10 ms·

Lichess is an excellent website. Open source[0], truly free[1] and provides an amazing UX. Lichess is a true gift to the chess community. [0] https://github.

by jbuss 8y ago

Lichess is an excellent website. Open source[0], truly free[1] and provides an amazing UX. Lichess is a true gift to the chess community. [0] https://github.com/ornicar/lila https://github.com/ornicar/lila [1] https://lichess.org/features https://lichess.org/features

dpwm 8y ago
Lichess uses interesting frontend technologies. The web client used to use mithril, then moved to snabbdom. The lead developer of Lichess, Thibault Duplessis, gave an excellent talk the other year if you're interested in the story behind Lichess. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHP5AdRlRNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHP5AdRlRNY
- nikisweeting 8y ago
  He's also a cool dude, my cofounder and I are huge admireres of lichess and met up with him in Medellin last year when he was passing through.
stabbles 8y ago
It's also ridiculously fast, both frontend and backend! The frontend virtual dom was initially Mithril and has later been replaced with snabbdom [1]. No React or Vue.js. [1] https://github.com/snabbdom/snabbdom https://github.com/snabbdom/snabbdom
- virtualwhys 8y ago
  It's fast on the backend due to running on the JVM and being completely non-blocking (Scala + Akka + MongoDB) Combined with a lightweight-ish frontend (Cordova build for native mobile) and, voila, impressive performance with a decent UI all while not having to maintain separate web, iOS, and Android apps.
  - krick 8y ago
    Am I mistaken, or was it that lichess was actually in PHP a couple of years ago? I seem to remember that I was surprised to learn that it is Laravel+Vue. But maybe I'm mixing things up.
    - virtualwhys 8y ago
      You're probably confusing Lichess for another app, the founder has been in the Scala community since at least 2012, if not before. Although maybe in the early days it was, for some reason, written in PHP; I'd be quite surprised if that were the case.
joelfolksy 8y ago
Indeed. Pity the culture is so... unfriendly? Rematches are basically non-existent - even in bullet! It's bizarre, and I have to assume it's going to limit the site's growth.
- dsjoerg 8y ago
  I get rematches regularly. And probably 20% of my opponents will chat a little.
  - joelfolksy 8y ago
    I'm just a single data point, although I've seen others complain about it online. I would love it if the major sites would release stats on this. As frustrating as it can be, especially in bullet, I'm more curious than anything. If the phenomenon is real, it could hold some surprising lessons for how design affects user behavior.
- jbuss 8y ago
  Yesterday I played a classical game vs an opponent rated higher than me and lost. Afterwards I analyzed the game in a lichess study, and my opponent was nice enough to share his thoughts in the study. It was an awesome experience. There are great parts of the community as well.
  - joelfolksy 8y ago
    That's pretty cool, but it's probably best to think of classical as a whole different game/community that happens to be accessible from the same homepage.
    - jbuss 8y ago
      I played the classical game on lichess.
      - joelfolksy 8y ago
fabiospampinato 8y ago
I don't agree on the UX, the interface is _terrible_ in many ways: 1. I can't even scroll the page horizontally on Chrome. 2. There are 2 menus with a completely different interface. 3. The Android mobile app gives you a completely different experience, and I think there is no lobby, so I often pick a match from Chrome and then switch to the app (and of course the "Open in Mobile App" button doesn't work for me). 4. In general I find the UI is very confusing: 4a. There are 3 places where to write something about a match: your personal notes (never used this, I guess the value proposition here is that your notes will be stored along the match, but I don't think almost anybody cares about notes about games played last year for instance), the chat (which works only between the current 2 players, and you can't access it from the analysis page) and the spectators chat (I suppose this has a purpose for highly spectated matches and live commentary, but I could also run a separate browser where I'm not logged in and read that too so it sounds useless to me). 4b. The match history at the bottom of the chessboard is useless to me 99% of the times, as it's completely empty. 4c. Often the same information is displayed in different parts of the page, I already mentioned the menu problem, but also when playing you can see some infos about the players both on the left and the right column. All these things complicate the UI. To close on a positive note the feature I like the most of lichess is probably the analysis page, super useful and well done.
- wolco 8y ago
  You sound like you are working on a new ui. Can't wait to see it. Remember open source starts with the most vocal critic.
  - colmvp 8y ago
    I'm a designer by trade and I think Lichess is really well done. They've managed to pack a ton of features and have a game that works well for me on both mobile and web. Certainly there are ways that it could be improved, but calling it "terrible" seems like a huge exaggeration to me and does practically warrant an illustrative alternative that would better suit the OP. I've also never been of the belief that mobile and should have exactly the same interface specifically given the different restrictions of the mediums.
navan 8y ago
I love lichess website too. I used to play on fics server. Once I switched platforms for my computer, I could not find a good client for fics. lichess is easy to use and get some quick chess time everyday. I like their tourney format also. Easy to get in and out unlike other places where you cannot get in after it started.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Unfortunately, lichess moderation and policies for account bans or forced periods of inactivity are horrendous. I once got banned because my cell phone lost connectivity as I passed a subway tunnel and in the meantime the other user “reported” me for abandoning the game. This resulted in my account being frozen out from playing games for several hours. I wrote to the support email address and got no response. This then happened two or three more times in the same month. Furious with the ridiculous policy, I only will play in “anonymous” mode now, usually at chess.com with frequently changed accounts, sometimes still at lichess with no registration.
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Isn’t it possible to play in “email” mode (read: days long time control) or something else if you’re going to be in a situation with spotty coverage? As I understand it, live games mean just that. A few hours ban is a slap on the wrist from a moderation perspective, and it seems... odd... that they’d even hit you with that unless you regularly leave games.
  - Jabbles 8y ago
    > This then happened two or three more times in the same month. Sounds like they do it pretty regularly :/
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    The bans are automated. It happens even if you disconnect irregularly and infrequently through no fault of your own.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  Only several hours? Sorry, but you're being a drama queen. If you're riding a train through a tunnel, you shouldn't be playing on lichess. Stop ruining other players' experiences.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    Your reply is quite rude. It is deeply unreasonable to suggest someone can’t play chess e.g. on their morning commute because other people are too whiny to accept that disconnections and move delays are simply a built-in reality of internet chess, period. If your experience of internet chess can possibly be affected by intermittent disconnections or move delays by your opponent, then you are being the drama queen. That would be incredibly unreasonable.
nilkn 8y ago
Chess and Tetris are two of my favorite games. I've known about Lichess for quite a while and recently discovered jstris, which is a sort-of similar site for Tetris: https://jstris.jezevec10.com/ https://jstris.jezevec10.com/ It's not quite as polished as Lichess and if you've never played Tetris with a keyboard before that may be a significant learning hurdle (though it's actually a very good control scheme for the game). But overall it's a really cool site. (There's also Tetris Friends, but I just always found the general style of the site very offputting.)
- jabl 8y ago
  > if you've never played Tetris with a keyboard before Wait, whaat? Are there pointy-clicky interfaces to tetris nowadays? Well, of course there must be.. I think I last played tetris as the original version made by that Russian guy (or was it so long ago that it was a Soviet guy?) running on DOS.
  - barbs 8y ago
    I think they meant using a controller, probably from playing a console version ( Game Boy / NES )
  - nilkn 8y ago
    Controllers/gamepads. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-8BAEcWSEs4-KQp1ULVnaQ/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-8BAEcWSEs4-KQp1ULVnaQ/fea...
ummonk 8y ago
Yeah the UX is better than any of the commercial chess websites.
- stupidcar 8y ago
  Is it? I us chess.com, and parts of the Lichess interface seems quite primitive in comparison: The board doesn't resize to fit the screen, there's no live evaluation, and it just seems a bit less polished overall.
  - johnfn 8y ago
    There is definitely live evaluation on lichess, and it's really good.
barbs 8y ago
It's pretty great. Does anyone know a similar website for backgammon?
mindgam3 8y ago
I’m a mational master, 2400 blitz/bullet player and full stack dev, and I support this message :-). LiChess is an incredible resource for the chess community. I’m also building some software integrated with lichess to help people get good at chess, fast. Any chess hackers interested in contributing, please email me! Contact info is in my profile.

by jbuss 8y ago

dpwm 8y ago

Lichess uses interesting frontend technologies. The web client used to use mithril, then moved to snabbdom. The lead developer of Lichess, Thibault Duplessis, gave an excellent talk the other year if you're interested in the story behind Lichess. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHP5AdRlRNY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHP5AdRlRNY

nikisweeting 8y ago
He's also a cool dude, my cofounder and I are huge admireres of lichess and met up with him in Medellin last year when he was passing through.

stabbles 8y ago

It's also ridiculously fast, both frontend and backend! The frontend virtual dom was initially Mithril and has later been replaced with snabbdom [1]. No React or Vue.js. [1] https://github.com/snabbdom/snabbdom https://github.com/snabbdom/snabbdom

virtualwhys 8y ago
It's fast on the backend due to running on the JVM and being completely non-blocking (Scala + Akka + MongoDB) Combined with a lightweight-ish frontend (Cordova build for native mobile) and, voila, impressive performance with a decent UI all while not having to maintain separate web, iOS, and Android apps.
- krick 8y ago
  Am I mistaken, or was it that lichess was actually in PHP a couple of years ago? I seem to remember that I was surprised to learn that it is Laravel+Vue. But maybe I'm mixing things up.
  - virtualwhys 8y ago
    You're probably confusing Lichess for another app, the founder has been in the Scala community since at least 2012, if not before. Although maybe in the early days it was, for some reason, written in PHP; I'd be quite surprised if that were the case.

joelfolksy 8y ago

Indeed. Pity the culture is so... unfriendly? Rematches are basically non-existent - even in bullet! It's bizarre, and I have to assume it's going to limit the site's growth.

dsjoerg 8y ago
I get rematches regularly. And probably 20% of my opponents will chat a little.
- joelfolksy 8y ago
  I'm just a single data point, although I've seen others complain about it online. I would love it if the major sites would release stats on this. As frustrating as it can be, especially in bullet, I'm more curious than anything. If the phenomenon is real, it could hold some surprising lessons for how design affects user behavior.
jbuss 8y ago
Yesterday I played a classical game vs an opponent rated higher than me and lost. Afterwards I analyzed the game in a lichess study, and my opponent was nice enough to share his thoughts in the study. It was an awesome experience. There are great parts of the community as well.
- joelfolksy 8y ago
  That's pretty cool, but it's probably best to think of classical as a whole different game/community that happens to be accessible from the same homepage.
  - jbuss 8y ago
    I played the classical game on lichess.
    - joelfolksy 8y ago

fabiospampinato 8y ago

I don't agree on the UX, the interface is _terrible_ in many ways: 1. I can't even scroll the page horizontally on Chrome. 2. There are 2 menus with a completely different interface. 3. The Android mobile app gives you a completely different experience, and I think there is no lobby, so I often pick a match from Chrome and then switch to the app (and of course the "Open in Mobile App" button doesn't work for me). 4. In general I find the UI is very confusing: 4a. There are 3 places where to write something about a match: your personal notes (never used this, I guess the value proposition here is that your notes will be stored along the match, but I don't think almost anybody cares about notes about games played last year for instance), the chat (which works only between the current 2 players, and you can't access it from the analysis page) and the spectators chat (I suppose this has a purpose for highly spectated matches and live commentary, but I could also run a separate browser where I'm not logged in and read that too so it sounds useless to me). 4b. The match history at the bottom of the chessboard is useless to me 99% of the times, as it's completely empty. 4c. Often the same information is displayed in different parts of the page, I already mentioned the menu problem, but also when playing you can see some infos about the players both on the left and the right column. All these things complicate the UI. To close on a positive note the feature I like the most of lichess is probably the analysis page, super useful and well done.

wolco 8y ago
You sound like you are working on a new ui. Can't wait to see it. Remember open source starts with the most vocal critic.
- colmvp 8y ago
  I'm a designer by trade and I think Lichess is really well done. They've managed to pack a ton of features and have a game that works well for me on both mobile and web. Certainly there are ways that it could be improved, but calling it "terrible" seems like a huge exaggeration to me and does practically warrant an illustrative alternative that would better suit the OP. I've also never been of the belief that mobile and should have exactly the same interface specifically given the different restrictions of the mediums.

navan 8y ago

I love lichess website too. I used to play on fics server. Once I switched platforms for my computer, I could not find a good client for fics. lichess is easy to use and get some quick chess time everyday. I like their tourney format also. Easy to get in and out unlike other places where you cannot get in after it started.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

Unfortunately, lichess moderation and policies for account bans or forced periods of inactivity are horrendous. I once got banned because my cell phone lost connectivity as I passed a subway tunnel and in the meantime the other user “reported” me for abandoning the game. This resulted in my account being frozen out from playing games for several hours. I wrote to the support email address and got no response. This then happened two or three more times in the same month. Furious with the ridiculous policy, I only will play in “anonymous” mode now, usually at chess.com with frequently changed accounts, sometimes still at lichess with no registration.

Karunamon 8y ago
Isn’t it possible to play in “email” mode (read: days long time control) or something else if you’re going to be in a situation with spotty coverage? As I understand it, live games mean just that. A few hours ban is a slap on the wrist from a moderation perspective, and it seems... odd... that they’d even hit you with that unless you regularly leave games.
- Jabbles 8y ago
  > This then happened two or three more times in the same month. Sounds like they do it pretty regularly :/
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  The bans are automated. It happens even if you disconnect irregularly and infrequently through no fault of your own.
SamReidHughes 8y ago
Only several hours? Sorry, but you're being a drama queen. If you're riding a train through a tunnel, you shouldn't be playing on lichess. Stop ruining other players' experiences.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  Your reply is quite rude. It is deeply unreasonable to suggest someone can’t play chess e.g. on their morning commute because other people are too whiny to accept that disconnections and move delays are simply a built-in reality of internet chess, period. If your experience of internet chess can possibly be affected by intermittent disconnections or move delays by your opponent, then you are being the drama queen. That would be incredibly unreasonable.

nilkn 8y ago

Chess and Tetris are two of my favorite games. I've known about Lichess for quite a while and recently discovered jstris, which is a sort-of similar site for Tetris: https://jstris.jezevec10.com/ https://jstris.jezevec10.com/ It's not quite as polished as Lichess and if you've never played Tetris with a keyboard before that may be a significant learning hurdle (though it's actually a very good control scheme for the game). But overall it's a really cool site. (There's also Tetris Friends, but I just always found the general style of the site very offputting.)

jabl 8y ago
> if you've never played Tetris with a keyboard before Wait, whaat? Are there pointy-clicky interfaces to tetris nowadays? Well, of course there must be.. I think I last played tetris as the original version made by that Russian guy (or was it so long ago that it was a Soviet guy?) running on DOS.
- barbs 8y ago
  I think they meant using a controller, probably from playing a console version ( Game Boy / NES )
- nilkn 8y ago
  Controllers/gamepads. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-8BAEcWSEs4-KQp1ULVnaQ/featured https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-8BAEcWSEs4-KQp1ULVnaQ/fea...

ummonk 8y ago

Yeah the UX is better than any of the commercial chess websites.

stupidcar 8y ago
Is it? I us chess.com, and parts of the Lichess interface seems quite primitive in comparison: The board doesn't resize to fit the screen, there's no live evaluation, and it just seems a bit less polished overall.
- johnfn 8y ago
  There is definitely live evaluation on lichess, and it's really good.

barbs 8y ago

It's pretty great. Does anyone know a similar website for backgammon?

mindgam3 8y ago

I’m a mational master, 2400 blitz/bullet player and full stack dev, and I support this message :-). LiChess is an incredible resource for the chess community. I’m also building some software integrated with lichess to help people get good at chess, fast. Any chess hackers interested in contributing, please email me! Contact info is in my profile.