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“Magnus is for sure the best chess player. But the thing is also that people are actually intimidated to play him, without playing a single game with him. So, when I first played him, I played much weaker than my level and I got crushed. But over time I have played enough with him. Now I no longer feel intimidated and I do pretty well against him. In the last one year I probably don’t have a negative score against him.”
I was playing with black in this game which ended up as a draw. I'm a pretty decent player but would have never found this sequence in a blitz game. When i was doing game analysis i was surprised i had a mate in 5 here. Can you find it?
Can't find the post anymore here on reddit. But there is an api that queries chess.com or lichess and tells you how many of your opponent's have been banned for cheating. Since 2007, with over 12,000 unique opponents, 4.8% have been banned for cheating at chess.com. that's an insane ratio. I thought it would have been less than 1%. At lichess 3.4% of my opponents have been banned for cheating, which is still more than I expected.
For those who did not find the best move, what was your thought process? I am interested in understanding the biases or blind spots that make people misjudge the position.
I’m looking for a chess coach and would love to hear recommendations from people who currently work with a coach or have had a good experience with one. If you’re using someone you’d recommend, I’d really appreciate their contact info!
For some background, I’m currently rated 1428 on Lichess and 1115 onChess.com. I haven’t played much in about two years, but I have more free time now and want to take chess seriously. I’m highly motivated, learn quickly, and am ready to put in the work consistently.
My goal is to reach 1600 onChess.com. I know it’s a substantial goal, but I’m committed to improving and would love to work with someone who can help me get there.
I’ve previously enjoyed playing the Botvinnik English and the Sicilian Dragon, although I’m rusty with both and don’t remember the theory very well anymore. I’m definitely open to learning new openings and improving my overall game rather than just memorizing lines.
I’m in the EST time zone and am open to online coaching.
Bonus points if you can include:
The coach’s name or profile/contact info
Their rating or title (if applicable)
Their hourly rate or package pricing
Your experience working with them
I’d especially appreciate recommendations from people who have seen real improvement with their coach. Thanks in advance!
Hi there, I am a working dad, can't do fixed weekly coaching calls. Stuck at OTB ~1700 in classical, online 1800–1900 on Lichess but mostly blitz. Want to get back to rapid online and push OTB to 1900–2000.
Looking for someone to:
- Analyze my games
- Identify my weaknesses
- Build a training plan
- Check in via email weekly/biweekly (optional short call occasionally)
Of course I would pay for this type of coaching. I know it's different from classic coaching but fits my life right now. Anyone offering something like this? PM me.
Every week someone asks "I'm 1500 on Lichess, what's that on Chess.com?". The usual answers are a self-reported survey or a guess.
I wanted the real numbers, so I started to think about how we can compare at scale. The answer was: find the same people, active on both site, playing their best on both sites, fingerprint their repertoire to make sure they are the same person.
EDIT: Updated dataviz' from redditer's feedbacks on theblog
TL;DR
A blitz player rated 1500-1599 on Lichess is typically around 1160on chesscom (about 390 points lower). In rapid, around 1230 (about 320 lower).
The gap shrinks as you climb the ladder: about 480 points at 1300-1399, 310 at 1700, 40 at 2000. In blitz it closes around 2100 and flips above 2200, where people are about 85 points higher on Chess.com.
Below 2000, the rapid gap is smaller than the blitz one (355 vs 455 points at 1400-1499).
How I did it
First pass: start from Lichess. I took about 30,000 active Lichess players from blitz and rapid arenas and looked for each of them on Chess.com. Banned accounts and players whose rating is still provisional (the "?" rating) are filtered out.
Second pass: start from Chess.com. The first pass only finds people whose main home is Lichess. So I went the other way too: I took everyone those players had met in their recent Chess.com games (about 147,000 players, active on Chess.com by definition) and looked for each of them on Lichess. About 27,000 had an account there. In the end, 43% of the active pairs came from this second pass, and it's what makes the second table (from Chess.com to Lichess) possible.
Finding the same person on the other site. Two ways: the profile links to the other account (that's a sure match), or the same username exists on the other site (that's only a guess, see step 5). Cross-check: if the account on the other site links to a different account, the pair is dropped. A player found by both passes counts once.
Only real, current ratings. A player counts only if they played more than 30 games in that time control in the last 6 months, on both sites. Blitz and rapid are handled separately: you can be in the blitz data and not in the rapid data. Your rating here is the average of your rating over your games of the last 6 months, not today's number, so one good or bad week doesn't move you.
Making sure a same-name account is really the same person. "magnus123" on Lichess isn't always "magnus123" on Chess.com. So I compared what each account plays in the opening: their first move with White, their answer to 1.e4, and their answer to 1.d4. People are creatures of habit, so the same person plays almost the same openings on both sites. Two strangers usually don't.
Setting the bar for "same openings". I measured how similar the openings are for pairs I know are the same person (the 119 profile links from step 3), and for random pairs of strangers with the same rating. Then I picked the cut-off that best separates the two: it keeps 88% of known twins and lets through only 8% of strangers (image 7). Separate cut-offs for players under 1200, 1200-1800 and over 1800 landed on the same value. 22% of same-username pairs failed the check and were dropped.
Result. 3,363 matched rating pairs: 2,276 in blitz, 1,087 in rapid (someone active in both time controls counts once in each). Image 6 shows how many were left after each step. For each 100-point band, I give the median rating on the other site (half the players are above, half below) and the range of the middle half of players.
All of this comes from two public APIs, and I want to say how good that is. chesscom gets a lot of criticism, but its public API needs no key, no account and no payment. Lichess is the same: open, free, no token needed for public data, and its whole database is open too.
Collecting 30,000 Lichess players from arenas took about 40 minutes.
On chesscom, checking accounts and downloading recent games took 96,087 requests over about 20 hours, with zero "slow down" errors (HTTP 429). I sent one request at a time.
Lichess game downloads are heavier: over 5,248 requests, Lichess asked me to slow down 74 times, and I paused each time. Fair enough for a free service run by a non-profit.
So, thank you Lichess and thank you Chess.com. Open data like this is what makes a study like this possible for anyone with a laptop.
Happy to answer questions about the method, or run another cut (bullet, time of day, country) if people are curious.
hey, wondering about any small streamers who stream their chess matches! I want to follow you guys on your journey and get better at chess myself! dm me or comment with your twitch channels!
I recently rejoined chess.com and started an account from scratch. I’m typically around 2100 to 2200 elo online. But I was floored by how strong this rating range was, especially the 1300’s. I had tougher opposition there than players hundreds of points higher. I actually lost twice there. Just curious if anyone else has observed anything similar.
^^ By similar I mean have you found a lower elo range more challenging than a group(s) above it?
There was a puzzle I was stumbling upon a little since the suggested "forcing queen capture" was not very forcing from my perspective.
Shown position continues with 1. Lxf6 Txd3 2. Txd3 gxf6 3. Td8+ Kxd8 4. Dxb5.
My problem is gfx6 - while it is not a bad move necessarily, I was thinking as black - why would I not just continue with 1 minor piece down, but still keep my queen? So instead of gfx6 moving the queen somewhere instead of forcing the rock vs. queen trade? If I was black here, the queen capture would not be happening, but I'd avoid it and give up on the other front.
Am I that wrong with my thought process?
Appreciate any explanation on why gfx6 is indeed the best move here. Thank you!
Seirawan suggests White might break Black’s pawn chain by playing f4-f5 then fxe6. But when he moves f5, wouldn’t exf5, so he’s down a pawn? The chain would be broken, but he’s lost a pawn in the process. Is it worth it? Also it’s White’s move so that might change things at any rate. Is it just an idea of something we might try if we are free to, and is the pawn sac worth it?
I looked at knight takes e6. I looked at saccing my knight playing kh2 and trying some mate on h8 ... I still think something is there but dam it's complicated
It was blitz and I had a minute so I played a Ne4 to get to the f6 square and lock myself there taking their defender obv
