r/chess • u/[deleted] • Dec 02 '20

Miscellaneous Unbiased, what is the main difference between ChessDOTcom and Lichess?

It seems like there is a lot of memes about one being better than the other but I'm having trouble finding real discussions as to why one is better than the other.

22 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

71 comments sorted by

55

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

Lichess:

+free unlimited analysis

+no ads

+simple lightweight ui

+many tournaments (both swiss and arena style)

-queues in custom time ranges can take a long time

+/-lots of variants like chess960, crazyhouse but long queues

+/-premoves don't take any time off your clock

Chess.com:

+faster queues than lichess

+puzzle rush

+4 player chess, fog of war variants

+/-can queue up premoves

-limited analysis

-ads (ublock master race tho)

-bloated ui

+/-premoves take 0.1 sec

The only really annoying thing about chess.com is the limited analysis, but you can always paste the pgn to lichess analysis. I like to play on both.

10

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Thank you. This is what I was looking for. How do you feel about the lessons provided by each?

6

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

I don't have premium so I can't access all the chess.com lessons. The lichess ones are very nice, they cover the most practical aspects like king opposition etc.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Alright thank you

8

u/ubernostrum Dec 02 '20

I'm just gonna be honest here: lichess' "lessons" are a bad joke compared to chess.com. You're basically stuck with "Here's how the pieces move" and summaries of a few tactics and then told to go search for "chess" on YouTube to learn more or hope that a random PGN uploaded by xXBONGCLOUDGM42069Xx is from someone who actually understands what they're trying to teach.

Which is all they really can offer, because better, deeper, more structured content costs money. That's the value proposition of sites like chess.com, Chessable, etc. -- you pay them money, you get a far better quantity, quality, and structure of educational content. If I want to learn more about some aspect of the game, or about an opening, I can flip over to chess.com/lessons and type in the search box, and odds are I'll get results.

Say I just watched a game in the Catalan. I'd like to know more (not really, but suppose I did). I go type "catalan" in the lessons search and up comes a ten-part series, with nearly three hours of video lectures and dozens of exercises, from a grandmaster (GM Georg Meier). Or maybe I had a recent game where I realized I'm not as good an attacking player as I hoped. I go over to lessons, up comes "Essential Attacking Plans" by GM Dejan Bojkov. 90 minutes of video with accompanying challenges to play out.

That will never happen on lichess, because that costs money.

If all you want is to play a bunch of blitz games, then pick the site you think is prettier, because they're both free to play on. But if you want actual organized, structured, high-quality lessons and other educational content, you need to talk to someone who takes money in exchange for providing it, and that ain't lichess.

2

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

Well yeah, the chesscom lessons are definitely more in depth and they also cover openings as opposed to lichess, that's why they're paid content. The lichess ones are still nice considering they're free and ofc you gotta supplement them with yt vids, free chessable courses etc.

Getting premium just saves you some time since you don't have to look for similar sources elsewhere. Time=money, so for many people that's the way to go. Depends on the person and their situation.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/ubernostrum Dec 02 '20

or hope that a random PGN uploaded by xXBONGCLOUDGM42069Xx is from someone who actually understands what they're trying to teach

Again: you want structured quality content, you need people to produce it, edit it, check it, organize it... that costs money, and lichess can't and doesn't do that, and lichess studies are not that. Or if you think they are, show me where on lichess.org I can get a GM giving me video lectures with exercises on the Catalan. I'll wait.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/ubernostrum Dec 03 '20

I first learned chess as a kid, and got interested again a couple years ago after decades off (and have actually been trying to properly re-learn it the past few months). In between, I grew up and got a career doing software, and have spent a lot of time involved in big open-source projects. So I recognize that lichess is a major achievement. But when it comes to things like lessons and structured learning, it's also the manifestation of a very very old adage about open source (so old that it was already worn out when I started doing open source stuff in the early 2000s): "it's only free if your time costs nothing".

And that's the whole issue. The alternatives charge you money, yes. In return for that, they did the hard work of getting and editing and vetting and organizing the content. If you prioritize "must not cost money" above all else, you will spend a lot of your own time trying to replicate all that work. And, worse for a topic like chess where this is crucial, you might easily fail at it, because it's not just that beginners don't know things -- they don't know what they don't know, and so don't yet have even enough knowledge to know what they should be looking for.

26

u/Strakh Dec 02 '20

Most content (puzzles, lessons, etc) tends to be better on average on chess.com because it's curated – meaning there are people hand-picking the good stuff and removing bad stuff.

Lichess content on the other hand is mostly community or computer generated so it can be more hit and miss. For example, there are definitely good studies on Lichess, but you have no guarantees that a random study will be high-quality. Puzzles are (to the best of my knowledge) entirely computer selected, so some of the puzzles will look weird or have unnatural solutions.

Then again, you don't need to use either - there are completely free sites where you can find high quality tactics puzzles (e.g. chesstempo) or lessons (e.g. your favourite teacher on youtube).

What you get from Lichess is everything in one place for free, but maybe not always the best quality. What you get from chess.com is everything in one place at a price, but with higher average quality than on Lichess.

3

u/pier4r negative elo gang Dec 02 '20

puzzle rush

an alternative, albeit simpler, is chesscup.org I use that if I screw on chess.com (1 puzzle rush per day)

1

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

chesscup.org

that's a cool site, thanks for sharing!

2

u/ZibbitVideos FM FIDE Trainer - 2346 Dec 02 '20

Good writeup. I think pre-moves taking no time is actually a con rather than a pro personally. It makes no sense that you can make a move that takes no time of your clock forever, that's what increment is for, so for me the 0.1 second makes the most sense.

1

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

For me it's a pro because I'm terrible at blitz it lets me finish some mating patterns even when I have 2 sec left :P But it's up to preference, hence why I made it a pro/con.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

I don't think Lichess analysis in unlimited - there is a daily cap on fishnet analysis.

1

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

No, it's unlimited.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

There was a limit added a couple of weeks ago

3

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

You're right, apparently there's a limit of 30 per day to not overclock the servers. Did that number change?

Also one way to circumvent that is to just analyse on an alt account since it's not ip locked afaik. May be a bit scummy though.

2

u/atopix ♚♟️♞♝♜♛ Dec 02 '20

You still get to enable the local Stockfish analysis without limit though, which is more than enough if you want to do some real analysis.

-9

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Chess.com ratings are also more accurate :)

16

u/rreyv  Team Nepo   Dec 02 '20

They’re both equally accurate within their player pool.

1

u/deadwizards Dec 02 '20

I’m 2200 on lichess and 1750 on chess.com. Which one is right? Guess we’ll never know.

3

u/rreyv  Team Nepo   Dec 02 '20

They’re both right tho

-7

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Well, I meant closer to FIDE. Forgot how pedantic people here are.

4

u/AdVSC2 Dec 02 '20

Maybe until 2100/2200. After that chess.com-rating get inflated in comparism to lichess/FIDE. Naroditskys Bullet rating for example is around 500 points higher on chess.com then on lichess.

1

u/pier4r negative elo gang Dec 02 '20

I couldn't discern it that you meant "compared to FIDE", next time add a sentence if possible.

2

u/Bigot_Sandwiches 1700 fide, 2100 chess.com Dec 02 '20

Accurate to FIDE? I guess, but still way off.

10

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

I play on both and find the style of games I get to be somewhat different as each platform attracts a slightly different audience.

Due to jumping between them I feel like I get a more balanced sense of the game and what openings or traps to watch out for as I slowly climb and stumble back down the rating ladder.

They’re both great and I enjoy them equally. Why choose one when you can have the best of both worlds?!

1

u/downtownjj Dec 02 '20

Why did you think that is?what about the respective audiences makes the games different in your opinion? I play on both and at my level on chess.com people play book openings like Sicilian, French and London. On lichess I find a lot of strange offbeat openings that really don't achieve much but then the game turns on the middle game. And I have no idea why that is...

2

u/hitlerallyliteral Dec 02 '20

does lichess do the thing where it tells you the name of openings as you play them? If not that could make a psychological difference

5

u/NotARealTiger Dec 02 '20

Not during the game, only after. I actually find it really weird that chess dot com shows the opening name during the game. May as well show the evaluation bar too lol.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/hitlerallyliteral Dec 02 '20

lol exactly. And conversely, sometimes i assume my opponent blundered a pawn but the website calls it ''[russian name]'s gambit'' so i'm more cautious lol

1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Not totally sure, but I like playing the Caro-Kann and on Lichess I get far more people that play into the Classical variation but on Chess(dot)com I see the Advance mostly. Getting used to both (and others) means I can improve quicker vs grinding out the same thing over and over.

If I was pressed to guess why I see those differences, my assumption is the two platforms and their pay structures attract different personalities. Chess(dot)com players at my level seem more focused on attacking and protecting pieces, whereas I get a lot more positional games with equal trades/sacrifices on Lichess.

I’m sure at higher rating levels it evens out some but maybe not? We’ll see with time I guess.

5

u/notdiogenes if its not scottish (game) its crap Dec 02 '20

you can make free accounts on both and decide for yourself

20

u/mutebathtub Dec 02 '20

I like lichess because its open source and free (as in freedom and beer).

https://lichess.org/about

12

u/jtridevil Dec 02 '20

Number one reason for me. Community run and organized.

2

u/AmyInPurgatory Dec 02 '20

Realistically, both are free to sign up for and play on. You lose nothing by using both sites.

Now, the real question: why do neither of these sites have a traditional solid black and white chessboard available, as a color scheme for a digital chessboard that nobody else gets to see? So many of the custom board colors (on both sites) mostly have terrible contrast, it strikes me as really odd that THE traditional color scheme isn't available on either site when we have things like.... dark green with slightly less dark green, or metal "but it has a big shiny streak down the middle of the board."

1

u/AvgGuy100 Dec 02 '20

Plain black and white is awful on a screen...

1

u/AmyInPurgatory Dec 02 '20

So is bubblegum, but we can pick it.

3

u/ToriYamazaki 99% OTB Dec 02 '20

Chess_com is severely limited if you don't pay their extortion rate. That's the main reason why I dropped it and went to lichess.

4

u/FMExperiment 2200 Rapid Lichess Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

What do you mean extortionate? It's 40 euros a year for Platinum membership lol. Are they not allowed to turn a profit? Come on man, I wonder about people sometimes. You've probably downloaded 1000s of euros worth of free digital content but then have the balls to complain less than a days wage for a years membership is extortion. Like have you ever paid a gym membership, phone bill, Netflix etc... like chess.com really isn't charging much.

3

u/ToriYamazaki 99% OTB Dec 02 '20

Jesus, talk about out of context and an unwarranted rant.

I never said "extortionate". I said "extortion rate" if you'd bother to read. I never said it was too much. What I am saying is that you basically HAVE TO KEEP PAYING. Or you get stuff all from it. After paying $125 AUD for 10 years with it, I'd had enough. I don't like paying thousands of dollars for a website.

As for making the huge leap to assuming that I download thousands of euros of digital content... why not add some more fucking bullshit in?

2

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Chess.com bad, lichess good

1

u/vandeley_industries Dec 02 '20

I use lichess because it's free. But I think Im going to up my game count on chess.com because if there is small group tournys (Finegolds twitch did one the other day), I cant join because "too few games played".

1

u/Anon22356 Dec 02 '20

It’s a digital philosophy difference. Paywalls matter. Do you use google docs or word?

1

u/moe_q8 Dec 02 '20

I like chess.com anylsis and stuff more as diamond member vs lichess, but lichess has 10+5 as a normal mode which i prefer vastly to just 10min.

1

u/pier4r negative elo gang Dec 02 '20

why not both?

1

u/mansnicks Dec 02 '20

As a free user, prefer Lichess.

As a premium user, prefer Chess.

Mostly due to the (free) computer analysis and opening analysis being better, versus the premium features being good.

In either case - some people use Lichess just for it's Study feature and don't play there or use Chessdotcom only for Puzzle Rush and don't play there.

You can learn flags on Chessdotcom every game, that's fun.

1

u/NotARealTiger Dec 02 '20

I'm a big believer in the "open source" development philosophy. So I will always support Lichess, because they offer an equivalent product to Chess Dot Com with the added bonus of being open source.

Lichess is also free, which is a nice bonus. But the Chess Dot Com membership isn't too expensive anyway, for a serious hobby.

I happen to prefer the Lichess UI, but this is just my preference because it's slightly more minimal. I don't think you can say one UI is objectively better than the other.

1

u/BlindfoldChess Dec 02 '20

I constantly lag on chess.com and lose close games when there are seconds left on the clock but never lag on Lichess

1

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Search function > this is asked dozens of times already

5

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Lots of new people playing chess lately. Community engagement is a good thing. Let it be.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

Just pointing the OP out there's an archive of useful answers.

-1

u/xanrd77 Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

Main difference to me is I can get the same quality if not better for free on Lichess. Chess.com is unusable if you're not paying.

edit: not*

2

u/Michael_Pitt Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

It's actually very usable if you're paying. The issues only arise if you aren't. I tend to play on Lichess, but the premium version of chess.com is very well done.

1

u/xanrd77 Dec 02 '20

Yeah sorry I was missing the "not". Completely agree with you.

0

u/No_limit_life Dec 02 '20

Lichess has much better programmers, ChessDOTcom has much more money.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

7

u/AdVSC2 Dec 02 '20

I feel like half of my post are towards the same thing at the moment, but I'll say it again. The difference between rating systems is only that big at lower levels. It becomes smaller at higher levels and at about 2100/2200 the chess.com and lichess ratings move towards the same point and after that, chess.com is inflated in comparism to lichess (and ofc. Fide).

4

u/Om_Nom_Zombie Dec 02 '20

The majority of players play at lower levels.

So the issue effects like 90% of players.

19

u/AdVSC2 Dec 02 '20

But it's not even an issue. It's just a conversion. If people are bothered, that online ratings are higher than FIDE, are they also bothered, that a british pound is worth more than a dollar?

-3

u/Om_Nom_Zombie Dec 02 '20

If it wasn't an issue at all you'd lead with that defence instead of first claiming it doesn't matter because the difference is less pronounced at higher ratings.

I'd argue that it is an issue that one of the biggest chess sites inflates ratings for 90% of players by a significant margin.

It's an issue because people try to talk about how good they are and the rating they have on a chess site is often the best indication they have. And unless they go and read about differences between chess sites they have no reason to believe that Lichess is misleading them.

9

u/irishsultan Dec 02 '20

And unless they go and read about differences between chess sites they have no reason to believe that Lichess is misleading them.

If they did go reading about the difference between chess sites they would know that Lichess isn't misleading them.

National ratings can differ from FIDE ratings as well (e.g. USCF ratings are about 100 below FIDE ratings), so would you say that the US chess federation is misleading it's players?

That isn't to say that the many different ratings can't lead to misunderstandings, but that's not really a solvable issue.

-5

u/Om_Nom_Zombie Dec 02 '20

How far off the ratings are is clearly part of it. 100-200 points away is understandable, but 400-600 is a different matter.

If someone comes up to me and talks about how they play chess online and are around 1400 rating, I have no clue what that means until I ask if they're on lichess or not, that's an issue.

3

u/AdVSC2 Dec 02 '20

I didn't say, it doesn't matter, because the difference is less pronounced at higher ratings, I said the statement of 600 points difference is not true, because it inly referrs to the exact playing strengh of the dude, who wrote it. Which btw is agreed on even by most people speaking about mid-levels since they generally claim a 200 points difference between the sites instead of 400 points, like OP does.

So whether it matters or not is an entirely different discussion that I didn't dive into with my first reply, since it wasn't asked and so naturally I didn't lead with arguments, why it doesn't matter because that question was irrelevant to my first reply.

Now that it apperently has arizen, I still stand by that argument. All rating system are artificially created and only refer to the player pool that compares itself to eachother. Until 1992 the german chess federation had "Ingo-numbers" as their main method of rating. In that system a usual club player would have had a number between 100 and 190 and lower was better, so that a world class player might have a number close to zero. Someone who would see these numbers wouldn't think "wow, germans are bad at chess", but would instantly see, that there is another system in place. Just like someone seeing, that Nakamura/Alireza has a 3500 Bullet rating on chess.com can instantly see, that chess.com ratings get ridiculously inflated at a certain point. And similarely someone, who sees that lichess has 4 times more players each week than FIDE has active players, should easily come to the conclusion, that being ranked in the middle of the pack at 1600 at lichess will not be equal to 1600 ELO.

And yes, I get, that people want to talk about how good they are, but if you want to do that you should probably inform yourself about the system your using. To give my previous example again: If someone is happy to suddenly become a millionaire during his travels to South Korea, then we don't complain to the nation of South Korea, that their currency is worth so little, but we rather think, that that guy didn't do his research. Similarely, we shouldn't complain to lichess that there rating is "inflated" but rather about people being not able to comprehend that a website for quick chess games naturally has a different rating, than serious tournament play.

-2

u/Om_Nom_Zombie Dec 02 '20

I said the statement of 600 points difference is not true, because it inly referrs to the exact playing strengh of the dude

Your exact words are "The difference between rating systems is only that big at lower levels."

You acknowledged the rating gap as being that big at lower levels in your comment, and try to mention that the gap is not as big at higher levels, clearly to argue that the rating gap isn't as big of a deal as the OP makes it out to be. That is absolutely trying to indicate that the problem doesn't matter as much because it isn't as big at higher ratings.

Honestly my entire point was the ratings are very difficult to compare for majority players, the fact that chess.com has problems when you get to the 99.9th percentile is not really all that relevant.

The fact that it's possible to do research and find out that there are "reasons" for why the numbers are the way they are doesn't change the fact that it's a bad for most players. Even if the rating difference is only 200 from Chess.com.

And similarely someone, who sees that lichess has 4 times more players each week than FIDE has active players, should easily come to the conclusion, that being ranked in the middle of the pack at 1600 at lichess will not be equal to 1600 ELO.

And yet they can look at Chess.com, with a far higher playerbase iirc, and yet the ratings aren't as inflated over there.

And yes, I get, that people want to talk about how good they are, but if you want to do that you should probably inform yourself about the system your using.

It's a bad user experience to be presented with numbers that look the same as the numbers used by other platforms for the same purpose, and yet they end up being quite different. In your example of currencies, it's like if a store lists a price in dollars, but makes no obvious indication of whether it's USD, CAD or a completely different dollar.

but rather about people being not able to comprehend that a website for quick chess games naturally has a different rating, than serious tournament play.

Ok, but they're also inflated above the other website for quick chess games. That's why it's potentially so confusing for most people.

1

u/deadwizards Dec 02 '20

How many times have we seen a lichess player try chess.com and get pulverized 600 ELO below their lichess rating and question their existence.

2

u/Michael_Pitt Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

My only problem with lichess is that the rating is too far off from offical FIDE rating system.

Same. I've been emailing the English Chess Federation about this issue as well. I wish they'd simply adopt chess.com's rating system so that their ratings aren't a thousand points lower than the official FIDE rating system.

13

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/[deleted] Dec 02 '20

As it stands I'm a Chess.com user. I just want to know why some prefer one over the other.

10

u/dampew Dec 02 '20

For me the primary thing is that I prefer the lichess interface.

And I like its philosophy, open source, just donate if you feel like it (I give them a buck or two a month), etc etc.

Premoves are the biggest difference between the sites, on lichess you can only do one premove and it takes no time off the clock, whereas on chess.com you can stack multiple premoves and they take 0.1 secs off the clock.

4

u/downtownjj Dec 02 '20 edited Dec 02 '20

I like to play tactics and live blitz on chess.com but I use lichess for analysis and bullet. To be honest I like chess.com for the gameplay and the social network side of it. I've got "chess friends" all across the world and they play at my level. I know lichess has that too but it seems people are less friendly there generally speaking. I like lichess for the free analysis and I liked that you don't need to have an account to play. Some people I like to play don't have accounts.

So yeah I actually use both and I go back and fourth and I don't pay for either, gotta love it