Lots of cheating players in another words thieves and criminals. Moderators are exactly the same. Criminals. Account gets timed out for allegedly running down the clock when I'm simply communicating with opponents. What's the purpose of chat then? Absolutely disgraceful. Stay away from those crooks. As law enforcement agent I'll be back with a search warrant.

Nearly all of their practice programs are flawed. They present you with puzzles in which you find the "best move", but the moves the computer says are the best work off of a deeply flawed algorithm. It promotes getting check above all else, even when it is suicidal. Another example from my experiences with these puzzles is it presented me with a game in which I had the option to move my knight into a position in which it would either take the opponent's rook or queen, obviously the best move, however, their bot said that the best move was a suicidal check performed by my queen in which it could be taken out by a pawn. Yes, really. It constantly promotes these puzzles and analyses done by the bot, which needs improvement. This is why I do not recommend lichess beyond playing with people or friends. The community is great, the experience you can gain is great, but the bot they continually shove in your face will only serve to annoy you with its complete lack of ability to analyze.

Every other person you will play on this site is an engine cheater or has other guidance, making rating completely worthless as an indicator of skill. Playing games becomes incredibly anti-fun with player after player playing the exact same moves, with the exact same speed. Support people are non-existent, and automatic cheat detection is deficient to the point of being worthless, if any, that is, exists, in the first place.

Worst chess site. Dictatorial management. Dumb developers. I can go on and on. Better to play by yourself. They allow cheaters. Better yet encourage it with minor slaps on their wrists. They punish those that let the time run out a few secs while youre thinking ofcourse more harshly than cheaters. I guess youre not allowed to think in this game i a losing position and have to quit the game,,, how stupid. They lag in the game review dept. 2 week wait time to see your games played... another dumb

If you try and accuse someone of cheating you'll get a sleazy message saying repeating this will result in loss of communication. Which is ironic because I was trying to communicate and you've lost me as a player. Just awful. Zero stars.

Cheaters run amok on the site, protected by admins. Reporting them leads to being muted. Covertly muted, so that others can still talk to you but your replies aren't delivered (you are not told this). Unethical all around.

It's a very bad place to play chess. Got the worst experience and I just wanted to play the game with a real human and not a computer. Basically cheaters everywhere and no time to think about your next move, their timers are broken or something

There is zero support on this site. Not even an email link. Which considering your bombarded by "donate " prompts is terrible. This also means that moderators... abuse their powers and can allow cheating/ban whoever they like... making for the fairness factor to not be there on this site.

Anyone trying Lichess.org as a free online chess club will be disappointed. Whether you play for a month or three years, sooner or later you will realize what Lichess amounts to: engine chess cheaters haven lased with loony bin administrators that close accounts for cheaters, non-cheaters, and chess talents alike. The player rating system is a disaster where you could play against ten different players of similar levels, win nine games, draw the last and end up with beginner's rating. The website always claim thousands of players logged at a time, yet always have a handfull of people available to play a game with. Players personal stats seem to claim non existing games and their wins and loses. And despite draconian treatment to visitors of this website in the name of stopping cheating, cheaters are dime a dozen, and if you are good at chess, the administrators will treat you as a cheater too. There are writers who are clearly hired to defend this worthless website typically stating that its dissatisfied visitors are the problem and not Lichess. This is usually a similar tactic to all bad products/services where junk positive reviews are created to drown the mountain of negative reviews revealing the truth. Don't take my word for it. Try this website for a while. I promise you, you will give up, become a cheater yourself, or get your account removed.

Now let me explain more about Lichess.org which claims to be a free online chess club. There is no such thing as free lunch. Its founder Thibault stated that he doesn't play chess much. He also stated that he doesn't care what visitors to his website think of it, and if they don't like it, tough. Then why did he create a free club for a game he doesn't even care about, for people he doesn't care about either? Well, he is not a communist hippie as many has claimed him to be. What he is actually is an artificial intelligence computer programmer. In other words, he is one of those who destroyed chess by creating the chess engine problem that they claim to be fighting against. Its like those who created the nuclear bomb claiming to want to undo its danger. Too late, it can't be undone.

See, chess was used as the fruit fly of A. I. scientists to learn and practice their evolving field with. The creators of the so called chess engines claim that these wonderful software programs can be used as great practice and analysis tool for chess players and not intended for cheating. What they don't mention is that these programs are not designed really to play like humans, but harness the immense numeric calculating power of the computer. Watching your numeric calculator getting accurate answers to math operations in a fraction of a second will not make you any better or faster at crunching numbers in your head anymore than watching a chess engine program destroy its opponent with perfectly calculated moves will make you play anywhere near its level.

To summarize, chess playing experience at Lichess is never a pleasant one. Its ratings are junk and its administrators are online power junkies. Its founder claim a free service but he gets unknown donation money amounts from his visitors that he abuses. All his claimed numbers seem highly manipulated and should lead to formal criminal investigation.

Horrible and arrogant behavior by the appeals committee. Below is the response that they sent on one of my son's account. He is just a beginner who is starting to learn chess and like to practice games on lichess because his coaching academy uses this site to teach him. Not sure why they dont want to allow new players who is learning to make couple of mistakes. If they are not comfortable, they can just restrict beginners from playing rated games. But these people are so arrogant that they decided to block the accounts permanently.

"Your account was closed because you have broken our rules on at least two other accounts.

You are no longer permitted to create new accounts.

We will only consider giving you another chance if you appeal again after 6 months. This waiting period is mandatory and will not be shortened for any reason.

We have the right to take strong action against users who repeatedly break our rules (lichess.org/terms-of-service) on multiple accounts by for example using engine or external assistance, sending offensive or "spam" messages, registering an unnecessary number of accounts, or trying to evade playbans."

Bans the account if he wants with no proof. He is most likely a dictator. I am sorry for him. I was thinking that it is a better website than chess.com, but hell no. Chess.com is the king. Thibault makes people second-class citizen if he wants.

My two accounts were closed yesterday with no explanation, advance warning or as it turns out, right to re-instate any of them. I am of course disgusted by this as I am a youtuber and had posted many of my videos with one of the lichess accounts. The explanation provided by lichess was multiple accounts and abusive behaviour. Lichess is entitled to decide what is abusive and what is not however I reserve myself the right to abuse back when I am abused. As for the multiple accounts I cannot think of any other chess playing web site that would shut down your accounts provided you have only two active ones and all the rest have been closed in the past. Lichess`s unwarranted and authoritarian actions will result in potential loss of income for me due to the fact I use my lichess account for my youtube videos which does generate some income for me. I will not leave this here and will be informing the general public about lichess`s authoritarian approach that hurts chess in general - show me any other website that closes your accounts - no explanation given, no warning, no right to re-instate. Clearly lichess has reached a new low in online censorship and I do not recommend this website to any chess fan that values freedom of expression.

Trash people. I got flagged for cheating but I didn't even cheat! I realised someone hacked into my account then flagged me, and as stupid as that, I got this thing under my name that said "This account violated the Lichess Terms of Service". THIS ALSO MEANT that i couldn't play any games with NON cheating players. This also meant I couldn't join ANY tournaments. So I told this to the moderators. But their response was "You are responsible for all activity on your account." and that's all. This got me so pissed off that i wrote this review. If you unflag me, I will gratefully give a 5 star review.

I started playing chess in 2011. At chess com at the time. But since 2016 I play in lichess...
I am stunned from the level of cheating I meet there. I play for 10 years, I had lessons for chess before pandemic for 4 years and I can solve puzzles well. I am a person able to put checkmate in 7 moves if I have to.
At this place my bullet rating is 1500. I lose 90 % of my games, for a year playing somewhere around 10K games I won with checkmate 1K of them. The rest 9K - lost over time or lost due to checkmate. I never resign. Ever.
This website is ether full of cheaters or I am the most sore loser ever.
I think it is the first, since for 2 days playing from 1200 bullet rating I jumped to 1700 rating. This due to the fact I was reporting all of my games for those days as cheating ones. And receiving notifications that my opponents were caught.
But I still lose most of my games, because I can't know is someone cheating when I play.
I am giving up. This is pointless. Why there is so many cheaters?
Why when I report them in forum no one is responding my posts?
Obviously I was being muted.
I am no longer going to play chess there. It is pointless waste of time. Even people call me crazy and noob all the time. No punishment. At all.
Sick of it. Lichess, Good bye!

Played here for 6 months and then suddenly my account gets restricted. I email them and they reply with a one sentence email saying I have been using computer assistance. My rating is 1700 on blitz, 1800 on Bullet and 2000 on rapid. My rating on 1 minute games are similar to what i have when i play 10min games. I beat a few good players at 2000 rating but have lost to several between 1200-1600 (not sure how they got that low rating and played insanely good but whatever). Noticed that when you play 1 min games, some players don't even think for a second. I played a game with 35 moves each, i lost on time and my opponent used 3 seconds. Not humanly possible. So looks like they have tons of people cheating using bots, and they dont care about those but restrict people who try and play fair.
Worst site and support/admins are completely frauds.

The site claims to be free for all, which is totally true. But they also use this an an excuse to be super arrogant "we are a free site and have no obligations so we/our admins can do whatever they feel like" and this is just horrible

Time never ends unless your opponent leaves the game. Your opponent could recover from 2 seconds to 6 seconds every game

Has so many hackers, not letting me play, hacking accounts.
Lichess moderators closing account without any use.
Please do not try lichess.org/
A cheater betraying me, lichess.org/@/unnownuser, My friend on lichess was betraying me by lieing
On gmail, Not replying when online too

I play a lot of chess online, and it used to be good fun. But lately, most chess websites such as Lichess, Chess.com Gameknot and Playchess.com are being run by a bunch of control freaks. When you play at these sites, I learned that you are not playing actual players, but rather a bot or the owners of the sites that are purposely making stupid moves. (sic) They do this to try and trick you get to become a member and pay for a membership. This is deceptive and really unfair for people who can't afford it. Also, it does a diservice to the game itself. You would think that they would want to promote the game for all, but for them it's just about the money. I guess they think people are stupid. But it just goes to show how stupid they are, because players like me will gradually stop playing at their websites and they will eventually become a cyber bot wasteland. It's mentally sadistic and truly sad for the game of chess.

Further, I want to thank sitejabber for giving people like myself the chance to vent their anger and frustration, as well as exposing the fraudulent behavior of these sites.

Lichess.org allows too many cheaters. Do yourself a favor, download chess.com. Thank you. Can't choose photo that I took.

There are A LOT of players that made their account in (For example) in 2011 or 2013, and they played 1 or 2 games and quit, there are a lot of good usernames that are taken because of players like this...
Please make that if a player is offline (Quit) then ban there account or something!
Also, if you are about to mate someone in 1 move, or win, but your time runs out... Please make it just be a draw because a lot of games and rating is dropped because of mate in 1 missed opportunity
Thank You!

The worst matchmaking system I've ever seen. Rating is not at all coresponding to the real skills. From 800 to 1800 people are basically with same skills.

Good software. Bad community of people. Developer is using this site to polish his over-inflated ego. They have a hivemind gang mentality and group up on individuals questioning their superiority.