Chess fanatics compare online game-playing preferences and challenges

Chess.com vs Lichesss is a question as old as...well, 2010. At Stevenson, Chess.com seems to have the support of the mob: over 85% of players use Chess.com.

Jake Carlyle, a middling chess player, prefers Chess.com. He comments, “Famous people use chess.com”; in fact, Chess.com pays many well-known chess players to use their platform, so it can attract more customers. Although Chess.com uses an outdated and mathematically inferior rating system, Jake ignores its flaws and responds, “My self-worth number is too low on Chess.com." When asked about the abundance of cheaters on Chess.com, Carlyle comments, “It’s so much easier to escape bans.” Ultimately, Jake says that his choice of Chess.com hinges on one fact, as he says, “I love capitalism.”

Jacky Lin, president of the chess club, gives a detailed analysis through the lens of a high-level chess player. As a competitive chess player, he believes that Lichess is more helpful, saying, “As a competitive chess player for 10 years, I noticed that Lichess studies are significantly more useful to prepare for USCF tournaments. When you go to a chess club for a [weekly tournament], you're expecting to play the same people again and again, yet to study, you have to learn 1-2 openings with all the possible lines. This is why Lichess would be great since you can add openings to your study and make it private so that other people don't see it. Trust me, when I first started playing chess, my coach told me to use Chess.com. Until I came across my current coach (or rather, the coach who taught me during middle school as right now I don't have too much time to play and there are no tournaments nearby), he used Lichess over Chess.com and provided great reasons. I mean I have no right to doubt him as he used to be the world champion at age 9, and his point also makes sense. I had about 10 studies on different openings, and a few studies on top games across the world that use my opening in some ways, as well as the different variations and lines in the opening.”

At the same time, Lin offers a new perspective on the rating system. Instead of viewing it through a mathematical lens, he continues with his perspective as a chess player. He lectures, “This is the thing — no one really cares about online rating. People in the school always talk about "oh I'm rated 900 or I'm xxx," but out of all seriousness, an actual chess player wouldn't care. For me, I have a chess.com account but I never play on it that much. My lichess accounts were 2200 rated (from a year or two ago), but what does that show? I mean yeah it shows that if during that time I played in USCF tournaments I could probably hit to around 1900 (I'm currently 1600 USCF since when COVID hits, I stopped playing for tournaments for 5 years). But at the end of the day, if you don't even play in tournaments, why would rating matter? If

you do play in tournaments, why should you care about your online rating? Nevertheless, I have a pretty good sense of the scaled rating between chess.com/lichess/USCF. If you need any more explanation feel free to reach out to me with this email (jlin25@stevensonschool.org). I'm also the leader of the chess club currently trying to move people onto lichess for tournaments.”

Of course, there are people like Luca Fang, who simply say, “I hate Chess.com.”