Live data from Hacker News

Chess.com vs. Lichess

siddhesh.substack.com

81–90 of 221 posts

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#81
It's worth noting many of these points are subjective, and I disagree with all of the bullets in favor of chess.com. I'm 2100 Elo on Lichess for what it's worth.

1. I prefer the way Lichess handles right clicks, knight movement tracking, and tracking arrows.

2. 4-player chess: The author mentions that it's their favorite variant to watch. I can't say I've heard that opinion before. Personally I tend to stick to vanilla chess, but it's worth noting that Lichess has many different variants available.

3. Games start faster: I've found games start faster on Lichess for me.

4. Varied playing sounds: Lichess also has different sounds for captures. Personally I turn the sounds off for slow chess since they're annoying, but I can't find my rhythm without them when playing bullet.

5. Multiple premoves: Actually it's much easier to win endgames on Lichess when you have 1 second left, since Lichess does not deduct time from your clock when you make premoves.

6. Social media: I've never seen any content from either on social media.

This comment is admittedly just a massive diss of chess.com, but it's not all bad. I think the main reason many people prefer chess.com is that it's familiar from the streams of the likes of Nakamura and Rozman. This is simply because chess.com pays streamers with the money they receive from premium users, whereas Lichess is free.

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#83

It's worth noting many of these points are subjective, and I disagree with all of the bullets in favor of chess.com. I'm 2100 Elo on Lichess for what it's worth. 1. I prefer the way Lichess handles right clicks, knight movement tracking, and tracking arrows. 2. 4-player chess: The author mentions that it's their favorite variant to watch. I can't say I've heard that opinion before. Personally I tend to stick to vanil…

I prefer to play on my phone as opposed to with a mouse. I like short games 3 mins and under. I've tried so much to like chess.com, but it's just so much worse than Lichess. Chess.com feels choppy, I don't like the style of the pieces, and the app just kind of bugs me in comparison. I'm not a strong player, but I play a ton... maybe we are just creatures of habit and like the apps we are used to?

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#84

A smidge off topic, but I'm curious; is there a place where you can upload (say) a chess bot you designed and play against other uploaded chess bots? (or any move base game, even as simple as 'paper rock scissors')?

You can also use the Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) as a test bed for chess engines. The interface is telnet-based, so it's pretty easy to experiment with and learn. There's also "zippy" mode in xboard that allows you to connect your engine to FICS .

The commands below will login as a guest and display all of the computer accounts. Use the finger command to find info about an account.

  telnet freechess.org
  g 
  who C
  finger ACCOUNT
Sadly, FICS has been dying a slow death for the past 10 years ... but there are plenty of idle CPU accounts waiting for an opponent.

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#85
post #31

I also recently switched to Lichess after using Chess.com for years. What tipped it for me was that I switched to an iPhone, and for some reason the Chess.com app on the iPhone absolutely obliterated my battery. I'm not sure what the issue was and maybe it's been fixed, but for a while it was just eating up battery life while playing like nothing else. The servers for Lichess I find a little less reliable, but it's m…

The lichess app is all around better. Bullet is unplayable on chess.com's app.

Really? I play billet games on my phone almost daily.

Maybe try to reinstall your app if or crashes or won’t let you play because I’d definitely should.

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#86
post #42

If you have some server sitting idle you could consider contributing cycles to the fishnet: https://lichess.org/get-fishnet

I requested this a few months ago as my server was sitting unused and I wanted to help. Never got an answer back, maybe because the server's specs aren't great. Either way now I've got nextcloud running so unfortunately too late :(

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#87
post #43

If you've been following these two products for the last few years it's definitely clear to see that Lichess is slowly eating chess.com's lunch ... They're not fast at development, but slowly and surely improving and innovating on the space via being open source. For example, Lichess puzzles aren't quite of the same quality yet and their puzzle games are new (BUT) they've built and are improving the tech to create ne…

Interesting perspective. I have subscriptions to both and my first reaction was the exact opposite of yours. Chess.con is so far ahead of lichens that it wasn’t debatable. What in your opinion leads you to believe that lichess is eating chess.com’s lunch. For me games are far easier and quicker to setup with chess.com. The drills are better at chess.com and so are the lessons, both in-depth and breadth. I can’t reall…

How exactly increased elo makes lichess worse? I would only argue that because of the number of players chess.com it seems more stable. I really feel every 50 of elo difference.

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#88
I think lichess.org is far superior in that it has a super-polished UX in ways that are not immediately obvious. After I made the switch from chess.com in 2014 (I had the paid features), it was always extremely annoying to come back. Also lichess.org gives you most of what chess.com tries to upsell you on, for free. As it happens I've re-validated this over the last few days with dozens of games on chess.com.

A single example, and a counter-point to the article: Drawing knight-moves as "L"-shaped arrows is actually super annoying, because the likelihood that moves between different pairs of squares partially overlap is quite high.

And in general, the lichess.org app is miles ahead on visual clarity, giving feedback on your actions, and indicating your turn (seems trivial I know, but it's not). Chess.com on the other hand offers chess content, such as courses tournament coverage, blogs, etc. that lichess does not.

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#89
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting perspective. I have subscriptions to both and my first reaction was the exact opposite of yours. Chess.con is so far ahead of lichens that it wasn’t debatable. What in your opinion leads you to believe that lichess is eating chess.com’s lunch. For me games are far easier and quicker to setup with chess.com. The drills are better at chess.com and so are the lessons, both in-depth and breadth. I can’t reall…

How exactly increased elo makes lichess worse? I would only argue that because of the number of players chess.com it seems more stable. I really feel every 50 of elo difference.

It doesn’t. Especially in this case, because lichess doesn’t even use elo ratings. It’s a different rating system altogether.

https://lichess.org/faq#ratings

Re: Chess.com vs. Lichess

#90
post #89
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly increased elo makes lichess worse? I would only argue that because of the number of players chess.com it seems more stable. I really feel every 50 of elo difference.

It doesn’t. Especially in this case, because lichess doesn’t even use elo ratings. It’s a different rating system altogether. https://lichess.org/faq#ratings

Chess.com also uses Glicko. Though it might be version 2 on lichess and version 1 on chess.com.
Post reply on HN