I am posting on this forum to talk about a serious problem on Lichess and every other chess website: premoves. Premoves don’t exist in real chess. I know this is online chess, but over the board chess, online chess, blindfold chess, etc. chess remains chess. The problem isn’t the premove feature in itself, but how it is made. Premoves should take at least half a second and multi-premoves shouldn’t exist. And, just in case someone posts a message like: “Well just don’t play bullet games if you’re not happy”, premoves being made fair and bullet games are two different things. So I hope Lichess moderators will think about this problem in the future.
Why cant different versions of the game have different characteristics? Online chess has allowed the game to grow in ways players of the past could never have imagined. Sure, I agree that the premove doesn't perfectly represent what OTB chess is like, but maybe that's a good thing? Premoves have opened up new skills and new ways to play the game. Ultrabullet wouldn't even be able to exist without them. Regardless of the idea that bullet / ultra bullet do not have the same beauty of longer games. some people enjoy them and it is not right to take a part of the game that people enjoy away simply to make the game 'more realistic.' In your title, you implied that premoves are not fair? how so? you also have the ability to premove. If you are unable to come up with your moves fast enough, your opponent is at an advantage. That is not the feature's fault but your own. Additionally, how do you get to define what 'real' chess is? I would say that chess is whatever you make it. The game is simply a framework for us to go wild in.
I completely agree with chasseboy123 ... in real chess the premoves do not exist and this mode does not reward the strongest chess player speaking but the most skilled and appropriate with the mouse .... players who like me do not have over 20 years old and born with the real chessboard in front of them are penalized by these "inventions" beyond any real consistency. So also from my side there is the hope that the moderators of Lichess will take this problem into consideration. Sorry my english but it is a source of google translate. Thank you
You already can't multi-premove in Lichess (other sites do have this feature).
I don't really honestly see a problem with how premoves are implemented. Yes, it's not feasible to do this in OTB, but so what? There are lots of variants in chess with widely different rules... not just how the clock operates, but even how the pieces interact with each other (e.g. atomic) or the effects of captures (crazyhouse) or the number of players in the game (4p variants, bughouse). Why does it matter if in one specific variant (speed chess) you are allowed to premove at no time cost?
You can multi-premove on Google.
You can't multi-premove on lichess at all unless you use the extension.
Both @chasseboy123 and @djungelskog have good points on the topic; I try to bring them together.
A fair solution could be implement a minimum delta time for move in the longer time controls and leaving the standard premove in faster time controls, where the premove itself is a structural base of the format
What do you think?
I lose time when I pre-move due to latency, so not sure how you guys get instant moves.
Online chess needs premove because you can't actually see your opponent reaching for a piece. In a real game over a board, you'll see your opponent reach for a piece, touch it, and then move it. You know what's coming. In online chess, you can wait for an unknown number of seconds before a piece "suddenly" moves.
To me pre-move compensates for this to some degree.
And one pre-move is fine. Multi-pre-move is another discussion but we're not in that environment so why have it.
Also my mouse is bad, and i'm often playing on a track pad. I lose games due to time flagging because I simply lack the dexterity to move the mouse on the screen as fast as i could in person. I need to premove. So yeah. This is a non starter to me. Besides, flagging is kinda eh anyway
But premoves do exist in over the board chess. Using a modern blitz time control with either a 2-5 second delay or a 2-3 second increment allows for "premoves". A player just has to make their move faster than the delay or increment to effectively freeze time. How is the online premove, to the best of its ability, not just mimicking over the board play in this regard? I don't see the problem
Also, online chess is not OTB chess. If you want online chess to be exactly like OTB chess then that can't happen. In OTB chess, there is a rule called touch-move which means if you touch a piece then you have to move it and in online chess players are always "touching" pieces with their mouse but that doesn't mean that the players have to move it. Also, since in OTB chess we have to touch our clocks every time we make a move, then in online chess should we click our clocks after we make a move? The answer is no.
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