1.I do not feel pressured to spend money. I still have not used my premium free trial on chess.com (and I hardly ever play on there anyways)
2. I feel that chess is more competitive here
3. Sense of Community. Yes Lichess may have a smaller user base but I like seeing the same usernames on the forums( for instance, when I first joined I would see Onyxchess on the forum)
4. Interacting with the site is so much better than on chess.com. You have a homepage with all the time controls and can immediately hop into a game , but on chess.com you have to go through clutter to click to play (this is just a nit pick imo)
What do I miss?
1. nothing really, I just want to feel comfortable playing chess. Ive gotten used to playing here so my chess.com account has turned into my "play whatever" account. Puzzle rush is cool, but the puzzles here work just as well
Chess.com has achievements whilst lichess doesn't. That's one thing I think Lichess could improve on, because the achievements give the player a target, and when you get an achievement it feels like you've achieved something and ur proud of it.
However, lichess has an unlimited amount of everything. to get unlimited resources on Chess.com means you have to upgrade to at least Platinum as Gold only gives you 25 puzzles/day and 5 puzzle rush/day. Chess.com also has annoying ads while Lichess doesn't, which is a definite plus.
Chess.com might have puzzle rush but honestly, the only point of it is to have fun.
I'm not sure why people go on chess.com
Lighter interface.
Reasons why I play on lichess:
1. The chessboard UI is very smooth, fast, and works great on an iPad Pro.
2. The study feature on this site is amazing. I love making private studies of chess books that I’m reading. It’s such a great learning tool.
3. The look / feel of this site is generally a lot smoother than chess.com. I love how user profiles work, the rating graph tools, etc.
4. The analysis tools on this site are amazing. I love the “learn from your mistakes” feature.
5. It seems like the cheat detection on this site is superior to chess com - but that could be wrong. Not sure.
6. This site actually has two factor authentication - which chess.com does not offer (this is useful for me, I play at Internet cafes from time to time - I do not want to be using my credentials on public computers).
Things I wish were available here from chess.com:
1. Achievements. It’s never going to happen, lichess is not that kind of site - but achievements for casual players to strive towards would be super cool, I think. Also, perhaps some kind of trophy system that players on the lower rating band can strive for. As of right now - every unique accolade / profile trophy that is available is basically unattainable for anyone who is not titled, or very close to titled. What I mean is - it would be impossible for me to win a shield tournament at my level - and it would be cool if players on the lower rating band could have something to compete for too.
2. The piece sets on this site are...overwhelmingly flat. If you look at the piece sets for this site, a very large amount of them have no shadow or depth. For example, compare cburnett (very flat design) to Staunty (a piece set that has at least some depth - just look at the difference in how the knights look). Now take a look at the amount of piece sets on this site that are flat - you will notice that an overwhelming amount of them are. This is an oversight in my opinion - and something that chess.com does better. Their piece set selection has a variety of pieces that have depth. Additionally, a few more board color options wouldn’t hurt either.
(Pro-tip: hovering your mouse over a piece set in the settings menu will tell you the name of the set).
3. The rating system on this site. Yes, I know that ratings are based on the community and have no real value, but at the same time it just feels like a pain point. A 1700 lichess player does not have even close to the level of strength that a 1700 USCF player is going to have. Not even close. It makes it a bit frustrating when looking for chess materials for studying that are rating specific. I have to do some kind of weird mental conversion in my head when purchasing chess books (“Oh, my lichess rating is 1650 meaning I should be looking for books in the 1300-1500 range”). I wish the rating system here was a bit more consistent with USCF / FIDE ratings, but I highly doubt I’ll ever see that happen.
Overall, I do think that this is the superior site. I just went on chess.com on my iPad Pro and the site is completely unusable. You cannot play a game. The site is basically non-functional on tablets. And chess.com’s app is a bit lacking in features (no way to set piece movement speed is a major oversight in my opinion - and makes their chessboard UI look even more sluggish and unresponsive than it already is).
I think, though I'm not sure, that the app on facebook I used before Lichess was chess.com. If not then ignore this. I prefer everything about Lichess except that on Lichess I never seem to get to play people out of my league. On here I never played anyone more than maybe 50-100 points more or less than me. On the other app those games were very growth-inducing.
Had played around 12000 games on chess.com before leaving.Here till date a bit less than 1500.Was for 5 and half years on chess.com.here only recently-a few months- only one difference for me in my favorite rapid-10 minutes games - cheating is less.
Action taking for both sites for reporting cheater is almost same-very very little-.
On chess.com 8 out of 10 cheat and here it is about less than 3 out of ten.
About the lack of achievements on Lichess : the reward system is a well known strategy used in particular in video games to increase addiction. A LOT of websites (even very good ones) are conceived with this system (with various names like milestones, trophies, badges, etc.). I personally feel relieving that lichess doesn't use it.
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