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are around 200 - 300 points higher than Chess .com ratings, but I'm starting to think that information might be outdated, at least for rapid ratings above 1500.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

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 played a game of 3+0 superblitz. As I was making my final moves, I noticed that the opposite player actually got an increment of 1s with every move. I had no choice but to sit out the rest of the game and let me clock hit 0.

Here is the game: https://lichess.org/VqS88QVw/black

Notice it says 3+0 but each player received an increment of 1 second on every move.

EDIT: You don't actually see the player's timers go up in the replay. but I am 100 % positive that my opponent's and probably my own clock went up with each move. I saw that my opponents clock approached 0 and started making nonsensical checks to run out his time. I was watching his time and this is why i'm certain that i eventually noticedit going up after each move.

I played on lichess on and off since 2020, almost exclusively Blitz, and never noticed this happening.

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 was trying to sign up to Lichess and i decided to try typing in some 3 letter usernames just to see, turns out on the third try I got one.

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

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.

Just hopped on to play today after a week, and noticed i was playing against much better opps, who were clearly better at the game than me and that my rating was not decreasing after losses. When i clicked on their profile, it showed me that their account had been banned for violating the Lichess T&C. I googled whatever had happened, when i realised i had been shadow banned aswell, checked from which game my account had stopped gaining or losing elo, and I found that it was a loss around the 1200's range. I deny using and external assistance in my games and would like to know why such measures have been taken.
My user is Undefeatable_Knight

TLDR:
Me banned but me no cheat
user Undefeatable_Knight

Thanks

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!

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

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

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.

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