Single input play mode

I want an option to where If there's only 1 piece that can move to a particular square, then you can move that piece to that square by clicking on the square.

The obvious benefit being less clicks equals less time spent clicking and maneuvering your mouse. It means much faster captures. Most captures happen where there's only 1 piece that can capture. This way you could just click the piece you want to capture and it'll be captured.

With this option engaged and if there's more than one piece that can move to that square, the player would then have to click the piece they want to move there. So in the case of captures, you click the piece you want to capture, and if the interface doesn't immediately capture the piece, then you choose which piece you want to capture it with, at which point your piece will move and capture the piece you first clicked on.

Chess beginners will certainly abuse this feature. Add a disclaimer to players under 1200 not to abuse it because it'll stunt their playing. For an example of abuse, beginners might just click every single piece of their opponent at the start of their turn starting with the queen and moving down in value order, then start looking for moves.

Well ok, they're going to take forever to get actually good. Plus this strategy takes time to do. Imagine adding 5-15 extra clicks per turn instead of sometimes saving a click by going from 2 clicks (piece, target square) down to one (target square only).

For good players, this will speed up their play substantially. I think speed chess players are going to absolutely love this.

I estimate that a single input play mode will save about 1/3 clicks and a significant amount of mouse travel distance. This is time savings at the interface level. It's something (inferior) paid chess sites might charge as a premium feature because they're terrible.

I'd love to be a beta tester for this feature. Thanks!

Go Fine! Rawr!

This option exists in LiChess Tools: https://siderite.dev/blog/lichess-tools---user-manual/#oneClickMove

it only works for Analysis and Study and stuff, because we are not allowed to change the way playing works in Lichess.

I've also raised an issue with chessground: https://github.com/lichess-org/chessground/issues/305 which is where the change should begin before Lichess implements it.

I understand it would be optional, but seems like a huge opportunity for mis-clicks, e.g. clicking away to cancel a move and accidentally making another one. I also understand from the github discussion how this could help real issues people have, but it only partially solves things when there is the one move option, I don't think it's enough to really justify mangling the code more and creating another area for people to be confused. If it's that hard to move the mouse and click things, maybe they should look at slower time controls.

As far as beginners abusing such an option I don't see how this would be a problem. They can already see possible destination squares by default when clicking on a piece, and I don't think it really helps them to look for captures in such a scattershot way.

I might be curious to try such a feature but I think the inconsistency would lead to more pain than joy. For myself as a click to move player, I'd rather just have the mental model always be source/destination click/click.