Garry Kasparov launches a community-first chess platform

I defaulted to “lie-chess”, and that’s where I’m staying.

The website is very lightweight and fully responsive on mobile, and usually has some extra features than the apps.

Every time I think about lichess, I realize how untrue the generic 'we cannot have good things' platitude is. Everything about lichess just strikes pure joy to me --- open source, no tracking/ ads, feature complete and everything totally free for everyone!

Also quality. Lichess has by far the best interface and smoothest experience.

Well financed commercial players like chess.com, chess24, chessbase were never able to replicate it. Lichess which was a one man show for a long time has beaten them all in engineering department and not by a small margin. The difference is just night and day, like driving 30 years old car and modern one.

It's one of the examples of how you can't pay your way to good software. There was a discussion about Discord lately and how it's about userbase only and how you could recreate it spending a fraction of what its valuation is. I don't think you could. I mean apparently you can't even pay your way to get somewhat playable chess site.

Btw, check the git log (or run one if those punch card scripts on the repo). The main programmer is a machine. It's humbling what kind of output a great programmer with great work ethics can achieve.

Current landscape of chess platform as I understand it:

lichess: non-profit, free and open source, community oriented, high quality tech, growing userbase, amazing founder ornicar, much loved by its users and supporters including me. Regular online competitions well attended but doesn't organise major events. Doesn't really do things like video lessons or partnership with streamers as far as I know, probably due to non-profit status and community focus.

chess.com: for-profit, the largest user base, led by IM Danny Rensch. Tech is not as good as lichess but still okay-ish. Organises major events with GM commentators. Has partnerships with major streamers, such as the most successful (but controversial) US number 2 GM Hikaru Nakamura. I used to support them before lichess got big.

chess24: for-profit, led by GM Jan Gustaffson, much smaller than chess.com and lichess, supported by current world champion GM Magnus Carlsen. Tech is worse than both lichess and chess.com. Also organises important events, and also produces high quality content such as video lessons. I'm considering supporting them too as I watch a lot of their content but I just enjoy playing on lichess too much.

One fascinating thing is how both for-profit chess.com and chess24 have much worse tech than non-profit lichess despite presumably large budgets. For example chess24 platform has been under development for years and has become a running joke even for its employees. You'd think a chess website would be fairly simple tech in the grand scheme of things but clearly it's still hard to do it right. A testament to how impressive lichess founder and community is.