Can I delete data?

@Cedur216 said in #10:

Your opening repertoire has no weaknesses to worry about. Other than your general weaknesses at chess, whether these may be more on the tactical or the strategical side.

The concept of "preparation" is hardly effective at my level. I did that in Twitch viewer battles, either I got upset when I was surprised by an early different move (and I did that to opponents too) or I got my favorite opening for a few moves but still had some position from which I had to orientate on my own, and the games are always decided by completely different things

Last month we had our most important regional team tournament for 15 to 19 years. In one of the matches we put our weakest athlete (she’s not even rated yet) to play against the strongest girl from the other city, just to burn that table and try to win in the others.
Guess what, my athlete managed to win the game brilliantly against an about 1400 rated player.

That happened due a huge effort in the preparation; we saw that she was playing specially the Carokann defense. I know my athlete, she was better in open positions so I put her to play the Panov-Botvinnik attack with the isolated pawn, we saw many possibilities and lines and in the end she brought the win. My athlete was confident while the 1400 girl got nervous during the game because she saw she was inside our preparations, she tried to play sharp and finish the game but she was finished first.

This same athlete with no FIDE rating had to fight another 1400 rated player from another city and we did a lot of preparations now as black using the french defense, but this time the opponent had information, because my athlete had made a friendly game before with another girl from that team and she used the french defense in the game. Now white won’t be surprised, she knew the french defense was coming (as my athlete is beginner, it was no use on teaching something completely new) then she prepared ideas in the Tarrasch variation which is the less common in the lower levels. Still we prepared an isolated pawn line but the opponent was under control of the preparation, she was not surprised or anything and this time we lost the game as expected, even though the game was beautiful.

In this same match I made a 1180 rated player win against a 1560 with black in the Scheveningen sicilian, because we discovered her only idea was to play the Be2 castle and f4 attack, so we prepared very well against this line with NxN, b6 Bb7 and d5, we got a very good position and them we got the win.

Trust me, the weight of preparations in lower levels is huge, specially in terms of psycology and about knowing the plan the position demands, if the player knows what to do and he is confident, half of the way was done; and the less information you can give to the opponents, the best it is.

I think your request goes against the whole ethos of the game.

The scores of players' games is, and has always been, publicly available information. Preparing to meet other players is, and always was, a matter of looking at their games. Professional players will avoid revealing their preparation for particular opponents by not playing those moves in recorded games until the time comes.

I think your students would do well to learn this feature of our game and abide by it.

@Brian-E said in #12:

I think your request goes against the whole ethos of the game.

The scores of players' games is, and has always been, publicly available information. Preparing to meet other players is, and always was, a matter of looking at their games. Professional players will avoid revealing their preparation for particular opponents by not playing those moves in recorded games until the time comes.

I think your students would do well to learn this feature of our game and abide by it.

I’m not in favor of hiding official games, and even if was I don’t have control over it, official games are available in so many different websites and it’s ok.

But lichess is the place where we learn, we practice, it’s different. In the practice, not allowing people to hide information only estimulates them to hide their identity with fake names, to not join groups of the city, to avoid following friends or not allow to be followed... it estimulates the isolation in competitive players. I don’t see any problem on creating a tool for hiding your account for a month for example, but this is my personal opinion.

If you don't put your real name and don't talk with people about your Lichess activity, then your identity can't be found. Blame yourselves for that, but again, no need to fret in the first place if your accounts are important to you.

@Cedur216 said in #14:

If you don't put your real name and don't talk with people about your Lichess activity, then your identity can't be found. Blame yourselves for that, but again, no need to fret in the first place if your accounts are important to you.

Yeah, competitive players will tend to the anonimity as I said, which is a sad thing, it could be another way.

Anyway, that’s enough, I got my answer, the topic can be closed already.

Wait you people are worried about opening repertoires? having never thought about that bit nervous rn

@jose1122 said in #13:

I’m not in favor of hiding official games, and even if was I don’t have control over it, official games are available in so many different websites and it’s ok.

But lichess is the place where we learn, we practice, it’s different. In the practice, not allowing people to hide information only estimulates them to hide their identity with fake names, to not join groups of the city, to avoid following friends or not allow to be followed... it estimulates the isolation in competitive players. I don’t see any problem on creating a tool for hiding your account for a month for example, but this is my personal opinion.
I understand, regular OTB players tend to see lichess as their trainings tool.
But I don't play OTB, lichess is my only place to play chess. To me, lichess games are my official games.

@jose1122 said in #1:

My students will have an important tournament next month and I don’t want the opponents finding their repertoires here. Can we delete our past games or will we have to delete the account and make a new one?

Plus, is it possible to change the name of the account?

Thank you.
@MentalFugues said in #2:
You can't delete past games. The games will remain even if the accounts are closed.

You can't change the names of accounts except for a one-time changing of the capitalization: lichess.org/faq#change-username.

FWIW, "Untitled players can create a second account for . . . having a private account to hide opening preparation, playing “blindfold” games, or playing games with any other self-imposed impairment." lichess.org/terms-of-service

I think you can delete data