The punch card graph for the Open Source engine behind Lichess that he wrote is... impressive! <a href="https://github.com/ornicar/lila/graphs/punch-card" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ornicar/lila/graphs/punch-card</a>
I'm a tournament Scrabble player and I want to do this for Scrabble. The only choices we have are a very buggy and crappy phone app, made by EA (missing tons of words) that only allows correspondence play, and a client written in something like Java 5 and hosted on some computer in Romania (<a href="http://www.isc.ro" rel="nofollow">http://www.isc.ro</a>) to avoid the copyright issue. The latter recently crashed and wiped out about a year of data because presumably the maintainer did not do backups. I can't even use it because I'd have to downgrade Java on my computer.<p>There are great open source tools out there for analyzing/simulating games that can be hooked up to the proposed site (<a href="http://quackle.org" rel="nofollow">http://quackle.org</a> for example). Both of the aforementioned programs (the EA one, and ISC) have very elementary analysis with nothing close to look-ahead.<p>I've written a study server at aerolith.org using HTML5/new technologies and am going to add multiplayer soon with Websockets. My time is very limited due to my job, but I'd be willing to help with an effort to recreate something like this amazing site for Scrabble. But again the main issue is the copyright/trademark issue, and the fact that EA has the rights to online Scrabble in North America. If anyone has any ideas it would be awesome.
Excellent site! Congratulations!<p>The only site I ever visit while I work.<p>Whenever I get stuck on something (multiple times per day), I take a lichess break. If I win, I feel better and get back to work. I never lose because as soon as the computer catches me with a fork or a pin, I angrily close my browser and get back to work. Either way it's good.
I am thoroughly addicted to watching John Bartholomew's lichess bullet tournaments: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIdP7iIsGOU&list=PLl9uuRYQ-6MDiHow7MW8J8E2v16u1etrv" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIdP7iIsGOU&list=PLl9uuRYQ-6...</a>
Ha, I remember that some years ago I've found a silly bug that allowed you to take over white's session and play for him by just changing the url token (lichess.org/<token>). I had my fun for a handful of games, then reported it. Unfortunately, I don't know anymore why or how it worked - Maybe the creator can remember and explain it :). Crazy, how the UX changed over the years. Good job!
Wow, congrats @ornicar!<p>Is that comment that lichess.org is the second largest chess site on the web true?<p>I was happy to learn of its existence last year when you mentioned on twitter that you were using Mithril.js, and I never realized how big lichess had become since then.<p>Great work!
I came across lichess last year, incredible site with a good stack: Scala, Play framework and mithril.js for the client. Now please implement the top 64 chess variants, like 5x6 chess or chess for 4 players, or modern day abstracts like Dvonn, Arimaa (not AI resistant anymore), Hive, Canon, The Duke, Tash-Kalar, Neuroshima Hex or Taj Mahal.
I play on Chess.com a lot. I want to move to Lichess - in large part because it doesn't spam me with requests to sign up - but the matchmaking system is much harder to use.<p>On Chess.com I can log on and click a "find me a 10+0 game" and I just get a game. On Lichess, as far as I can tell, I have to scan the list of games, compare them to my rating (which I can't even see on the main screen, and don't trust at all since it swung +150 points on my first game..), and then pick from the list. It's a huge mental barrier on "playing a quick game of chess".<p>I also really wish that the chess UI on lichess showed me what pieces each player had captured. It seems to.. sometimes.. but not always, which is confusing. They constantly disappear. Also, the pieces that show up above/below the move list on the right side both appear as black pieces (when they actually show up), rather than of the appropriate color, so the display could be read as both "pieces you have captured" and "pieces you have lost". I'm sure I could get used to this but it's confusing as a new user.
I have not played chess for some years, but just wanted to say congratulations especially for making (and keeping!) the site free without the usual upsells and tiered accounts where you get only X problems a day free and so on, thanks for your effort!
I wonder how these kinda models work. I think that over time, while the userbase / costs increases, the donations won't increase as much / decrease. Is this true?
Now that you have such a huge dataset, do you have any plans to make use of it in interesting ways? For example an opening popularity browser, or a puzzle generator?
lichess has a nice clean interface and it is a joy to play on it and also it is nice to have easily exportable games (i am looking at you chess.com!)<p>The one problem with everything free philosophy and relying on donations is that top players are unlikely to play on the site (see FICS vs ICC battles of early 90s where ICC by paying and giving affiliate sales quickly rose to be the dominant force in early net chess despite the questionable morality of taking over original ICS).<p>This presents a problem for someone who has problems getting a good game on lichess.<p>At 2400 on lichess, I either have to play masses of 2100-2200s or computer cheaters. As an FM I've played a few FMs and I think one IM on lichess.<p>On commercial sites (the top 3 being chess.com, ICC, and Playchess) there are incentives to bring in GM caliber players.<p>Again, if you just want a good amateur game, then lichess is a fine choice.
Please fix your content load priorities, or sub a standard font before the web font is ready. This is how the page looks for the first 8 seconds on mobile: <a href="http://m.imgur.com/rKmzqvJ" rel="nofollow">http://m.imgur.com/rKmzqvJ</a>
Thanks a lot for a great service! Did not know it was just a single developer, I'd much rather donate to this than pay for ICC. In fact I just did.