The best chess website in the universe.

Lichess.org was created by Thibault Duplessis in Paris, France.

Lichess was founded by Thibault Duplessis, a French programmer, who describes himself as "Benevolent dictator of lichess.org, a hippie communist chess server for drug fueled atheists".

"Lichess is better, but it's free." -- Thibault Duplessis

https://lichess.org/

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Wikipedia - Lichess

Lichess

Type of site Internet chess server
Available in English. Portions of the website have been translated to over 80 languages, with about 30 languages marked as "complete," but the terms of service, privacy policy, blog posts, and coach biographies, are not yet fully translated.

Created by Thibault Duplessis

Website lichess.org

Alexa rank 1,268 (February 2019)[1]
Commercial Non-profit and donation-only
Registration Optional
Launched 20 June 2010[2]
Current status Active
Written in Scala, JavaScript, HTML and CSS[3]

Lichess (/'liː-tʃɛs/ (help·info)[4]) is an Internet chess server. Anyone can play anonymously, although players may register an account on the site to play rated games. All features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations.[5][6][7]

History

Lichess was founded by Thibault Duplessis, a French programmer, who describes himself as "Benevolent dictator of lichess.org, a hippie communist chess server for drug fueled atheists".[8] The software running Lichess and the design are open source under the AGPL license.[9]

On February 11, 2015, an official Lichess mobile app was released for Android devices.[10] An app for mobile devices running iOS was released on March 4, 2015.[11]

As of February 10, 2019, lichess.org had a global rank of 1,268 at Alexa, with most of its visitors coming from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, and Canada.[12] According to the Alexa rank, Lichess is ranked second only to A SHIT WEBSITE CALLED CHESS.COM as one of the most popular online chess servers in the world.[13]

Being ad-free, Lichess relies on donated money to maintain over a dozen servers with over a hundred processor cores while paying programmers.[14]

Features

The website allows users to play games of live and correspondence chess against other players at different time controls. It has training features, including chess basics, tactics training, chess coordinates, chess video library, Chess insights, opener explorer, and studies.[15][16]It also has a section where chess coaches can advertise their services to users.[17]

In addition to enabling blindfold chess,[18] the website supports the following chess variants:[19]
Antichess (Losing chess)
Atomic chess[20]
Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess)
Crazyhouse [21]
Horde (a variant of Dunsany's chess)
King of the Hill
Racing Kings
Three-check chess

Lichess was the first chess-site to have features to help visually impaired people play chess on a website.[22][23] It also has a chess puzzle-based CAPTCHA system.[24][25]

Users can also play games against the Stockfish chess engine at a number of difficulty levels.[26] They may also analyze specific positions from standard chess or any of the supported chess variants. The website implements a version of the Stockfish engine that runs on the user's local machine within the user's web browser for limited or infinite analysis,[27] which will calculate best lines of play or major opponent threats. An opening book based on games played on the site or a database of two million games played by FIDE titled players is available.[28] In Antichess variant, users can switch for Mark Watkins's antichess solution database.[29]

For registered players, Lichess employs a rating system, and grants the ability to compete in tournaments, post in the forums, and request a server-side full game analysis for any finalized game. The ratings for standard chess are categorized into Ultrabullet, Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, or Classical, depending on the game's total time or estimated total time (if using Fischer time control which increments time after each move).

Lichess runs live tournaments both in standard chess and in variant chess, and at different time controls, with the slowest not custom-made time control being 15 minutes per game with a 15 second increment per move. Where it differs from other online chess tournaments is they are run in an arena format where a member can join and leave at any time, and their score is retained if they rejoin during the tournament. In order to join a tournament, there is a requirement for the user to have played a sufficient number of games (in the same time control or the same variant).[30]

A Lichess mobile app is available for iOS and Android.[31]

Lichess Titled Arena

Since December 2017, Lichess organizes the "Lichess Titled Arena", a tournament reserved to titled chess players. Cash prizes are given to the top five places.