For example at lichess.org I can look at any of my chess games from a long time ago for free while chess.com makes me pay them to see games from more than one month ago. Another interesting fact: If I wrote this question at chess.com my account would be deleted. There is no censorship at lichess.org
Posted Mar 27, 2016, 1:23 PM UTC
I like the mobile app for chess.com better than lichess. It's not perfect, but I don't have a lot of time around a pc or laptop, so it's nice to have their lessons at anytime (there's tons of lessons, broken down by category), their tactics trainer is pretty good (you get unlimited with diamond, plus unlimited lessons, instead of just a few free a day).
The video library at chess.com is pretty huge, and most of it is really in depth stuff. YouTube has a ton of free chess videos, so this is just a bonus, but it's nice not to have to search around youtube all the time for quality vids (there's a lot of crap out there too).
I like lichess, nothing bad to say about it really, I just like the chess.com app a little more than lichess', and I don't mind pay a monthly fee for the convience of learning chess whenever I want. My rating has improved and my play has become more solid since I went to diamond in December.
Slightly off-topic: you can switch for free to the 3rd version of chess.com. You'll have unlimited access to your games, as well as many other previously "Premium" features.
Any evidence of chess.com censorship?
I don't understand. What is this 3rd version? And what is this censorship?
I pay for chess.com because I can play in daily sectioned tournaments at a "goldilocks" time control that allows for a good game, but not too long to make it unmanageable on weeknights.
If any other sites offer daily tournaments with time controls near 15|10 or 25-30 min, I would be interested. TMK, Lichess max time control on their regular tournaments is 10 minutes, which is not good for me. So, I have not really played on lichess very much.
I used to play ICC a lot (I need to update my flair I guess), but prefer a browser-based solution nowadays (ICC on Linux is not that great). I understand ICC has a 25|10 autopair pool now, which is tempting, though.
Other than being able to play in tournaments daily, I do not use the premium features of chess.com. I have an adblocker already, and the tactics trainer is inferior to chesstempo (which I also pay premium for, but primarily to support the site). I don't care for chess.com's other premium features really.
I really don't mind paying a few bucks per month for subscriptions to chess sites, even multiple chess sites. I recently subscribed to chess24 for the enhanced analysis features to follow candidates tournament, and the videos; I don't think I'll play there really.
Chess is a very cheap hobby, compared to others.
Well, a lot of reasons. First of all, I am simply glad for the opportunity to spend money on chess. I have a chess.com account and a premium CT account because I love supporting chess professionals and I want it to be a viable industry. It's just good for the game. Not only does chess.com have full time employees, they host high-prize fund events for professional players and they pay them to write articles, make videos, and make lessons for the lesson tool. This is only possible because they charge for premium content.
Now, outside of that (very important) reason, chess.com premium is a great service that is well worth the cost. Silman has two programs (with a bazillion positions each) on chess mentor that just give you a position and let you try to figure out the imbalances and find the plan. Then he explains it in the same language as his book Reassess Your Chess, so it's an incredibly useful tool for people reading the book and looking for more practice. These lessons alone are literally already worth the lowest tier of chess.com subscription. Of course that's nowhere near all they have. They have extremely high quality videos that are much much better than anything on youtube because the players are so strong. IM Danny Rensch's endgame series are excellent and let me really understand KP endgame concepts I was struggling with. But you can't undervalue his series on material imbalance, I find myself constantly referring to his guidelines in games. And his giant pawn structure series. Or the series about practical defense by the GM whose coach was Tigran Petrosian and whose student was Levon Aronian. Or GM Sam Shankland presenting his games. Or GM Simon William's hours-long gambit repertoire that taught me to not be afraid of sacrificing a little material. You're not going to find this stuff anywhere for free.
There is just so much great content on chess.com and they pay real chess professionals to create it. It's making "professional chessplayer" that much more viable a career and increasing the quality of the game for everyone. I'm proud to support such a great site.
You could do this on Lichess, too.
That would go towards the upkeep of one website. A chess.com subscription eventually goes towards chessplayers and expanding the reach of the game. I like what chess.com does with my money. Read my comment.
Paying for a service is also hugely different than tossing money into the wind by donating to a website's upkeep. I support high-quality chess services like chess.com and chesstempo.
Flawed argument. Chess.com needs to maintain its servers too, so some of the money going there is being used for the same things. If Lichess had even more money, it would be using it for the exact same things chess.com does. The difference is just that Lichess is currently a service of far, far superior quality compared to chess.com, and I would highly prefer that authors currently writing for chess.com would change platform, at least until chess.com can keep up with the quality of Lichess.
So chess professionals (not the richest group) should, instead of producing content for sites that will pay them, like ICC, chess.com, chess24, chessvideos, etc, should just work for free until lichess magically gets more money? That's delusional. The reason that these sites can afford to hire content creators is that they charge a price of admission. I like lichess (I really appreciate that they have arena-style tournaments, other sites should take note) but it is incredibly unrealistic to expect a FOSS, donation-funded project to be able to be able to hire content creators. And they have never shown an interest in it!
So just not get paid for a while?
Except you don't know that.
Just to set the record straight, I don't have a Chess.com sub, while on the other hand i had made a (small) donation to Lichess, but nevertheless, his argument is actually perfectly sound.
There's a very detailed list of feature that you are guaranteed to receive, right there and then, when you pay x amount of money on Chess.com
On lichess, on the other hand, the only thing you know when you give them money is that you are supporting the site, and that's it... there's no additional content, there are no additional features, there are no sponsored authors.
If/when Lichess announce any plan on using the money for something akin to chess.com offering, then you might have a point, but until then it's just whisful thinking, there's nothing suggesting that you will ever receive any comparable service for that cash; in that regard, he's very justified in spending his money the other way around, if he wants premium content
The only thing that is the same quality on lichess and chess.com is playing games.
"Lichess is currently a service of far, far superior quality compared to chess.com"
I agree. This is why I don't understand why anyone would play chess at the inferior chess.com.
Last month a user had an idea of using a donation service like Flattr to pay for content in the hopes of bringing content creators to lichess.
https://github.com/ornicar/lila/issues/1581
It's just an idea at the moment but hopefully it becomes a reality. Supporting the sport financially is really important.
edit: Forgot to mention that bitChess has partnered with lichess to provide cash prizes for some of the tournaments. They have done this twice already, I believe. Lets see where that takes us. https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/4brmdh/bitchessco_430_tournaments_within_the_next_2_days/