10 ms·

Garry Kasparov launches a community-first chess platform

139 points by prostoalex 6y ago

mustafa_pasi 6y ago
The community first chess platform is lichess, which doesn't even get a mention because it is non-profit. This thing sounds like some botched together platform with Kasparov's name attached to add legitimacy. It will 100% fail.
- lasfter 6y ago
  100%. Lichess is an astounding achievement of FOSS and I wish it got more love in general. I can't think of any other open-source website with as much traffic and with as much complex functionality.
  - Scarblac 6y ago
    And with multiple paid employees, funded _only_ by small donations. No ads, no corporate sponsors, no investors etc.
  - darepublic 6y ago
    to dogpile more -- the lichess open source library is amazing and the site itself is a joy to use.
    - User23 6y ago
      I also clicked through simply to say lichess is amazing.
  - jmarcher 6y ago
    Presentation from the original author about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI
  - axaxs 6y ago
    I'll vouch for that. I hadn't even heard of lichess, just went looking for an Android chess game to play to pass the time. The app is stellar, and not full of garbage like the others. My only complaint is how it's pronounced. Can't help but think of leeches.
    - ycombinete 6y ago
      I defaulted to “lie-chess”, and that’s where I’m staying.
      - axaxs 6y ago
        That's how I pronounced it initially, and I'm sticking to it also.
    - yewenjie 6y ago
      The website is very lightweight and fully responsive on mobile, and usually has some extra features than the apps.
    - thih9 6y ago
      > Can't help but think of leeches. Too much fantasy here and “lichess” makes me think of a female lich.
  - bluecalm 6y ago
    Also quality. Lichess has by far the best interface and smoothest experience. Well financed commercial players like chess.com, chess24, chessbase were never able to replicate it. Lichess which was a one man show for a long time has beaten them all in engineering department and not by a small margin. The difference is just night and day, like driving 30 years old car and modern one. It's one of the examples of how you can't pay your way to good software. There was a discussion about Discord lately and how it's about userbase only and how you could recreate it spending a fraction of what its valuation is. I don't think you could. I mean apparently you can't even pay your way to get somewhat playable chess site. Btw, check the git log (or run one if those punch card scripts on the repo). The main programmer is a machine. It's humbling what kind of output a great programmer with great work ethics can achieve.
    - krisgenre 6y ago
      True. Bullet is unplayable for me on chess.com because of latency but works really well on lichess.
    - rtwall 6y ago
      chess24 needs to work on page load performance, but I find watching tournaments more pleasant on chess24 than on lichess. chess24's default chess board is easier on the eyes than the flat design lichess one. lichess is amazing for playing though.
- rectang 6y ago
  Seriously. Lichess is solid, featureful, has a huge userbase, and enjoys buy-in at the highest levels: Magnus Carlsen plays there under the alias DrNykterstein. https://lichess.org/@/DrNykterstein https://lichess.org/@/DrNykterstein
- beforeolives 6y ago
  Yes, lichess is by far the best platform and a great example of an open source project. The founder had an AMA on reddit a few days ago, it was a very wholesome read - https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lichess_ask_me_anything/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
  - CamelCaseName 6y ago
    I loved everything about this thread. Thank you for sharing.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    I've always just used the chess.com app, and have never thought to look for alternatives. Apart from using Open Source, is there any other reason for me to consider switching to lichess?
    - nickysielicki 6y ago
      It's just better made all around. The site is sleek. The game renders well, doesn't lag at all even on very old and underpowered devices. The analysis on lichess with wasm stockfish was stolen by chess.com -- there are no premium features and no ads. There is simply no good reason to use any other site.
    - yewenjie 6y ago
      No ads, no tracking, all features free forever for everyone.
    - spuz 6y ago
      Free unlimited analysis of your games. Free unlimited puzzles. Basically any reason you might pay for chess.com, lichess has it for free.
      - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
        Free unlimited puzzles? Oh ok... that’s why I pay the highest subscription level on chess.com. Wow, that’s cool
- raspyberr 6y ago
  I have to add to the commendations of Lichess here. It's amazing. You don't need an account to just jump in and play with people. Amazing stuff.
- unlog 6y ago
  lichess has very big problems with the chat, so I won't call it "community first", it's nice if you are just there to play chess, but playing chess with your actual friends its a problem, the chat is heavily censured so having any casual conversation while playing it's hard. To give some examples they ban chat messages that look "similar" to the previous one, so lets say you type a2, and then you type a3 (... a chess position) the last message won't be displayed which is very annoying. This "solution" solves nothing and causes problems, because anyone trying to say something will just try till the message goes through(if you ever noticed that what you typed didnt reach the chat...). Did you make a typo on your phone number/birthdate/address? you can't fix it if it's just the fix to the number, they seem to have been trying to solve with the computer social issues that cant really be solved that way. Besides, there's a very lengthy list of censured words that you can't type, even if you are playing with your actual friends, with people that you may even know in real life, it's insane. I maintain sites frequented by teens and their language is not the best but thats the way teens talk, lichess doesn't welcome the young by doing what its doing now. They are dictating what you can say and not. The funny thing is that I believe the chat is logged forever on their server and there's no indication on the screen of that actually happening, I really wish for my chat history to be deleted, specially because I was not informed about it. Don't get me wrong, I love lichess, but I have pretty much stopped playing when I discovered these things.
  - rectang 6y ago
    Whatever they're doing, it's kind of nice to have far fewer homophobic slurs hurled in the lichess chat in comparison to other chess servers.
  - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
    When I play chess (on lichess) with my friends, I am typically in the same physical/Discord room with them. We do not need another way to chat. With everyone else, I'm very happy to be limited to "GL", "HF", "Thanks", "Bye" (localized to their language of choice). I'm also not trying to make friends/community on lichess, its not like WoW or Dota where teams matter to the actual game. Historically, chess teams existed because of geographical boundaries. People needed other chess players of a similar level to: 1. get better at chess, 2. amortize the costs of traveling to a tournament, 3. try to estimate their global ranking to satisfy ego. Players on the same chess teams happened to become very good friends because of the time commitment to the game and therefore each other. Eventually the friendships were the more important commitment. However, with lichess (or just the internet in general), I can satisfy all 3 benefits of having a chess team by playing alone on lichess and have really great friends orthogonal of chess (especially since travel isn't part of my chess hobby's time commitment).
- aoeusnth1 6y ago
  I have nothing against Kasparov’s efforts, and I’m sure there’s plenty of valuable content on his new site. But I have to agree that Lichess is an absolute jewel of the chess community, and I’m a happy supporter of it. We don’t need another chess matchmaking site, but it doesn’t sound like Kasparov is trying to compete in that space.
- yewenjie 6y ago
  Every time I think about lichess, I realize how untrue the generic 'we cannot have good things' platitude is. Everything about lichess just strikes pure joy to me --- open source, no tracking/ ads, feature complete and everything totally free for everyone!
- cmsefton 6y ago
  Lots of love here for lichess, and it's well deserved. My son got into chess over a year ago, but when lockdown came I signed him up to Chess Kids, which is pretty good for children who are learning. However, he quickly migrated to lichess, and we've not looked back. It's been an absolute lifesaver during lockdown for my 8 year old son, he learnt an incredible amount from the site. Great tutorials, great puzzles, plus he gets to see some of his chess heroes like Carlson play live. It's a fantastic community. Plus, my son was able to learn pretty much everything, including how to write his own tutorials and how to analyse games, on his own without my assistance, which just demonstrates how good and intuitive the UI is.
- andrei_says_ 6y ago
  Lichess is one of the best experiences on the web. I build web apps and this one is polished to perfection. It is an example of what is possible when you combine good intentions, great taste, excellent skill and sincere love for the beauty and fun of chess. The UX is just perfect. It is an inspiration for me.
- SergeAx 6y ago
  I never knew Lichess is open source and donation supported. I feel so grateful now.
- jorgenveisdal 6y ago
  Very Kasparov. No doubt very half-baked, and very self-promotional
young_unixer 6y ago
The idea of a domain-specific Udemy with appropiate instructor filtering has been done 100 times already. Which doesn't mean it's going to fail. It just means that there's nothing new about it. It's all about good execution and management, and nothing about innovation, like I feel this article tries to paint it.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  Yes, and while Kasparov has branding potential, any of the top 5 current Super GMs do too, and they're already present in Lichess, chess.com, Twitch, Youtube, etc.
torgian 6y ago
I read about this man and his chess stuff religiously when I was a kid. Loved it and it’s pet of what got me into chess. I’m pretty happy he is making a platform like this, it’s bound to be excellent.
- Cullinet 6y ago
  there's just something about Kasparov that reeks of a lifetime away from the board that's looks to me like it has been a very unsatisfactory if not even unhappy excercise in trying to parlay undoubted excellence in the game into a intellectual halo of unassailable and unquestionable superiority, from political motivations to commercial exploitation and branding. honestly I really hope that I'm entirely wrong about the man's life and success, but at the very least I'm convinced that Kasparov has never associated with the best available public relations and marketing minds, certainly no one equal to his genius for the game.
  - Cullinet 6y ago
    I get the idea that what I wrote might be misunderstood as a adhimonem or purely personal opinion, but I have just found confirmation of the memory that caused my misgivings concerning Kasparov : my father took me to see Korchnoi, Spassky, Karpov compete in the Hastings international chess congress near to the tiny town where I was born, but I never heard of Kasparov playing in this tournament and now this confirms only Fisher also never competed : http://www.hastingschess.com/congress-history/ http://www.hastingschess.com/congress-history/ my apologies if I received a very early impression from Kasparov by the fact that he most certainly made a impression on my youth but disappointed greatly by ignoring the nearest and most wonderful setting where nobody else was above competing in.
faeriechangling 6y ago
Chess.com not only ran forums but held community events like collaborative games vs master players early on. This just seems to be copying the community aspect of MOOCs and incorporating that into a chess course promoted by a strong brand (Garry Kasparov). It's pretty derivative.
- iratewizard 6y ago
  Chess.com and lichess have done wonders for chess, and its revival can mostly be attributed to Chess.com's collective smart decisions and hard work. If it weren't for that, Kasparov's copycat wouldn't catch the slightest bit of traction.
  - beforeolives 6y ago
    Isn't the revival attributed mostly to The Queen's Gambit being released on Netflix?
    - rlayton2 6y ago
      Not really. The revival for me was due to agadmator on youtube but obviously I only started seeing his videos once they were popular and I dont know the cause of that (other than the quality of the channel of course!) But Queens Gambit did push chess to be even more popular.
    - codethief 6y ago
      Definitely not. I remember watching chess games on Twitch when the pandemic started last spring and being surprised how popular chess had gotten.
    - Scarblac 6y ago
      It's chess streaming becoming mature at the same time a global pandemic forced people indoors, combined with TQG.
    - User23 6y ago
      Chess is the poster boy of the Lindy effect.
schaefer 6y ago
I would anticipate that if the site had actually launched, I could register and play right now. But as it stands, I can only pre-register. For a chance to be one of 6400 players granted early access.
- Cullinet 6y ago
  I really seem to have a filter how I see thy this that I just found confirmation about the original disappointment of when I was a impressionable young chess fan, in my comment above, but I can only say that I really would have felt very hurt by this limitation if I could transplant my childhood me to today. I have such a distinctive memory of the way I felt about arbitrarily elitist and opaque barriers to intellectual pursuit. I'm not doing a very good job expressing myself probably because I have such a clear recollection of the way I was as a kid, but I think that my earlier comment about how better PR and marketing would be a help with Kasparov's image when you consider this limitation remains opaque in functional reality even if the reason of the limit is clear any inquiring mind has to ask why not take it more slowly / soft launch, as you suggested, or if something else isn't quite there yet.
Grakel 6y ago
I had a "Gary Kasparov" "computer" chess board when I was a kid, maybe 1995. On one hand it was cool in that you hard pressed your move into the board with the piece, and it would tell you where to move it's piece. On the other hand it had 64 difficulty levels which were all either extremely easy or impossible to defeat. He's been putting his name on stuff for years.
- koolba 6y ago
  What was the cut off difficulty level at which point it became impossible?
  - Grakel 6y ago
    I can't remember, sorry.
darepublic 6y ago
nice looking lander, which is a big form to request access. of course that is the easy part.
hahla 6y ago
A bit off topic but I found MasterClass classes to lack depth. Most of what I watched (mainly cooking related) seemed more like entertainment vs actually learning anything.
yesenadam 6y ago
There was a kasparovchess.com before: Mig Greengard's wikipedia says he "was vice president of content for Kasparov Chess Online and editor-in-chief of kasparovchess.com from 1999 until the site's demise in 2002." Greengard has been Kasparov's PA/confidante for a long time. Before 2011 he also had the best chess blog, the Daily Dirt.[0] I wanted to share a fascinating insight into Kasparov that Mig wrote to Edward Winter in April 2005: "A few words regarding your interesting note about Garry Kasparov and his retirement. While I don’t disagree with the content of your item, Garry has always been demonstrably impetuous and I’m a little surprised you give much credit to an entourage of Iagos and people trying to make a buck off of him. They may exist, to a degree, but he makes his own decisions, often with what I consider too little external input. That, and his mother is still very much the only real member the inner circle, or at least the “inner inner” circle. In the brief time I have been close to him, most of his big decisions, dubious and otherwise, were made quickly and on his own. (Obviously the degree of his mother’s influence is unknown to me.) His sudden decision to dive into politics last year with the Committee 2008 Free Choice was against the advice of just about everyone. This was also true with his retirement. In both cases it was more after the fact concern than pre-announcement advice. Certainly in my case, as a selfish chess fan, I would much prefer he played chess until, at least, his best isn’t good enough. I’ve encouraged him to stay involved in the chess world by writing a column or training young players, and I expect he will eventually return to the board. You can make a case that his combative, contrarian nature tends to lead him against the advice of friends and public opinion because he enjoys trying to prove people wrong. (I believe this largely explains his interest in the New Chronology.) If you are looking for a tidy reason why Garry has made bad decisions, I’d say it’s simply because he makes them very quickly. He doesn’t like dragging things out (what I would call contemplation) and he is very confident of the correctness of his decisions. This is essential in chess, but often a recipe for disaster in other areas, at least if you’re not as good at them as Kasparov is at chess. This may be too prosaic, but it’s also Occam’s Razor. Since he has demonstrably improved in this area in the past five or six years (Predecessors Vol. 1 notwithstanding), I can’t imagine he was anything but worse ten or 15 years ago. It was all about action, making something happen, shocking the critics. He’s very sure of himself in just about everything and rarely seeks advice or tells people what he’s going to do. Regarding his decline in public opinion, I think here too the answers are fairly simple. I concur with your specific examples, but the real basis is that people root for underdogs, not the favorite. When Kasparov was an outsider it was much different from when he became the status quo. Who doesn’t like a young rebel? Having power is very different from shouting at the gates. When you actually try to do something you are going to make enemies. And again he went about many of these things too much on his own, convinced he was 100% right and unwilling to compromise." [0] Mig got me into seriously following and studying chess in about 2007-8, with his hilarious audio tournament broadcasts on ICC's ChessFM . There'd be him being extremely funny, teamed with a serious GM, usually strongly accented, like Yermolinsky or Har-Zvi. It was great. I'd listen to that while following tournaments live on FICS, and taking part in discussion about each game on there (no computer lines allowed), which were wonderful. That was a great community. The tv-style streamed youtube videos of today from Chess24 or St Louis, featuring strong GM commentators, live video of the players, player post-mortems, are amazing, but still maybe not as instructional and enjoyable as those days. The ancient history: the ICS (Internet Chess Server) began in 1992, and started charging $ in 1995, becoming the ICC (Internet Chess Club). FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) split off then, led by people who wanted to keep it non-commercial. [1] https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/kasparov2.html https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/kasparov2.html
gentleman11 6y ago
Kasparov is a big human rights advocate, but his business’s privacy policy is extremely long and complex, and allows a lot of tracking and targeting. I suppose he is not fully aware of how important privacy is for freedom of speech
radicalcentrist 6y ago
> "I was so happy because it was the first time where we could see chess as a positive factor," he said. "We had so many years with chess being seen as potential destruction and something that could push kids to the dark area of psychological instability." This surprises me, could someone expand a bit on this? I've only ever heard chess referred to positively in popular culture. I would assume most non chess players' understanding of chess is based on idioms like "thinking N moves ahead" and "playing 4D chess." (I'm not sure I'd consider Beth Harmon a shining example of psychological stability either...)
- bobsled 6y ago
  This is something that has been over-hyped for the sake of dramatization. Paul Morphy[1] and Bobby Fischer[2] are great examples of people who most likely were already psychologically 'at risk', and 'went over the edge' because of their obsessive chess playing. Certain potentially self destructive traits, largely obsessiveness and paranoia, can be of great use when playing chess if they are moderated. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#Abandonment_of_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#Abandonment_of_che... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Speculation_on_psychological_condition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Speculation_on_p...
- indigochill 6y ago
  In the west, at least, Bobby Fischer went down what some might consider a pretty dark path. Fugitive status from the US for violating cold war sanctions, choice words about 9/11, and remaining on the run from the US for the rest of his life in Iceland. That said, I grew up as a chess nerd and although I knew vaguely that Bobby Fischer was a tragic figure (largely thanks to "In Search of Bobby Fischer", despite the movie having almost nothing to do with the titular character), I'd never heard of that association with chess in general.
  - greedo 6y ago
    His anti-semitism was pretty ugly as well.
  - 6y ago
stelliosk 6y ago
Can someone please explain how this is valued at 2.5 billion?
erostrate 6y ago
Current landscape of chess platform as I understand it: lichess: non-profit, free and open source, community oriented, high quality tech, growing userbase, amazing founder ornicar, much loved by its users and supporters including me. Regular online competitions well attended but doesn't organise major events. Doesn't really do things like video lessons or partnership with streamers as far as I know, probably due to non-profit status and community focus. chess.com: for-profit, the largest user base, led by IM Danny Rensch. Tech is not as good as lichess but still okay-ish. Organises major events with GM commentators. Has partnerships with major streamers, such as the most successful (but controversial) US number 2 GM Hikaru Nakamura. I used to support them before lichess got big. chess24: for-profit, led by GM Jan Gustaffson, much smaller than chess.com and lichess, supported by current world champion GM Magnus Carlsen. Tech is worse than both lichess and chess.com. Also organises important events, and also produces high quality content such as video lessons. I'm considering supporting them too as I watch a lot of their content but I just enjoy playing on lichess too much. One fascinating thing is how both for-profit chess.com and chess24 have much worse tech than non-profit lichess despite presumably large budgets. For example chess24 platform has been under development for years and has become a running joke even for its employees. You'd think a chess website would be fairly simple tech in the grand scheme of things but clearly it's still hard to do it right. A testament to how impressive lichess founder and community is.
- Bootvis 6y ago
  I follow chess quite a lot but I still don’t know how chessable, which has major GM support, relates to chess24.
  - erostrate 6y ago
    My understanding is that chessable was founded by streamer IM John Bartholomew as an educational platform, and like chess24 got acquired by Magnus Carlsen's group. I believe they are trying to create some synergies between chess24 and chessable but they still operate fairly separately.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  Chess.com is not lead by IM Danny Rensch alone. He has a C-title (chief chess officer). I did a double take there because that would be an amazing fact. Danny Rensch is one of the best things with chess.com overall. Wikipedia can tell you about which the leaders of chess.com are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess.com

139 points by prostoalex 6y ago

The community first chess platform is lichess, which doesn't even get a mention because it is non-profit. This thing sounds like some botched together platform with Kasparov's name attached to add legitimacy. It will 100% fail.

lasfter 6y ago
100%. Lichess is an astounding achievement of FOSS and I wish it got more love in general. I can't think of any other open-source website with as much traffic and with as much complex functionality.
- Scarblac 6y ago
  And with multiple paid employees, funded _only_ by small donations. No ads, no corporate sponsors, no investors etc.
- darepublic 6y ago
  to dogpile more -- the lichess open source library is amazing and the site itself is a joy to use.
  - User23 6y ago
    I also clicked through simply to say lichess is amazing.
- jmarcher 6y ago
  Presentation from the original author about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZgyVadkgmI
- axaxs 6y ago
  I'll vouch for that. I hadn't even heard of lichess, just went looking for an Android chess game to play to pass the time. The app is stellar, and not full of garbage like the others. My only complaint is how it's pronounced. Can't help but think of leeches.
  - ycombinete 6y ago
    I defaulted to “lie-chess”, and that’s where I’m staying.
    - axaxs 6y ago
      That's how I pronounced it initially, and I'm sticking to it also.
  - yewenjie 6y ago
    The website is very lightweight and fully responsive on mobile, and usually has some extra features than the apps.
  - thih9 6y ago
    > Can't help but think of leeches. Too much fantasy here and “lichess” makes me think of a female lich.
- bluecalm 6y ago
  Also quality. Lichess has by far the best interface and smoothest experience. Well financed commercial players like chess.com, chess24, chessbase were never able to replicate it. Lichess which was a one man show for a long time has beaten them all in engineering department and not by a small margin. The difference is just night and day, like driving 30 years old car and modern one. It's one of the examples of how you can't pay your way to good software. There was a discussion about Discord lately and how it's about userbase only and how you could recreate it spending a fraction of what its valuation is. I don't think you could. I mean apparently you can't even pay your way to get somewhat playable chess site. Btw, check the git log (or run one if those punch card scripts on the repo). The main programmer is a machine. It's humbling what kind of output a great programmer with great work ethics can achieve.
  - krisgenre 6y ago
    True. Bullet is unplayable for me on chess.com because of latency but works really well on lichess.
  - rtwall 6y ago
    chess24 needs to work on page load performance, but I find watching tournaments more pleasant on chess24 than on lichess. chess24's default chess board is easier on the eyes than the flat design lichess one. lichess is amazing for playing though.
rectang 6y ago
Seriously. Lichess is solid, featureful, has a huge userbase, and enjoys buy-in at the highest levels: Magnus Carlsen plays there under the alias DrNykterstein. https://lichess.org/@/DrNykterstein https://lichess.org/@/DrNykterstein
beforeolives 6y ago
Yes, lichess is by far the best platform and a great example of an open source project. The founder had an AMA on reddit a few days ago, it was a very wholesome read - https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lichess_ask_me_anything/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/mpasyl/i_started_lic...
- CamelCaseName 6y ago
  I loved everything about this thread. Thank you for sharing.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  I've always just used the chess.com app, and have never thought to look for alternatives. Apart from using Open Source, is there any other reason for me to consider switching to lichess?
  - nickysielicki 6y ago
    It's just better made all around. The site is sleek. The game renders well, doesn't lag at all even on very old and underpowered devices. The analysis on lichess with wasm stockfish was stolen by chess.com -- there are no premium features and no ads. There is simply no good reason to use any other site.
  - yewenjie 6y ago
    No ads, no tracking, all features free forever for everyone.
  - spuz 6y ago
    Free unlimited analysis of your games. Free unlimited puzzles. Basically any reason you might pay for chess.com, lichess has it for free.
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      Free unlimited puzzles? Oh ok... that’s why I pay the highest subscription level on chess.com. Wow, that’s cool
raspyberr 6y ago
I have to add to the commendations of Lichess here. It's amazing. You don't need an account to just jump in and play with people. Amazing stuff.
unlog 6y ago
lichess has very big problems with the chat, so I won't call it "community first", it's nice if you are just there to play chess, but playing chess with your actual friends its a problem, the chat is heavily censured so having any casual conversation while playing it's hard. To give some examples they ban chat messages that look "similar" to the previous one, so lets say you type a2, and then you type a3 (... a chess position) the last message won't be displayed which is very annoying. This "solution" solves nothing and causes problems, because anyone trying to say something will just try till the message goes through(if you ever noticed that what you typed didnt reach the chat...). Did you make a typo on your phone number/birthdate/address? you can't fix it if it's just the fix to the number, they seem to have been trying to solve with the computer social issues that cant really be solved that way. Besides, there's a very lengthy list of censured words that you can't type, even if you are playing with your actual friends, with people that you may even know in real life, it's insane. I maintain sites frequented by teens and their language is not the best but thats the way teens talk, lichess doesn't welcome the young by doing what its doing now. They are dictating what you can say and not. The funny thing is that I believe the chat is logged forever on their server and there's no indication on the screen of that actually happening, I really wish for my chat history to be deleted, specially because I was not informed about it. Don't get me wrong, I love lichess, but I have pretty much stopped playing when I discovered these things.
- rectang 6y ago
  Whatever they're doing, it's kind of nice to have far fewer homophobic slurs hurled in the lichess chat in comparison to other chess servers.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  When I play chess (on lichess) with my friends, I am typically in the same physical/Discord room with them. We do not need another way to chat. With everyone else, I'm very happy to be limited to "GL", "HF", "Thanks", "Bye" (localized to their language of choice). I'm also not trying to make friends/community on lichess, its not like WoW or Dota where teams matter to the actual game. Historically, chess teams existed because of geographical boundaries. People needed other chess players of a similar level to: 1. get better at chess, 2. amortize the costs of traveling to a tournament, 3. try to estimate their global ranking to satisfy ego. Players on the same chess teams happened to become very good friends because of the time commitment to the game and therefore each other. Eventually the friendships were the more important commitment. However, with lichess (or just the internet in general), I can satisfy all 3 benefits of having a chess team by playing alone on lichess and have really great friends orthogonal of chess (especially since travel isn't part of my chess hobby's time commitment).
aoeusnth1 6y ago
I have nothing against Kasparov’s efforts, and I’m sure there’s plenty of valuable content on his new site. But I have to agree that Lichess is an absolute jewel of the chess community, and I’m a happy supporter of it. We don’t need another chess matchmaking site, but it doesn’t sound like Kasparov is trying to compete in that space.
yewenjie 6y ago
Every time I think about lichess, I realize how untrue the generic 'we cannot have good things' platitude is. Everything about lichess just strikes pure joy to me --- open source, no tracking/ ads, feature complete and everything totally free for everyone!
cmsefton 6y ago
Lots of love here for lichess, and it's well deserved. My son got into chess over a year ago, but when lockdown came I signed him up to Chess Kids, which is pretty good for children who are learning. However, he quickly migrated to lichess, and we've not looked back. It's been an absolute lifesaver during lockdown for my 8 year old son, he learnt an incredible amount from the site. Great tutorials, great puzzles, plus he gets to see some of his chess heroes like Carlson play live. It's a fantastic community. Plus, my son was able to learn pretty much everything, including how to write his own tutorials and how to analyse games, on his own without my assistance, which just demonstrates how good and intuitive the UI is.
andrei_says_ 6y ago
Lichess is one of the best experiences on the web. I build web apps and this one is polished to perfection. It is an example of what is possible when you combine good intentions, great taste, excellent skill and sincere love for the beauty and fun of chess. The UX is just perfect. It is an inspiration for me.
SergeAx 6y ago
I never knew Lichess is open source and donation supported. I feel so grateful now.
jorgenveisdal 6y ago
Very Kasparov. No doubt very half-baked, and very self-promotional

young_unixer 6y ago

The idea of a domain-specific Udemy with appropiate instructor filtering has been done 100 times already. Which doesn't mean it's going to fail. It just means that there's nothing new about it. It's all about good execution and management, and nothing about innovation, like I feel this article tries to paint it.

Daishiman 6y ago
Yes, and while Kasparov has branding potential, any of the top 5 current Super GMs do too, and they're already present in Lichess, chess.com, Twitch, Youtube, etc.

torgian 6y ago

I read about this man and his chess stuff religiously when I was a kid. Loved it and it’s pet of what got me into chess. I’m pretty happy he is making a platform like this, it’s bound to be excellent.

Cullinet 6y ago
there's just something about Kasparov that reeks of a lifetime away from the board that's looks to me like it has been a very unsatisfactory if not even unhappy excercise in trying to parlay undoubted excellence in the game into a intellectual halo of unassailable and unquestionable superiority, from political motivations to commercial exploitation and branding. honestly I really hope that I'm entirely wrong about the man's life and success, but at the very least I'm convinced that Kasparov has never associated with the best available public relations and marketing minds, certainly no one equal to his genius for the game.
- Cullinet 6y ago
  I get the idea that what I wrote might be misunderstood as a adhimonem or purely personal opinion, but I have just found confirmation of the memory that caused my misgivings concerning Kasparov : my father took me to see Korchnoi, Spassky, Karpov compete in the Hastings international chess congress near to the tiny town where I was born, but I never heard of Kasparov playing in this tournament and now this confirms only Fisher also never competed : http://www.hastingschess.com/congress-history/ http://www.hastingschess.com/congress-history/ my apologies if I received a very early impression from Kasparov by the fact that he most certainly made a impression on my youth but disappointed greatly by ignoring the nearest and most wonderful setting where nobody else was above competing in.

faeriechangling 6y ago

Chess.com not only ran forums but held community events like collaborative games vs master players early on. This just seems to be copying the community aspect of MOOCs and incorporating that into a chess course promoted by a strong brand (Garry Kasparov). It's pretty derivative.

iratewizard 6y ago
Chess.com and lichess have done wonders for chess, and its revival can mostly be attributed to Chess.com's collective smart decisions and hard work. If it weren't for that, Kasparov's copycat wouldn't catch the slightest bit of traction.
- beforeolives 6y ago
  Isn't the revival attributed mostly to The Queen's Gambit being released on Netflix?
  - rlayton2 6y ago
    Not really. The revival for me was due to agadmator on youtube but obviously I only started seeing his videos once they were popular and I dont know the cause of that (other than the quality of the channel of course!) But Queens Gambit did push chess to be even more popular.
  - codethief 6y ago
    Definitely not. I remember watching chess games on Twitch when the pandemic started last spring and being surprised how popular chess had gotten.
  - Scarblac 6y ago
    It's chess streaming becoming mature at the same time a global pandemic forced people indoors, combined with TQG.
  - User23 6y ago
    Chess is the poster boy of the Lindy effect.

schaefer 6y ago

I would anticipate that if the site had actually launched, I could register and play right now. But as it stands, I can only pre-register. For a chance to be one of 6400 players granted early access.

Cullinet 6y ago
I really seem to have a filter how I see thy this that I just found confirmation about the original disappointment of when I was a impressionable young chess fan, in my comment above, but I can only say that I really would have felt very hurt by this limitation if I could transplant my childhood me to today. I have such a distinctive memory of the way I felt about arbitrarily elitist and opaque barriers to intellectual pursuit. I'm not doing a very good job expressing myself probably because I have such a clear recollection of the way I was as a kid, but I think that my earlier comment about how better PR and marketing would be a help with Kasparov's image when you consider this limitation remains opaque in functional reality even if the reason of the limit is clear any inquiring mind has to ask why not take it more slowly / soft launch, as you suggested, or if something else isn't quite there yet.

Grakel 6y ago

I had a "Gary Kasparov" "computer" chess board when I was a kid, maybe 1995. On one hand it was cool in that you hard pressed your move into the board with the piece, and it would tell you where to move it's piece. On the other hand it had 64 difficulty levels which were all either extremely easy or impossible to defeat. He's been putting his name on stuff for years.

koolba 6y ago
What was the cut off difficulty level at which point it became impossible?
- Grakel 6y ago
  I can't remember, sorry.

darepublic 6y ago

nice looking lander, which is a big form to request access. of course that is the easy part.

hahla 6y ago

A bit off topic but I found MasterClass classes to lack depth. Most of what I watched (mainly cooking related) seemed more like entertainment vs actually learning anything.

yesenadam 6y ago

There was a kasparovchess.com before: Mig Greengard's wikipedia says he "was vice president of content for Kasparov Chess Online and editor-in-chief of kasparovchess.com from 1999 until the site's demise in 2002." Greengard has been Kasparov's PA/confidante for a long time. Before 2011 he also had the best chess blog, the Daily Dirt.[0] I wanted to share a fascinating insight into Kasparov that Mig wrote to Edward Winter in April 2005: "A few words regarding your interesting note about Garry Kasparov and his retirement. While I don’t disagree with the content of your item, Garry has always been demonstrably impetuous and I’m a little surprised you give much credit to an entourage of Iagos and people trying to make a buck off of him. They may exist, to a degree, but he makes his own decisions, often with what I consider too little external input. That, and his mother is still very much the only real member the inner circle, or at least the “inner inner” circle. In the brief time I have been close to him, most of his big decisions, dubious and otherwise, were made quickly and on his own. (Obviously the degree of his mother’s influence is unknown to me.) His sudden decision to dive into politics last year with the Committee 2008 Free Choice was against the advice of just about everyone. This was also true with his retirement. In both cases it was more after the fact concern than pre-announcement advice. Certainly in my case, as a selfish chess fan, I would much prefer he played chess until, at least, his best isn’t good enough. I’ve encouraged him to stay involved in the chess world by writing a column or training young players, and I expect he will eventually return to the board. You can make a case that his combative, contrarian nature tends to lead him against the advice of friends and public opinion because he enjoys trying to prove people wrong. (I believe this largely explains his interest in the New Chronology.) If you are looking for a tidy reason why Garry has made bad decisions, I’d say it’s simply because he makes them very quickly. He doesn’t like dragging things out (what I would call contemplation) and he is very confident of the correctness of his decisions. This is essential in chess, but often a recipe for disaster in other areas, at least if you’re not as good at them as Kasparov is at chess. This may be too prosaic, but it’s also Occam’s Razor. Since he has demonstrably improved in this area in the past five or six years (Predecessors Vol. 1 notwithstanding), I can’t imagine he was anything but worse ten or 15 years ago. It was all about action, making something happen, shocking the critics. He’s very sure of himself in just about everything and rarely seeks advice or tells people what he’s going to do. Regarding his decline in public opinion, I think here too the answers are fairly simple. I concur with your specific examples, but the real basis is that people root for underdogs, not the favorite. When Kasparov was an outsider it was much different from when he became the status quo. Who doesn’t like a young rebel? Having power is very different from shouting at the gates. When you actually try to do something you are going to make enemies. And again he went about many of these things too much on his own, convinced he was 100% right and unwilling to compromise." [0] Mig got me into seriously following and studying chess in about 2007-8, with his hilarious audio tournament broadcasts on ICC's ChessFM . There'd be him being extremely funny, teamed with a serious GM, usually strongly accented, like Yermolinsky or Har-Zvi. It was great. I'd listen to that while following tournaments live on FICS, and taking part in discussion about each game on there (no computer lines allowed), which were wonderful. That was a great community. The tv-style streamed youtube videos of today from Chess24 or St Louis, featuring strong GM commentators, live video of the players, player post-mortems, are amazing, but still maybe not as instructional and enjoyable as those days. The ancient history: the ICS (Internet Chess Server) began in 1992, and started charging $ in 1995, becoming the ICC (Internet Chess Club). FICS (Free Internet Chess Server) split off then, led by people who wanted to keep it non-commercial. [1] https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/kasparov2.html https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/kasparov2.html

gentleman11 6y ago

Kasparov is a big human rights advocate, but his business’s privacy policy is extremely long and complex, and allows a lot of tracking and targeting. I suppose he is not fully aware of how important privacy is for freedom of speech

radicalcentrist 6y ago

> "I was so happy because it was the first time where we could see chess as a positive factor," he said. "We had so many years with chess being seen as potential destruction and something that could push kids to the dark area of psychological instability." This surprises me, could someone expand a bit on this? I've only ever heard chess referred to positively in popular culture. I would assume most non chess players' understanding of chess is based on idioms like "thinking N moves ahead" and "playing 4D chess." (I'm not sure I'd consider Beth Harmon a shining example of psychological stability either...)

bobsled 6y ago
This is something that has been over-hyped for the sake of dramatization. Paul Morphy[1] and Bobby Fischer[2] are great examples of people who most likely were already psychologically 'at risk', and 'went over the edge' because of their obsessive chess playing. Certain potentially self destructive traits, largely obsessiveness and paranoia, can be of great use when playing chess if they are moderated. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#Abandonment_of_chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Morphy#Abandonment_of_che... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Speculation_on_psychological_condition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer#Speculation_on_p...
indigochill 6y ago
In the west, at least, Bobby Fischer went down what some might consider a pretty dark path. Fugitive status from the US for violating cold war sanctions, choice words about 9/11, and remaining on the run from the US for the rest of his life in Iceland. That said, I grew up as a chess nerd and although I knew vaguely that Bobby Fischer was a tragic figure (largely thanks to "In Search of Bobby Fischer", despite the movie having almost nothing to do with the titular character), I'd never heard of that association with chess in general.
- greedo 6y ago
  His anti-semitism was pretty ugly as well.
- 6y ago

stelliosk 6y ago

Can someone please explain how this is valued at 2.5 billion?

erostrate 6y ago

Current landscape of chess platform as I understand it: lichess: non-profit, free and open source, community oriented, high quality tech, growing userbase, amazing founder ornicar, much loved by its users and supporters including me. Regular online competitions well attended but doesn't organise major events. Doesn't really do things like video lessons or partnership with streamers as far as I know, probably due to non-profit status and community focus. chess.com: for-profit, the largest user base, led by IM Danny Rensch. Tech is not as good as lichess but still okay-ish. Organises major events with GM commentators. Has partnerships with major streamers, such as the most successful (but controversial) US number 2 GM Hikaru Nakamura. I used to support them before lichess got big. chess24: for-profit, led by GM Jan Gustaffson, much smaller than chess.com and lichess, supported by current world champion GM Magnus Carlsen. Tech is worse than both lichess and chess.com. Also organises important events, and also produces high quality content such as video lessons. I'm considering supporting them too as I watch a lot of their content but I just enjoy playing on lichess too much. One fascinating thing is how both for-profit chess.com and chess24 have much worse tech than non-profit lichess despite presumably large budgets. For example chess24 platform has been under development for years and has become a running joke even for its employees. You'd think a chess website would be fairly simple tech in the grand scheme of things but clearly it's still hard to do it right. A testament to how impressive lichess founder and community is.

Bootvis 6y ago
I follow chess quite a lot but I still don’t know how chessable, which has major GM support, relates to chess24.
- erostrate 6y ago
  My understanding is that chessable was founded by streamer IM John Bartholomew as an educational platform, and like chess24 got acquired by Magnus Carlsen's group. I believe they are trying to create some synergies between chess24 and chessable but they still operate fairly separately.
kzrdude 6y ago
Chess.com is not lead by IM Danny Rensch alone. He has a C-title (chief chess officer). I did a double take there because that would be an amazing fact. Danny Rensch is one of the best things with chess.com overall. Wikipedia can tell you about which the leaders of chess.com are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess.com