The first thing you notice about Lichess is what is missing. There is no banner asking you to upgrade, no countdown on a trial, no greyed-out button with a padlock. You land on a page of time controls, click one, and within a breath or two a stranger somewhere is waiting for your first move. Guest play works for casual games, and an account takes moments if you want a rating.
Thibault Duplessis started the site in 2010, and it now runs as a non-profit under an open-source licence, paid for by donations. That model shapes everything. Features are built because players want them, not because they can be sold, and the result is a platform that feels generous in a way that is genuinely rare online. We kept it as our main board for six weeks.
Clocks for every temperament, from UltraBullet to correspondence
Lichess sorts play by time control: UltraBullet for the frantic, then bullet, blitz, rapid, classical and correspondence for those who like a move a day. Each has its own Glicko-2 rating, so your fifteen-minute self is not dragged down by your one-minute recklessness. Pairing is fast at almost any hour, and the lobby also lets you post a custom seek with your own clock if the presets do not suit.
We found ourselves gravitating towards rapid on weeknights and correspondence over weekends. The correspondence side is quietly excellent: games sit on your home page, you get a nudge when it is your turn, and the board remembers your conditional premoves. It turned a hectic Saturday into a pleasant series of small decisions rather than one long sitting.
The analysis board is the real treasure
When a game ends, one click requests a computer analysis powered by Stockfish. Lichess marks inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders on a graph, and you can step through every move with the engine’s best line beside it. It is the same depth of feedback that other platforms tend to ration, available after every single game, rated or not.
Better still, a feature labelled Learn from your mistakes walks you back through your own errors and asks you to find the better move. It stings, and it works. Studies extend the idea: you can build chapters of annotated positions, share them with a club or a friend, and edit them together in real time. We used one to prepare for a local league evening.
Puzzles, arenas and the odd variant to clear the head
The puzzle trainer serves positions drawn from real games, adjusting to your rating as you go, and you can filter by theme when you want to drill something specific such as back-rank mates or deflections. Puzzle Storm and Puzzle Racer turn the same bank into short timed sprints, which we used as a warm-up before rated play.
Tournaments run constantly in two formats, arena and Swiss, so there is nearly always one starting within the hour. And when the Ruy Lopez starts to bore you, eight variants wait: Chess960, crazyhouse, atomic, king of the hill and others. Chess960 in particular is a lovely reset, shuffling the back rank so memorised theory counts for nothing.
Where the plain approach can feel a little bare
The open, no-frills style has a cost for absolute beginners. Lichess has a Learn section covering the rules and basic ideas, but it lacks the structured, video-led lesson paths and personality bots that make some rivals feel like a guided course. A newcomer may find the speed of the lobby slightly overwhelming before they know what a time control is.
The interface also rewards a little exploration. Settings, board themes and accessibility options are thorough but tucked into menus, and we only discovered several handy tools after a fortnight. None of this is a real flaw, more a sign that Lichess assumes you came to play chess and trusts you to find your way.
Seven evenings with Lichess: a starter plan
- Play three casual games as a guest at ten minutes each, just to feel the board and the clock.
- Create an account, then play rated rapid until your provisional question mark disappears from your rating.
- After every loss, request computer analysis and run Learn from your mistakes before starting the next game.
- Spend ten minutes a day on the puzzle trainer, filtering by a theme that keeps catching you out.
- Join one Swiss tournament on Saturday and start a correspondence game you can nurse through the week.
Moves we applaud
- Every tool, including full engine analysis, is free for every player, every time.
- Pairing is near-instant across all time controls, even late at night.
- Studies make sharing and annotating lines with friends genuinely easy.
- Chess960 and the other variants are a joyful antidote to stale openings.
Moves we groan at
- Beginners get less hand-holding than on lesson-led rivals with guided courses.
- Useful settings hide in menus that take a while to discover.
- No characterful bots to practise against beyond the engine levels.
The player who will feel at home on Lichess
Anyone who knows how the pieces move and wants to play a lot, learn from every game and never be asked for a card number. Club players will love the studies; improvers will live in the analysis board; and anyone with a principled dislike of paywalls will feel at home immediately.
Our closing ruling on Lichess
Lichess earns the top of our shelf by being the most generous board on the internet. The analysis alone would justify a subscription elsewhere, and here it sits beside unlimited games, rich puzzles, regular tournaments and a handful of delightful variants. Beginners may want a gentler first week elsewhere, but sooner or later most serious players end up keeping a Lichess tab open. We certainly do.
