Revolutionize Lichess!

Warning: This is an April fool joke, if it’s funny enough for that purpose. The author is not a member of the Lichess team and the text doesn’t represent the opinions of the Lichess team. Hopefully it doesn’t represent anyone’s opinions.

I. New features of Lichess
This article presents brand new features of the site, which are designed to improve your user experience.

Reverse moves
A premove is a well-known and welcome feature, but Lichess is going to introduce reverse moves as well! You'll be able to go back with the piece with which you made the previous move, even if it’s an illegal move now!

Enemy requests – Do you dislike someone and want to beat them in a long match? Send them an enemy request to play a match! If you allow chat, trolling and insults will be allowed as well.

Rude arenas – Do you like to insult your opponents and suffer from the strict terms of services? If you prove that you’re aged above 18 by sending a picture of your ID cart and a photo of you holding a sheet of paper with your name, you’ll be able to enter our rude arenas where you’ll be allowed to insult or threaten your opponent or use bad language. This will help you to play the way you like without molesting players with different tastes.

Flagging arenas
There will also be flagging arenas, where both players get 30 seconds for the whole game, a king and a rook. The fifty-move rule doesn’t apply, draw offers are only allowed after move 50. A transition into a position with bare kings before move 51 leaves both players without points. This innovation ensures that players who especially enjoy flagging will have more opportunities to pursuit their hobby, and other users will be less likely to face them outside these arenas.

Fines for exceedingly long games
Have you ever waited for minutes while playing a Swiss tournament, until the last game of the round ended? Did you enjoy that waiting? No? Then we have good news for you! We’ve decided to fine players for games over 200 moves, or close their account if they fail to pay the fine within two weeks. Many of such games are artificially extended and they are also a burden for our servers. To show our good will, we let you play one free game over 200 moves. Each of the next games above 200 will cost you one dollar. This money will help to pay our programmers for their work.

II. New variants
For many years, Lichess has been a great place to play not only standard chess, but also eight different chess variants. But what is completely stable is dead, life evolves and changes are needed! For this reason, two new variants are going to be added soon.

Horse
We’re glad to present a new variant called Horse. Perhaps you’ve already heard of the Horde, where black’s full chess army faces 36 pawns. In Horse, white has 14 horseys instead of 36 pawns.

White wins by delivering checkmate, black wins by collecting all the horses. A stalemate is a draw.
The original suggestion contained 16 horseys, but such a position favors white heavily, although the engine initially strongly disagrees. Here is a sample game based on a Stockfish analysis:

If you’re really interested, feel free to put the position on your board and replay the game. (Hopefully special sets of white horseys appear soon in the Swag Store, otherwise one would need 8 standard chess sets to replay the game.)
The study also contains other analyses.
And here is the immortal Horse game, or rather an analysis:

The final position reveals the beauty of this variant and might serve as an incentive to make Horse a new variant on Lichess.

Three Horseys of The Hill (THOTH)
In this variant a game is won by a mate or by (gradually) entering three different central squares with your knight(s).
It’s not the best variant. It seems to be lost for Black, but this weird variant makes the previous one (Horse) look even better in comparison!

III. A revolution in anticheating

A public vote
Decades or even hundreds of players complain in the forum about too many cheaters. This is why Lichess introduces a revolutionary novelty. Each month there will be a public vote of the most suspect player in three categories, for accounts older than 6 months, accounts old between 1 and 6 months and for newer accounts. In each category the account which gets most votes gets banned and subsequently publicly shamed in a special article.
This innovation ensures that your opinion will no longer be ignored! Make your opinion count!

Contractor
Lichess is also going to introduce a new anticheating software called Contractor. This software uses one or two cameras. Due to special new technologies powered by neural networks, it displays everything except for the player, which ensures that any device on the body immediately becomes apparent. The players can thus enjoy complete privacy while playing in a safe environment. As the software is still under development and occasionally fails to distinguish bodily substances from their surroundings, it is recommended not to eat less than two hours before the start of the event, and avoid eating during the event as well. Full transparency has its downsides when it comes to one’s stomach. (There are some indications that cannibals could eat while using the Contractor. Anyway, conspicuous cannibalism contradicts the Lichess terms of service, so this possibility is purely hypothetical.)

It took me a lot of time to make ChatGPT draw how Contractor displays the reality. For this purpose I used a picture of an engineer sitting at the computer. I asked the AI to draw just two golden teeth, but to no avail. The artificial intelligence even stole an earring from an intermediary picture and only returned it on a direct request. Be careful with the AI, it can be tricky!

IV. Other notable changes

A forum lottery
There are so many comments in the forum sections that the moderators might feel overwhelmed at times. To fix the problem and eliminate irrelevant comments, each user will be allowed to send the initial 100 comments for free and then pay for the possibility to write more. The basic tariffs are further 100 comments for 5 dollars, 300 comments for 10 dollars or a special sale of 1000 comments for mere 20 dollars! Youngsters below 15 years, seniors above 60 years, people with disabilities and certified graphomaniacs will get a 50 percent discount!
A lottery will be held each year, in which two decades of random comments will be selected and their authors will win financial prizes or vouchers for hundreds of free comments.

International Horse Day
Lichess is going to hold big arenas on the International Horse Day, including a prize arena. Its medallists will also earn a special trophy. A picture of a horsey in a color of the respective medal will be displayed on their accounts.

Chat with Lila
If you subscribe to a special tariff Lichess Max, you’ll get 20 percent more basic time in all your games plus extra 5 seconds after move 100! You’ll also be able to chat with our AI-based coach Lila, who is ready to give you some valuable advice. Lila is currently fluent in 9 languages (English, Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, German, Esperanto), with further language versions coming soon.
You can’t communicate with Lila during your rated live games, but she’ll be waiting for you afterwards to analyse the game with you, to tell you how to study chess, improve, handle your time or deal with stress. The picture of Lila follows.

No more words are needed, but I'll finish the article with my usual warning.

Or maybe not...