post by sireat »

synu wrote: post #62
sireat wrote: post #46

Chess has always had this dichotomy over free/paid services. (a bit not unlike programming tools). I love lichess.org but make no mistake: without the dedication of one talented Scala programmer willing to underpay themselves that site would not exist. Commercial sites can provide more services and offer more opportunities to chess professionals simply due to the funding model. Disclaimer: I've played over 100k onlin…

Open source in general wouldn't exist without lots of people who contribute and underpay themselves for it, but I'm not sure what I'm not supposed to be making a mistake about? Can you clarify?

I meant to say that lichess.org is a bit of an outlier for a great service based on FOSS principles and a donation model.

There are many chessplayers who think lichess > chess because it is absolutely free. That is not a sufficient condition for greatness. Having a paid model is not a horrible thing.

It is not given that a nice FOSS project is sustainable. There are plenty of free projects which went nowhere.

Only a handful FOSS projects can support themselves (vue, lichess and very few others).

Even worse, there are many formerly great FOSS projects half-abandonded when the original creator decided to get a "real job". That is what worries me with lichess - the bus factor of one.

Yes I have lichess repo on my computer but that is not sufficient.

As I have grown older I've come to appreciate the value of paying for things well made.

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#69

Post by register »

shric wrote: post #64
register wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100K games!!! That's quite an achievement. I am an average club player and I have played about 15K in more than 20 years of playing.

I joined lichess in Nov 2018 and have played 15,269 games. It'll be more by the time most people read this :p

With an average length of 5 minutes per game ( given a 3+2 time control ) and assuming you don't play more than 8 hours per day this is around 162 full days spent playing chess. Also this is an achievement!

Re: Hikaru Nakamura's Forbidden Platform

#70

Post by register »

shric wrote: post #64
register wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100K games!!! That's quite an achievement. I am an average club player and I have played about 15K in more than 20 years of playing.

I joined lichess in Nov 2018 and have played 15,269 games. It'll be more by the time most people read this :p

Chess is quite a popular topic here on HN new. I propose to do a HN league / Tournament. Who is willing to join?
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