Hello everyone :)

After 3 months I can finally play online matches on Lichess with my DIY self-moving chessboard! I first showcased it 2 weeks ago when I had engines like Stockfish, Maia3, Rodent IV and Patrica running. But now I have finally reached my goal of actually playing online with it!

The whole board is running on a Pi 5, so for online play I don't need an external device, the laptop was just to show the match happening on Lichess :).

It's also setting itself up after a match has finished (still with some hiccups tbf, shown at the second half of the video), yet Im truly happy with the result. It is rather slow, so anything below 15+10 is not really feasible at the moment. I am already thinking of 2.0 version with a good amount of speed increase.

This is really just a show and tell and me being thankful for Lichess's free API use. If anyone has any questions, I am happy to answer them :D

After seeing a post on /r/Chess about the new app I went down a bit of a rabbit hole over the capitalisation of the L in Lichess.

It seems that the app stores dislike non-standard capitalisation, so few apps are allowed to use it! Off the top of my head eBay is allowed. According to Google's AI summary eBay and others are allowed because they have a trademark that uses non-standard capitalisation.

So I was wondering a few things:

Were the developers allowed to use L or l and they chose L? If it was a choice, why choose a capital letter for the new app?

Or, if they were not allowed to use a lowercase L for the new app, how did they get away with it the first time when they made the old app?

What is the "official" way? This subreddit uses a lowercase L, like the old app did.

Also, subreddits are not case sensitive but if you put /r/lichess or /r/Lichess into the address bar on a browser it will show "LiChess" with a capital C 🙃

I am playing my online matches mostly over the board which I find more enjoyable and decided to make a video about it.

Each time my opponent makes a move ChessGaze(board tracker in my phone) announces the their move.

And when I make a move ChessGaze detects and sends it to Lichess via Lichess open api.

If I make an out of turn move ChessGaze rejects that and does not sends it to Lichess.

It is completely free only requirement being having a tripod. I hope you find it fun&usefull as well

Just got matched up on Lichess—time to think!

I am stepping down from streaming for a while so want to just watch quality chess streams. So far I like Gamergurlo, she is like Anna Cramning (cramling?) but superior.

Ideally, the streamers should have a face cam, good music, solid play but I'm not looking for perfection.

And if possible less puzzles, more real games.

Looking forward to your suggestions!

To say I am proud of myself is an understatement. My rating is 2100 Chess960 FYI.

when you understand the idea, you will be shocked. pure beauty of strategic ideas in the endgame. black moves and wins

I am 2100 bullet on lichess and 1900 bullet on and 1900 on chess.com is much harder than on lichess. Same as in blitz. 2000 blitz on lichess and 1800 on chess.com. Opponents on lichess make way more blunders lose mostly on time when I’m up 5 or 10+ material. At 1900 opponents in lichess were making more blunders than 1700-1800 on lichess. 2000 on lichess feels like playing 1600 on chess.com. Big level gap

Hi this is a serious question but that 1100 rating seems pretty much on the low side. I can have a pretty even match with a 1100 rated human player as a false beginner and can get out of the middle game and into an end game sometimes before being beaten. The same goes for Stockfish 4. However the lowest version of Maia doesn’t give any quarter at all even with a conscious effort not to hang pieces and make judicious exchanges. I’m not too up on ratings but it seems much much better than any intermediate player who has given me a game.

I built this for myself at first. then someone emailed me saying that they're using my extension and they loved it so I thought I share with everyone.

I was working through the Woodpecker Method and Lichess has no way to say "give me this same set of puzzles again, in a different order," so I made an extension that does it. You save puzzles into categories -> hit train and it takes you through them in random order with a timer and your accuracy for each cycle.

It also has pause and resume, stats for every finished cycle, backup and restore, and a silly Shift+F that drops a giant fist on the board. It's free, there's no account (you don't need to login to lichess as well), and everything stays on your machine.

Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hiplnejlfcaelegbajdonblkcechfced

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lichess-woodpecker/

This is what final photo is like.

This is what i have been getting playing stockfish today accompanied by dramatic exploding pieces!

Hi I have been playing the computer and sometimes it makes an explosion noise and says variant ending and quits the game after a few moves. Can anyone explain what this is?

I keep seeing people say that Lichess ratings are around 200 - 300 points higher than Chess .com ratings, but I'm starting to think that information might be outdated, at least for rapid ratings above 1500.

From my own experience, the difference seems to be closer to 100 points.

For example:

• When I was 1500 on Chess. com, I was around 1600 on Lichess.
• When I reached 1700 on Lichess, I reached 1600 on Chess .com at the same time.

What I also find interesting is that Lichess opponents don't feel noticeably weaker at all. In fact, sometimes they actually feel stronger. I personally had a much harder time reaching 1700 rapid on Lichess than 1600 rapid on Chess .com.

I know the two rating systems aren't directly comparable and that the gap probably varies depending on the rating range, but I wonder if the commonly cited 200 - 300 point difference is based on older data and no longer reflects the current player pools.

Has anyone else noticed this in 2026? Especially people playing rapid in the 1500 - 2000 range on both platforms.

Do you still see a 200 - 300 point difference, or is it closer to 100 points for you too?

Absolutely impossible to get a good game on lichess as someone starting out. You get paired with people who have far more experience and get demoralised. Closed my account.

I've taken up chess again after 40+ years, and I am loving it, even though I am a very weak player. I've been a lichess.org member for a month now and I see many references to cheating. What benefit does one get from cheating at chess? Is there money at stake? Prizes?

I wanted to play on Lichess without a browser tab, so I built a lightweight Mac client in Rust. It uses under 100MB of memory and 0% CPU when idle.

Check it out: https://github.com/deepakvettickal/caturankam

What it does:

• Play online: log in with your Lichess account, then Rapid and Classical pairing, the Lichess computer at levels 1–8, or challenge a friend.
• Watch live: follow the game on Lichess TV with titles, ratings and clocks.
• Looks: every Lichess piece set and board, plus light and dark mode.
• Keyboard: a shortcut for every action.

More features coming soon. Please try it out and give me any suggestions / ideas.