Lichess.orgReviews 62

Lichess is free and has a pleasant UI, unlike Chess.com which is very busy and not particularly "friendly". As your victories mount, it will move you into higher level competition. Not bad. But, Lichess likes to play Big Brother and if you either walkaway or in my case, time-out while thinking-out moves. In Blitz, it will put you into a time-out like a wayward child. Not sure, but I think they also slow-down the rate at which they match you up with games, and/or match you up with lower-level players. Further, they won't respond to emails at *******@lichess.org, which I think is irresponsible. So, Lichess is... better than nothing.

Trash people. I got flagged for cheating but I didn't even cheat! I realised someone hacked into my account then flagged me, and as stupid as that, I got this thing under my name that said "This account violated the Lichess Terms of Service". THIS ALSO MEANT that i couldn't play any games with NON cheating players. This also meant I couldn't join ANY tournaments. So I told this to the moderators. But their response was "You are responsible for all activity on your account." and that's all. This got me so pissed off that i wrote this review. If you unflag me, I will gratefully give a 5 star review.

Worst chess site. Dictatorial management. Dumb developers. I can go on and on. Better to play by yourself. They allow cheaters. Better yet encourage it with minor slaps on their wrists. They punish those that let the time run out a few secs while youre thinking ofcourse more harshly than cheaters. I guess youre not allowed to think in this game i a losing position and have to quit the game,,, how stupid. They lag in the game review dept. 2 week wait time to see your games played... another dumb

My two accounts were closed yesterday with no explanation, advance warning or as it turns out, right to re-instate any of them. I am of course disgusted by this as I am a youtuber and had posted many of my videos with one of the lichess accounts. The explanation provided by lichess was multiple accounts and abusive behaviour. Lichess is entitled to decide what is abusive and what is not however I reserve myself the right to abuse back when I am abused. As for the multiple accounts I cannot think of any other chess playing web site that would shut down your accounts provided you have only two active ones and all the rest have been closed in the past. Lichess`s unwarranted and authoritarian actions will result in potential loss of income for me due to the fact I use my lichess account for my youtube videos which does generate some income for me. I will not leave this here and will be informing the general public about lichess`s authoritarian approach that hurts chess in general - show me any other website that closes your accounts - no explanation given, no warning, no right to re-instate. Clearly lichess has reached a new low in online censorship and I do not recommend this website to any chess fan that values freedom of expression.

For many that might not know this site has a bot that plays you pretending to be someone else that your playing. If you go to lobby and see there are almost 6 or 7 players waiting on players but yet if you start a quick game lets say 1 minute game. It seems like magic there are 200 players available to play you right away even tho there was no one in there to play 1 minute games. Also if you play an opening that your used to it almost seem like clockwork the bot plays exactly the same pattern as human would not.

When down to the last 5-8 seconds on your clock and while waiting for your opponent to finish making their move, your clock will instantly go to zero. So much frustration dealing with this that I spent hours more than I wanted to play. Now 24 hours later and my head still hurts, my body aches, and probably have blood clots as a result of dealing with this malicious web site.
I've had to drink some alcohol, been putting a massager device on one of my legs and shortly after putting on my legs my heart was hurting badly and so put the massager all around my heart area.

This site is dangerous to your health!

The bravado and indignation with which thibault presents his site can be called nothing else; support is nonexistent, filled with elitists and $#*!s that would rather "look cool" than actually help you with your problem, the algorithm which the site uses to find puzzles is terrible, ineffective and does not help you become better; temporary bans are given out for no reason at all (as Paul said) probably because the mods are bored power-tripping idiots, I could go on but you get the picture. Stay away! Stick with chess.com.

Frequently gives out temporary bans for unknown reasons, and the support is non-existent. When I tried to ask a question on its "Q&A", it gave me a bogus message about having to be a user for a week even though my profile says I have over eighteen days of non-stop game time. Then, when I tried to submit an issue on Github, my issues were immediately closed with no explanation! When I reopened them, I was eventually banned from their github, also with no explanation! Stay away from these people!

Nearly all of their practice programs are flawed. They present you with puzzles in which you find the "best move", but the moves the computer says are the best work off of a deeply flawed algorithm. It promotes getting check above all else, even when it is suicidal. Another example from my experiences with these puzzles is it presented me with a game in which I had the option to move my knight into a position in which it would either take the opponent's rook or queen, obviously the best move, however, their bot said that the best move was a suicidal check performed by my queen in which it could be taken out by a pawn. Yes, really. It constantly promotes these puzzles and analyses done by the bot, which needs improvement. This is why I do not recommend lichess beyond playing with people or friends. The community is great, the experience you can gain is great, but the bot they continually shove in your face will only serve to annoy you with its complete lack of ability to analyze.