Lichess

Announcements • Registration for season 35is closed. Registration for season 36 will open after season 35 has finished. • Timeline for season 35:team formation on May 1st, start of first round on May 8th 2023. • Detailed stats for past 4545 seasons are now available • A "new" edition of the league newsletter has been released! Read it About Lichess4545 This is a chess league for people who like playing long time control games online. On lichess.org. Team members play one game per week with a 45+45 time control.

So I usually play on Lichess now a days while my friend plays on Chess.com. He keeps telling me that Chess.com is harder and has more players and more serious players, therefore the games are harder and players are better than on Lichess. He thereby claims that games are easier on Lichess than on Chess.com. For me this claim makes no sense because both sites use the same ELO algorithm, which is a mathematical object, independent of which players play on which site. If my strength is X on Chess.com then my strength shall be X on Lichess, as well. The rating number could be different since that can be manually magnified, but the strength of a player cannot be magnified obviously. Who is right and who is wrong? What arguments would you guys provide to my friend ,or to me for that matter? Lichess recently added a concise explanation to its site: Important points: • Chess.com uses the Glicko-1 algorithm with an initial rating of 1200. • Lichess uses the Glicko-2 algorithm with an initial rating of 1500. • Neither of them uses the Elo algorithm ( not ELO - it's not an abbreviation). • Furthermore, it doesn't make sense to compare the ratings even if both sites used the same system, as they have different player pools. If we are just talking of abstracted playing strength, the assertion that one site is "easier" than another still doesn't make sense. Elo and Glicko systems all have in common that if you get matched with players with the same rating as you have, they will on avera...

First of all, lichess rarely bans players. What they usually do is flag their profile (usually for using chess computer assistance), remove their rating, and prevent them from p laying in tournaments and/or rating games. This is not a full ban. To answer your question: Lichess flags players for a variety of reasons, but (as mentioned above) they usually flag players for using chess computer assistance. They may also be flagged for sandbagging - artificially increasing or decreasing their rating. If you want to know why are particular player was flagged, check their profile. There should be a large red banner informing you what has happened. If you are wondering how the process of reporting/flagging players works, that would be a separate question.

Assuming Stockfish level 8 is full strength Stockfish, it's possible to beat it but extremely unlikely. In very rare cases, Stockfish will incorrectly evaluate a complicated position, unless given a minute or two to think. If a human were to get in such a position in a 3 0 game, Stockfish could make a fatal blunder. However, the chances of the human making a mistake first is far greater. Making the time control longer than 3 0 favors Stockfish, since it has more time to think if it's misevaluating something. If Stockfish level 8 is only 2200-2400 (I've read this on some online sources), then beating it is more realistic. IMHO playing against Stockfish level eight is a lost cause when playing against its full 16 quad core processors and basically unlimited flash storage, no matter the time constraints. Magnus Carlson stated a couple of years ago that he always lost against that computer program. The lichess version is but a shadow of its real self. While it is true that Stockfish (and any engine, afaik) can be stronger or weaker based on the hardware on which it runs, I don't understand what you're referring to when you say "...against its full 16 quad core processors and basically unlimited flash storage." Stockfish has no inherent CPU ("full 16 quad core processors") nor memory ("basically unlimited flash storage"). It's a program that runs on hardware, not a piece of hardware in itself. What are you referring to here? Yes, it is possibile and not so unlikely under two co...

I have been playing on chess.com and lichess for more than 2 years. My rating in blitz on lichess is around 2100, and on chesscom is around 1800. Yet I highly believe that the players on chesscom are much more accurate. Like sometimes I look at the position and they don't do any blunders, 1 mistake, and a few inaccuracies in a position that's really tough to play. Like I would beat them with good moves (not the best moves) and then I would be surprised at the end that overall they played better almost every time! This is very strange. I don't know if there's more cheating on chesscom or what? I would really appreciate it if you can give me your feedback on this topic because it has been driving me crazy. Like I find it easier to beat a 1900 player on lichess than a 1800 on chesscom which is insane! Let's look at this from another perspective. Instead of assuming that the problem is just that the ratings at different sites mean different things, let's take that out of the equation. Let's look at the reasons that you could observe that opponents at your rating on one site play fewer mistakes than opponents at your rating on another site. Your opponents might only appear to be stronger on one site: • If you are using the computer analysis from the different sites to find mistakes, the analysis on one site might be different from the analysis on another. The threshold for "mistake" might be different, or the analysis might be stronger or weaker, which affects how many mistakes...

I went to Lichess. Got to 2300+ in 9 games. Felt very little resistance. Got bored and left. For the most part, it felt like playing a string of beginners. Even at the 2000 blitz level, players were hanging their pieces in the opening. I'm sure it gets tougher at higher levels, but ... I prefer chess.com's competitive pool. To each their own, I suppose. (I do like how smooth/fast the gameplay feels there, though. For that reason, I can see why some players prefer Lichess.) I went to Lichess. Got to 2300+ in 9 games. Felt very little resistance. Got bored and left. For the most part, it felt like playing a string of beginners. Even at the 2000 blitz level, players were hanging their pieces in the opening. I'm sure it gets tougher at higher levels, but ... I prefer chess.com's competitive pool. To each their own, I suppose. (I do like how smooth/fast the gameplay feels there, though. For that reason, I can see why some players prefer Lichess.) There really is just something about Lichess' rating pool that makes it feel... inconsistent. One game I could be facing a 2000 rated Lichess player who plays like a 1600 Chess.com player at least and the next would blunder like there's no tomorrow. To be fair, Lichess would of course have some really strong players (as well as all the titled masters). And I'm sure a lot of the playing pool overlaps, between the two sites. But the general quality of moves, at a fundamental level, does seem a bit ... different. I suppose it depends on t...

@PhishMaster I forgot to accept some of them since I don't spend too much time on Stackexchange, but I don't want you to get the impression that I don't like your answers. I do upvote nearly all of them and find the information helpful. It's ofcourse up to you on whether you want to write up answers for me or not.

I have been playing on lichess for a while and it strikes me how low ratings are compared to other rating systems. This is not to say that players are weaker, I have quite the opposite feeling, but ratings are Glicko, rather than Elo, and this the number of players is reasonably low, so this prevents inflation but still... I am wondering what a typical low-2000s FIDE player's rating is on lichess. (I assume that higher rated players don't play online chess?) Thanks! I'm definitely an outlier of sorts, but my lichess rating is ~2400 blitz/bullet, and my FIDE rating is ~2100. My biggest complaint with lichess is that it's very difficult to find other high rated players that are playing blitz at any given time and to some degree I end up playing lower rated players which probably overly inflates my rating to some degree. I think lichess is a bit inflated, my rating there is 2100 (blitz and classical) but e.g in chess.com it's 2000. Furthermore in chess.com I should play very cautios otherwise I'll lose w.h.p to a same rated player (+-50) but in lichess I can have fun and try random sacrifices and still save the game, while in chess.com giving up a pawn or two or exchange sacrifice without concrete calculation or clear strategical achievment(w.r.t. my understanding), very often causes to lose. Note that in lichess I'm even 100 more rated than chess.com. I went through the list of LiChess FIDE LiChess username Name 2585 2265 ClassyPlays Thibault Dudognon [FM] 2389 1869 nikkon20...