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Comment by Buttons840 | Hacker News Reader

https://lichess.org/ is also very good. You can play without registering, all features are available to everyone for free, and the site is open source. It's a good clean website without ads or tracking.

(I used to be bitter about chess.com, thinking they're just cashing in on their domain name and charging for features because they can. And that may be, I don't know. But I have seen them organize some good chess events, so they might not be all bad. I think they pay streamers to use their site though, a practice I'm not too happy about.)

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I was bitter towards chess.com after they sent me my password through the forgot password process

That was a decade ago though. Maybe they've improved

They certainly have. Now not only are their user accounts secure, they are on the bleeding edge of detecting and kicking off cheaters.

How do they make money?

By charging their users money.

Premium features.

You can pay to get an extra move or a take-back (only joking).

Actually thinking about it, there probably is a cheap chess clonelike app on mobile market that does that.

There is! "Chess Online"

Oh no. You shattered my remaining slither of hope in mobile app market.

If you think that's bad, check out this GDC Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Lhqri8tZk

They procedurally generated 1,500+ different iterations on top of the same Unity-based slots shovelware using noun/adjective pairs. The general success they enjoyed is as sad as it is hilarious. For the record, the most enticing descriptor categories were: "3D", "Luxury", "Casino/Gambling", and "Sexy".

Stop it! This is soul crushing... and funny.

They have a premium membership that gives a few extra features like game analysis.

I’m quite happy that they are able to make money off of a game like chess. I don’t see a problem with “cashing in on their domain name.” They provide value to people, and people are willing to pay.

You generally have to pay to be a member of a chess club for example. For a fraction of the price, you can play with anyone in the world. Seems valuable to me.

Back in 2014 the lichess app would send your username/password in clear text :) will have to see if that's still the case...

Paying people to play chess can't be a bad thing. I prefer chess.com to lichess specifically because I support chess players by using chess.com. Streamers, tournaments, article writers...

What's so bad about influencer marketing? It is the norm these days. Inevitably competition will do it if you don't.

As an online chess player I find it a bit shady.

Lichess.org has a better UX and featureset for free than a premium chess.com subscription, but many of my friends watch steamers --> sign up to chess.com and get a worse expereince.

Very subjective opinion about the UX.

I much prefer chess.com's UX. They allow multiple pre-moves vs. lichess that only allows 1 premove, has much better cheat detection and overall much better handling of players who engage in bad behavior (abandoning lost games) by segregating repeat offenders into a pool of their own so they don't affect well behaved players, and lichess has a very quirky and unnecessary 300 move limit, which one can argue is more than enough for regular chess, but for speed chess is just a nuisance.

How does lichess handle abandoned games? About half the time I don’t even get to claim the early win and i can see the other player is already playing another game

If a player leaves your game, lichess gives like a 20 second timer and then lets you claim victory. I believe there are also "offer draw" options, but I'm not sure.

You can claim victory or a draw in that situation.

Oh is it not a thing on chess.com? Ime lichess abandoned game detector is not super reliable but i guess better than nothing

Chess.com has 60 seconds countdown after leaving a match (at least in 10 min mode, haven't played others that much). Also, in daily chess there is a time limit for every move. Failing to move on time results in automatic resignation

Sounds like valid reasons. I think we have different preferences - I like the lichess aesthetic, unlimited free puzzles, engine evaluations and opening explorer and lack of freemium popups.

Hope you enjoy your games, and your preferences seem reasonable too!

I've played speed chess for years, and I have never hit 300 moves in a game. The only way this will ever happen is if both sides are intentionally trying to avoid 3 move repetition.

And in terms of premoving, chess.com spends 0.1 seconds per premove whereas on lichess it's instantaneous, so I've found games tend to last longer on lichess move wise.

Also lichess has good number of variants, for example its very easy to get a game of CrazyHouse in lichess, whereas can you play CrazyHouse in Chess.com.

Marketing is antithetical to a free market, because it makes consumers prefer brands with the better marketing to brands with better value at a given price point.

This is why advertising is so heavily regulated - though not even close to regulated enough.

Marketing via 'influencers' is even worse than other forms of marketing because it is one of the least regulated spaces, especially when graphed against its relative effectiveness.

I bit the bullet and got a subscription. The game analysis feature is really good (I guess you can just run that client-side in theory? I don't know), and the lesson content feels worth it for me. And stuff like 4-player chess is fun.

The main homepage is a huge mess though...

> The game analysis feature is really good (I guess you can just run that client-side in theory? I don't know)

Indeed, this is how Lichess (optionally) does it (for free).

They also offer server-side rendering as well (provided by volunteers through fishnet): https://github.com/niklasf/fishnet

I think you mean .org and yeah that seems alright and the open-sourcing is interesting (resisting trolling on node ;).

It's all about SEO, chess.com is the first result on Google and DDG for "chess".

Thanks for the correction: https://lichess.org/

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