Lichess

src: de.lichess.org

Lichess ( /'li:-t??s/ ) is an Internet chess server. Anyone can play anonymously, although players may register an account on the site to play rated games. All features are available for free, as the site is funded by donations.

Video Lichess

History

Lichess was founded by Thibault Duplessis, a French programmer. The software running Lichess and the design are open source under the AGPL license.

As of 14 January 2018, lichess.org had a global rank of 2,312 at Alexa, with most of its visitors coming from the United States, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and Iran. Lichess is ranked second only to Chess.com as one of the most popular online chess servers in the world.

On February 11, 2015, an official Lichess mobile app was released for Android devices. An app for mobile devices running iOS was released on March 4, 2015.

Being ad-free, Lichess relies on donated money to maintain over a dozen servers with over a hundred processor cores while paying programmers.

Maps Lichess

Features

The website allows users to play games of live and correspondence chess against other players at different time controls. It has training features, including chess basics, tactics training, chess coordinates, chess video library, Chess insights, opener explorer, and studies. It also has a section where chess coaches can advertise their services to users.

In addition to enabling blindfold chess, the website supports the following chess variants:

• Antichess (Losing chess)
• Atomic chess
• Chess960 (Fischer Random Chess)
• Crazyhouse
• Horde (a variant of Dunsany's chess)
• King of the Hill
• Racing Kings
• Three-check chess

Lichess has features to assist visually impaired people to play chess on the website. It also has a chess puzzle-based CAPTCHA system.

Users can also play games against the Stockfish chess engine at a number of difficulty levels. They may also analyze specific positions from standard chess or any of the supported chess variants. The website implements a version of the Stockfish engine that runs on the user's local machine within the user's web browser for limited or infinite analysis, which will calculate best lines of play or major opponent threats. An opening books based on games played on the site or a database of two million games played by FIDE titled players is available. In Antichess variant, users can switch for Mark Watkins's antichess solution database.

For registered players, Lichess employs a rating system, and grants the ability to compete in tournaments, post in the forums, and request a server-side full game analysis for any finalized game. The ratings for standard chess are categorized into Ultrabullet, Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, or Classical, depending on the game's total time or estimated total time (if using Fischer time control which increments time after each move).

Lichess runs live tournaments both in standard chess and in variant chess, and at different time controls, with the slowest time control being 10 minutes per game. Where it differs from other online chess tournaments is they are run in an arena format where a member can join and leave at any time, and their score is retained if they rejoin during the tournament. In order to join a tournament, there is a requirement for the user to have played a sufficient number of games (in the same time control or the same variant).

A Lichess mobile app is available for iOS and Android.

On the 14th of December 2017 World number one chess player Magnus Carlsen won Lichess's first ever titled arena.

src: i.ytimg.com

See also

• List of Internet chess servers
• Stockfish (chess)
• Outline of chess (subject-wide table of contents)
• Glossary of chess
• Index of chess articles

src: pbs.twimg.com

References

src: i.imgur.com

External links

Leaderboards

• Classical Chess Leaderboard (Lichess)

Development

• Official website
• Official blog
• Lichess on GitHub

Source of article : Wikipedia