"Yeah, but Lichess is all casuals"

True quote from a guy on ICC (last night) who has spent the last few months dropping from 1600+ standard, to ~1200 standard. Was once an 1800 USCF.

It's amazing that this stigma still exists. In some cases, you see people on chess.com saying it's soft here because "my rating is 200 points higher there than on Chess.com". They didn't even look to see what kind of system is used here.

I play everywhere and this site is definitely not soft anymore. I'm finding some of the best long chess online here. Just as good as ICC quality in many cases and you can get games 10x faster here. Games of any length.

It's nice to haveLichess + other networks but I just thought I'd share this tidbit with the community here since this site has evolved so much over the years and is now full of IM's, FM's, and GM's.

Ppl have a weird psychological stigma about rating. They think 1500 should mean the same thing everywhere, when in practice it doesn't matter. If your rating is 50 on Lichess and 3000 on another site, that doesn't mean anything. You play, you move up, you get matched to the most fitting competition. The only issue is when there aren't enough players for you to play. Lichess doesn't have that issue.

I think with the case of ICC, people pay money to be there, right?

Yes. ICC is pay only. The thing is that it has some great leagues, great long chess, and the best client in the biz. What it does *not* have is the population anywhere near the size of Lichess.

I mean, don't get me wrong - ICC is great. ICC + Lichess are my bread and butter at this point. There's just still this stigma attached to Lichess by some folks and when you ask them when the last time they played here was it will boil down to not much ever and when they did, it was over a year + ago.

in my opinion ICC was THE Best about 5 yrs ago but ever since it has been declining rapidly and sites like lichess and chess.com have been ascending, ICC has been robbed of much of its fame by chess.com who buy strong players like naka through contracts and as of lichess it is currently has the best interface with the best features and increasingly strong players. However its a pity we cant see a player like naka play hyperbullet on lichess because he has been bought by chess.com whose software in my opinion is decent but certainly inferior to lichess.

[Slightly Off Topic] I have a free account on ICC and I can play chess without paying a dime. Sure enough, some (probably most) of the features are only made available behind the paywall on ICC, but I can play rated games with several time controls.

Claiming that ICC is a "pay only" platform is slightly inaccurate, I think.

Lichess is of course based on a different philosophy, which I like and I am honored to sponsor with my two cents :). This site is simply great.

If every one who is "on" chess.com used ad blocker and u block etc
chess.com would hear and change "I mean all users" more money is made selling ads then memberships.
I use these and only chess.com complains

I think Lichess is better cuase it is frree..just why take glocko?but i do not care AT ALL cause it is free and has everything that youw ish apart teams and self orgensiation tirunaments

The issue I have is that lichess definitely caters to casual play. Almost all of the decisions are made to benefit that side rather than the serious side. The lack of swiss tournaments and focus on arena tournaments is one obvious way this manifests. Another obvious way is the breaking down different time controls as low as hyper bullet and ultra bullet, but anything above 8 minutes (!!) is considered classical. Totally ridiculous decisions from a serious player's standpoint; but they make total sense when you are catering to the casual player.

So while you can say there are more serious players here, you should really add the caveat that they are here despite lichess's efforts, certainly not because of them.

I would also take issue with ICC having the best client in the biz. Ugh. Personal preference and all, but Blitzin is pretty terrible in my opinion. I've never understood why some people love it so much. Lichess's web interface is 100x better imo. To each their own, though.

Regarding why glicko in the last post, lichess actually uses glicko-2, which is an improvement on glicko. The reason is because it is a more accurate rating system than both elo and glicko. If it's better, there is no reason not to use it. Lichess does undermine its accuracy by not having auto-pairing pools like ICC does, so in the end, auto-pairing plus elo is far more accurate than no-auto-pairing plus glicko-2. (also, note that quick match buttons that lichess has are not auto-pairing pools)

I hope lichess is able to continue providing the best community service site for chess players come next year. I say this in anticipation of many new players arriving. chess.com is self-destructing. v3 after 2+ years could not be implemented. A new rewrite and v4 is promised. hehe. The phone apps have always been a complete disaster. The site is incredibly slow. Members are leaving en mass. Simply put, poor management decisions and making a profit off the chess community is not a viable business model. Soon I will show my support by making a voluntary monthly donation.

I don't think this site is any easier, it's just the ratings are different. I agree with innerspace. Chess.com is really bad atm. I tried chess24 but that was horrible then discovered this cool site. I think what I like best about it here is that the site has so many features yet still feels minimalist and fresh.