Previously I wrote about the importance of having a training partner. But what if you don’t have one, or yours is not available when you feel like playing chess? The two major online platforms, lichess and chess.com, provide ways for you to find someone to play with. Not just anyone, but someone who meets parameters that you are able to specify. Both also allow for “quick pairings,” without parameters, as well.
Lichess has a “Lobby” on its home page. At any given moment, it displays a list of available players, by Piece Color Preference, User Name, Rating, Time, and Mode (Casual or Rated). This list occupies the top part of the Lobby. (The lower part is dedicated to variant forms of chess, such as Bughouse, which I won’t be discussing.) The players listed have used the Create a Game function to specify their parameters. As the person seeking a game, you can use the Settings function to customize your Lobby’s display to show only potential games that meet your parameters. I set mine for a time control of 10 minutes or more and an opponent whose rating is in the three-digit range. My customized Lobby lists no available games much of the time, which is not surprising for a number of reasons, including that the lichess user base numbers only around 150,000. But when I have found suitable opponents, the games have been satisfying.
This has not always been the case for me on chess.com, where I have nevertheless played a lot more games. I play more games there because I never fail to find an opponent that meets my specifications. Why? Chess.com has more than 3 million active users, many times more than does lichess. But I have had a number of negative experiences there, both in terms of the way the games are played and in terms of the communication that takes place during the games via the chat function. Many of the chess.com users that I have been paired with try to use opening traps that result in a quick checkmate. If I successfully parry those, the players often resign the minute their going gets rough. Of course, to resign is their prerogative, but my teacher has urged me to play out every game I start, and I agree with her that that is the best way to learn. The problems in the chat dwarf premature resignations, however. I have been addressed as “Bro” and “Bru” (clearly a female couldn’t be playing chess and definitely not online). Other problems have to do with the speed of play. I have my time control on chess.com set at 30 minutes, which in today’s chess world signals that this will be a somewhat leisurely game. But recently, when I took nearly a minute to make a move, the chat read, “Hurry up.” I am not a fast player, so that soon escalated to “Are you even playing?!” and less nice urgings. This led to my discovery that you can easily disable chat during a game (or for all games) and permanently block a user from contacting you. It’s tempting to conclude that my trouble finding opponents in chess.com are attributable to the low rating range in which I am playing, and that may be a factor, but a more accomplished player recently tweeted that he had a similar problem—and his time control was 45 minutes, so the opponent had to know going into the game that the play would not be fast.
What to do if you can’t find a suitable opponent on either platform? Well, both venues offer the option of playing with the computer, and you can set a host of parameters for the game, just as you can when seeking human opponents. I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of play another time.
I am particularly excited about this Recommendation of the Week: The Chess Journeys podcast recently interviewed Julia Rios. What a revelation! She is a chess lover on the verge of receiving a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, and she co-hosts a podcast, Chessfeels, with a charming chess teacher named JJ Lang. In each episode, Julia brings her professional training to bear on the issues faced by adult chess improvers and even high-level players, thus filling a huge hole in the chess podcast universe.