The Rise of Lichess

Lichess.org, Free Forever.
20 June 2010, a day for every chess lover to remember, the release of the first ever lichess.org

Thibault Duplessis, a heroic individual, began a computer project, a chess website. It started simple, and grew slowly every year, leading to the successful website that we have today. Chess only surged in its popularity recently, and wasn't popular until the covid 19 lockdowns. Chess website creators didn't really get payed a lot at all. This resulted in chess websites looking like the way lichess and chess.com looked back in 2010. The lichess development progressed as the homepage grew more developed, along with the streamer feature and the ability to watch games.

When code developed more

Lichess grew in popularity as the code writers grew more skilled and were able to make the website look better, as code itself developed. New features sprouted such as daily puzzles and the ability to watch games of other users, and the different time controls as well. It began to have many different variants of chess, such as Antichess and Chess960. New features grew month by month

Further homepage developments

lichess became more detailed as time passed, and had features to change board color and piece theme. Players had the choice to have light or dark backgrounds, or custom ones depending on their taste.

Puzzle database and feature improvement

As lichess developers implemented more puzzle features into the site, the lichess puzzle interface was more intresting than ever. Features such as Puzzle storm, Puzzle Racer, and Puzzle streak surged in popularity as it was a new and intresting touch to chess puzzles. Users were able to see their improvement in ratings and areas they could improve from the Puzzle Dashboard as well.

Video library, Lichess TV, Streamers, And Broadcasts of top tournaments in the world.

At this point, lichess had a wide variety of tools and amazing features for chess improvement along with the ability to watch top master games. The Broadcast Page provides a display of top tournaments of different countries and nations for users to watch. Their Fide Page also lets the viewers see the players other ratings such as their rapid and blitz ratings. The Lichess TV allows users to watch other players during their online games, such as strong grandmasters like Magnus Carlsen and Daniel Naroditsky. The Lichess Video Library has a full library of chess improvement videos. Lichess features only grew and grew better and better.

Leaderboards and Bots

Soon enough, lichess created a Player leaderboard so everyone could see the best players on the website and their ratings.

Arena and Titled Tournaments And Swiss Tournaments

The Lichess Tournament Arena's Surged in popularity as players like you and i like to compete against other players for a good standing in a chess tournament to brag to our friends or share it on facebook.
Lichess had Special Arena's for titled players with master titles, CM, FM, NM, IM, GM, LM. WCM, WFM, WIM, WGM.
Swiss tournaments are like real over the board round robins but just online.

Lichess Today

Way to go lichess developers, thanks for creating a amazing website for all chess players to enjoy!
you rock!