[slm_HN]

Chess.com has the somewhat unique property of being a chess server run by people who aren't good at chess and aren't good at technology. I think they used to hire devs off Fiverr.

However they are somewhat good at business as they've convinced thousands of people to pay $17.00 per month for something that can be found for free at Lichess.org.

They do pay a ton of money to streamers to use their site exclusively, which is good for chess since it allows more chess players to make a living.

[tester457]

Bad at the game, bad at engineering, but good at marketing.

There's a lesson in here.

Similar to how most of the software that runs the internet is poorly written and has bad fundamentals.

[schiffern]

>There's a lesson in here.

"#20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately."

https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html

[eatsyourtacos]

>but good at marketing

I don't know much about all of this but it seems to me that owning chess.com is 99% of their success if it's not great at the game or great at the engineering aspect.

[nwienert]

The game reviews are really nice to quickly see the key points of the game. Plus the UI all over is better than Lichess. That and network effects explain the rest.

[owlglass]

I'm curious, as someone who appreciates the simple and intuitive Lichess UI, what makes the Chess.com UI better than Lichess'?

[filoleg]

Yeah, I am with you on this. It isn't even the case that Lichess UI is simple because it lacks advanced features, it just straight up feels more intuitive and way more pleasant to interact with. Chess.com UI reminds me of overcluttered websites from late 2000s/early 2010s.

Pure anecdata, but I only know one person irl who prefers chess.com, and I never managed to get a straight answer from him as to why, other than "i just play there and like it more, maybe i will check out Lichess at some point, idk."

[nwienert]

Could easily go into a very long list of reasons as a long-time app/UX developer, but playing against the computer is a good starting point: on Chess.com as a beginner I was immediately able to play against a wide variety of AI's, each is given to you by their ELO strength, and they are tuned to have different personalities so you can practice against the different types. This is so much better than Lichess where you literally choose "Strength" 1-8 (no idea what that means) and it only then clarifies "Stockfish 14 Level 8"... ok? And after the game, analysis and review interfaces have so many more helpful things for understanding the game, seeing threats, etc. Maybe if I was already very experienced with Chess I'd not mind so much. But this is just one example of many I found as I tested both a couple months ago when I was starting.

On Lichess the puzzles are less well organized and explained, the Lessons interface is arcane and much less polished in terms of content overall though there are gems if you hunt and eventually figure out the UI, and online play is likewise has a lot of small things all over that make a big difference.

[alexpotato]

Reading the above (which is excellent) reminded me of reading a review of a Linux distro window manager setup vs MacOs.

[Y_Y]

Worryingly, I disagree with your opinions despite your credentials. There's no accounting for taste, but then of course, all the carefully designed interfaces I don't like were made by people who thought they were great.

[tarentel]

Some of the UI is really tiny on the smart phone version of the lichess app is my only complaint against their UI vs chess.com. As far as I'm concerned though they both could use a good designer. Neither of them are very good.

Besides that I tend to use, and pay for, chess.com more for their other features than for anything directly UI related. Their puzzles are better. I think their post game analysis is nicer to use, the way they do analysis in general is easier to use than lichess I think. They also have a lot of learning material.

As far as playing games go, I have friends who use both and therefor I play on both. It's about the same as far as I'm concerned.

[nwienert]

In retrospect UX rather than UI would have been better in my post as I agree with this mostly (and I'd love a chance to redesign either app, that'd be a joy).

[TylerE]

For one, I vastly prefer how pre moves work on chess.com

[mighty_plant]

At least on when using the app https://github.com/lichess-org/lichobile/issues/1027 prevents playing any blitz games without taking a bigger rating hit.

[rco8786]

The domain name doesn't hurt either. Though I guess you can wrap that up under Marketing.

[wslh]

> Similar to how most of the software that runs the internet is poorly written and has bad fundamentals.

Microsoft Teams? Good lesson to startups and companies in general.

[sn9]

Is it being good at marketing or just having the obvious URL?

Or is that the same thing here?

[rr888]

Surely the most important fundamental is that it makes money?

[dan-robertson]

Is the lesson Berkson’s fallacy?

[janalsncm]

Thank you for mentioning this, it’s a very interesting thought actually.

For the uninitiated, the idea is that a product needs good engineering + good marketing to be successful. Products with only one of them will fail. The idea of Berkson’s fallacy is that even though it seems that good marketing is negatively correlated with engineering (and vice-versa) it’s actually because the baseline level of engineering and marketing is low, and products which happen to excel in one don’t need to excel in the other.

[bsder]

Akin's Law of Spacecraft Design Number 20:

> 20. A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good design with a bad presentation is doomed immediately.

[pictur]

this is a sad fact of life. a great project in terms of engineering can be beaten by a job that is just a wordpress page but great in terms of marketing.

[randmeerkat]

> Bad at the game, bad at engineering, but good at marketing. There's a lesson in here. Similar to how most of the software that runs the internet is poorly written and has bad fundamentals.

Maybe now we can get rid of Byzantine tech interview processes and instead just focus on hiring people that are capable of hacking things together.

[fbdab103]

>..focus on hiring people that are capable of hacking things together.

Based on my daily frustrations with basically every piece of software, that already appears to be the status quo.

[randmeerkat]

> Based on my daily frustrations with basically every piece of software, that already appears to be the status quo.

That’s the kind of elitist thinking that leads to Byzantine tech interviews and poor collaboration.

[SideQuark]

Black and white thinking that leads people to decry "elitist thinking" is exactly a signal of a person I never want to work with, because such un-nuanced understanding of tradeoffs required to work on professional projects is demonstrably beyond their current understanding of things that do exist for good reason.

"Hacked together" is the software equivalent of fixing things with duct tape. It sounds cool and fun, and is fun to do for your own playthings, but it is a terrible mentality for developing solid projects.

[fbdab103]

That was more a commentary on hate-the-game not the playa. Lots of smart and talented people in the field, yet software coming out the door routinely has egregious usability and performance defects. Bizarre prioritization of features that are dictated by anything other than end-user needs.

Edit: remove the dig at management which is too easy a scapegoat to explain all ills

[oldstrangers]

>run by people who aren't good at chess

To be fair, Danny Rensch is a 2402 FIDE rated player. That's better than 99.9% of people on the planet.

[threatofrain]

Most competitive sports & games are much more cruel than chess, but chess is still very cruel. Can you imagine achieving recognition or winning money as the 3000th best Fortnite player? Or the 3000th best League of Legends player? If so, you'd be winning on personality during streaming but certainly not on competitiveness.

[trynewideas]

> Can you imagine achieving recognition or winning money as the 3000th best Fortnite player

There are quite a few retired pros still earning in that cohort, so, yeah. The prize pool is pretty deep and 3,000 is still top 0.2%.

[nchie]

"People" on the planet? If that's accurate it's not super impressive, considering that probably 95-99% (or more) of people don't take chess very seriously. I used to be the top 99-99.5% of Counter-Strike players (_very_ roughly obviously), and that wasn't very impressive at all even though it's way past top 99.9% of "people on the planet".

(that being said,

[pc86]

Ok just to be clear you're saying a 2400 rating isn't impressive? I'm not sure this is a hill worth dying on for the sake of useless pedantry.

[oldstrangers]

You can find whatever semantic qualifier makes it impressive enough for you, but a 2400 FIDE rating is extremely impressive and difficult to achieve.

[nchie]

So I posted this without finishing (probably managed to fat finger it somehow). I meant to say that I thought 2400 meant quite a bit more than 99.9%.

[JauntTrooper]

I'll admit it, I subscribe to chess.com. I pay $31 / year.

I mainly joined for the unlimited post-game analysis and puzzles. I also like the app, it's fast and intuitive. Lichess is great too, nothing against them.

[nicky0]

“run by people who aren’t good at Chess” - what an odd statement to make.

[recov]

Especially since the main spokesperson for the website is an IM

[berjin]

Chess.com is more polished than Lichess. Particularly the puzzles and learning features.

[1270018080]

I did not realize lichess was so much better. I just switched. The UI was a little off putting for some reason when I first started getting into chess.

[marshmallowmad]

I prefer their analysis over lichess’s and I think they are a lot more feature rich. Also, I think the company in general is pretty good at chess? I’m an 1800 elo player for reference.

[Euphorbium]

For just playing they may be equivalent, but for learning and analysing chess.com is way better.

[certifiedloud]

Lichess is better in every way except one: their push notifications are unreliable.

[benmmurphy]

I signed up to a chess.com membership a long time ago because the puzzles were behind a paywall and at the time lichess didn't have a puzzle rush mode. lichess now has similar puzzle modes to chess.com but it wasn't always like this.

[ecf]

Chess.com strikes me as a domain squatter who decided to try to make something of their site instead of selling it off once it was popular. Kudos to them, but at the end of the day they’re still domain squatters.

[lolinder]

They bought the domain in 2005, probably for quite a lot of money.