The community first chess platform is lichess, which doesn't even get a mention because it is non-profit.
This thing sounds like some botched together platform with Kasparov's name attached to add legitimacy.
It will 100% fail.
My only complaint is how it's pronounced. Can't help but think of leeches.
Too much fantasy here and “lichess” makes me think of a female lich.
Well financed commercial players like chess.com, chess24, chessbase were never able to replicate it. Lichess which was a one man show for a long time has beaten them all in engineering department and not by a small margin. The difference is just night and day, like driving 30 years old car and modern one.
It's one of the examples of how you can't pay your way to good software. There was a discussion about Discord lately and how it's about userbase only and how you could recreate it spending a fraction of what its valuation is. I don't think you could. I mean apparently you can't even pay your way to get somewhat playable chess site.
Btw, check the git log (or run one if those punch card scripts on the repo). The main programmer is a machine. It's humbling what kind of output a great programmer with great work ethics can achieve.
chess24's default chess board is easier on the eyes than the flat design lichess one.
lichess is amazing for playing though.
It reminds me of Dwarf Fortress. Admittedly, DF is not open source, but it's free with a wonderful community and a very transparent development process supported by donations.
But I have to agree that Lichess is an absolute jewel of the chess community, and I’m a happy supporter of it. We don’t need another chess matchmaking site, but it doesn’t sound like Kasparov is trying to compete in that space.
The UX is just perfect.
It is an inspiration for me.
With everyone else, I'm very happy to be limited to "GL", "HF", "Thanks", "Bye" (localized to their language of choice).
I'm also not trying to make friends/community on lichess, its not like WoW or Dota where teams matter to the actual game. Historically, chess teams existed because of geographical boundaries. People needed other chess players of a similar level to: 1. get better at chess, 2. amortize the costs of traveling to a tournament, 3. try to estimate their global ranking to satisfy ego.
Players on the same chess teams happened to become very good friends because of the time commitment to the game and therefore each other. Eventually the friendships were the more important commitment. However, with lichess (or just the internet in general), I can satisfy all 3 benefits of having a chess team by playing alone on lichess and have really great friends orthogonal of chess (especially since travel isn't part of my chess hobby's time commitment).