LiChess App Review (Play Online, Puzzles, Study & Watch)

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Lichess is one of the best such applications that’s out there. It allows the users to play games online, solve puzzles, participate in tournaments and much more. The app is available in both Android and iOS versions in around 80 languages.

Speaking about lichess as a brand, it’s right there in the top 3, competing against other giants like chess24 and chess.com.

In this article you will find out why lichess is one of most useful chess apps.

Why is the app useful?

Playing Online Games

Lichess is well known for the massive amount of features that it provides, free of cost! It is a platform where players can play games with one another, from anywhere in the world.

Due to the massive amount of users, it is easy to find an opponent immediately – reducing the waiting time.

There are a variety of time controls available, with an option for customization as well. You can play games in many modes. Some of them are –

• Bullet
• Blitz
• Classical
• Chess 960
• Crazy House
• Antichess

You can find all these on the dashboard of the app.

This wide variety of options makes lichess attractive for both professional players and amateurs.

All your games are stored in a database that you can access anytime. But to access them, you need to create an account with lichess. It’s easy and super-quick.

You can also see your game statistics that tell you the overall details of the games played. Lichess provides free Stockfish evaluation of every game in depth. It also provides for an unlimited opening explorer and an endgame tablebase explorer. This is beneficial for the learning process and improvement.

A commendable fact about this app is that Lichess was the first website to have features to help visually impaired people play chess online!

Solving Puzzles

The app also offers you to improve your level by solving puzzles. You can set your preferred level of difficulty for them. It also displays your puzzle rating which changes with every correct or incorrect solution. As your puzzle rating increases, the strength of the puzzles increase as well.

In the training mode, one can enjoy high quality chess positions. These are generated from actual Lichess games, which is outstanding.

Engines analyze each game played on Lichess, and look for positions that can be potential puzzles. Players get to solve positions from real games which makes the process very practical.

Study Lichess

Study is another interesting feature that lichess offers in it’s app and website. Here you will find thousands of studies created by random players. A study is nothing but just a collection of positions with relevant notes. Just like a notebook is to a teacher.

Imagine tomorrow you have to give a lecture to your student and want to prepare the material. You can either create your own study and add material to it, or you can find inspiration from someone else’s study.

There are chess coaches who use this method frequently while teaching their students.

Watch Live Games

Lichess allows the users to watch the games of the top players that are being played live on the website. On the app, it is one of the first things you will see on the dashboard.

You can search for a specific player and watch their games too. This is very useful as you can learn how elite players think, especially in time pressure.

Playing online tournaments

There are a lot of tournaments that are continuously being organised by Lichess. Players have the option of playing in all of them – unless they are meant for a special category or are privately organised.

These tournaments provide a platform where players can evaluate their strength. They can also practice their new openings or ideas before actually implementing them in OTB chess.

Lichess hosts a monthly Titled Arena tournament for titled players with attractive cash prizes. This tournament has been played by elite players like GMs Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachiere-Lagrave, Anish Giri and many more. This just shows the sheer strength of this tournament.

Titled players need to register their titles with Lichess. After obtaining their verification, they can participate in these Titled Arenas.

To find tournaments, tap on the menu and choose the option ‘Tournaments’.

Create a global network for chess players

Lichess is an application that connects you with people anywhere in the world. Play games with them, discuss news on the chats and much more. You can search for specific players and challenge them as well. You can also set up a particular position from which you wish to play or analyse.

This is useful for coaching and for those who have training partners. You can find this on the app by going to the Community Tab and choosing the option ‘Players’.

App Interface

The app is extremely user friendly and is renowned for its simple yet elegant design. It is easy to understand and operate.

It offers most of the features that the website offers, not all. You can also play offline games with a computer or use the feature of Over-The-Board with a friend.

The most distinguishing element of Lichess is that all the features are 100% free.

It does not have any advertisements either. This is a big incentive for many players as other websites offer premium memberships to unlock additional features.

Lichess doesn’t. You can support lichess by donating to them on their official website. There are a lot of players who support the site in this fashion. It might even earn you a badge on your profile to show off!

In April 2021, the United States Chess Federation announced its official endorsement of Lichess’s fair play methodology. This goes ahead to show the trust that top organisations and players show in Lichess.

Conclusion

With a huge number of users, one can see why Lichess is so popular. It has surely built its reputation for being one of the best chess applications, if not the best. It was set up in the 2010s making it fairly new.

Due to its recency, the application has a modern yet simple user interface, and offers a wide variety of features. For a player who wants to improve in chess, lichess is a great app to use. I will say that it is a must. So if it’s lichess, go ahead and give it a shot without thinking much!