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Comment by cjonas | Hacker News Reader

I find it odd that all my friends & coworkers in the tech industry have ended up on chess.com instead of lichess. Even beyond the fact it's totally free (and free of ads), the architecture itself is super interesting: https://lichess.org/@/thibault/blog/starting-from-scratch/NI...

It must be one of the best examples of a very large scale implementation of features that are simple and easy to understand

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Its network effect. My friend was on chesscom so i went there. Now im on lichess but only because chesscom increased its basic price x3.

Also puzzles are slightly better on chesscom and (arguably) the analysis interface imo

For games I'm usually on lichess, but for puzzles I tend to use chesstempo.com. I find their quality just better.

What are the differences? I'm not familiar with lichess, but chess.com has tons of bots at various levels that you can play against, and you can have one game per day analysed by stockfish for free (more costs money). I think that's a pretty good deal.

Differences that I've noticed:

1. Lichess rating is ~200-300 points ahead of a Chess.com rating. Not in the sense that players are better, but an 800 player on Chess.com will probably be 1000-1100 on Lichess.

2. Fantastic analysis tool. Chess.com analysis tends to be a bit funky sometimes.

3. Zen Mode. Not really a pro / con, but it's nice to hide the UI and just have a board on the screen when playing.

4. Free, obviously. No ads.

5. Younger audiences may want to play where their favorite streamer plays, which tends to be Chess.com for nearly everyone unless you're Eric Rosen. Hikaru Nakamura, GothamChess, Magnus Carlsen, Botez Sisters, Anna Cramling, and Chessbrah are all on Chess.com.

6. Chess.com has better puzzles, although limited on the free tier.

I don't have exact numbers on population for both platforms, but if someone can correct me, I'm fairly sure Chess.com holds the majority of players.

Edit: Spelling

You can analyze unlimited games for free on Lichess (both locally in browser and also serverside analysis that I think is donated server time). It lets you play against stockfish bits but they don't have "personalities" like the Chess.com ones do.

You also have unlimited free puzzles on lichess (paid on chesscom). Chess.com probably has a better library of learning content if you're into that (much of it paid though).

IMO if you're not paying I can't see why anyone would prefer chess.com over lichess: you get less and also get ass for the trouble. If you don't care about the monthly subscription cost, then maybe chess.com has fringe benefits over lichess.

>>IMO if you're not paying I can't see why anyone would prefer chess.com over lichess<< For someone like me who has been playing for several decades now, it's the UI of chess.com/app.

And then there’s me who finds chess.com kind of cartoonish and ugly

IMO the Lichess app is superior. On desktop, the analysis features of Lichess and its database are superior. Ding Liren used the Lichess database to prepare.

I also like Lichess because I can play in arena tournaments against players with a much higher rating than me, which helps me learn - I'm not sure if this is so easy to do on Chess.com.

I paid for Chess.com for a while, but I stopped subscribing when I realized I never used it. Meanwhile I have multiple days of playtime on Lichess. Also, the owners of Chess.com don't seem like very nice people.

I'm pretty sure the pros and streamers prefer Lichess too, but they're sponsored by Chess.com so they have to pretend to like it.

https://lichess.org/player/bots

Maia is great, probably more human than the chess.com bots.

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