.orglichess.org is a completely free, open-source chess platform - exclusively powered by volunteers and donations.

In 2010, Thibault Duplessis began work on Lichess as a hobby project. Gradually, the site improved and the user base grew as an enthusiastic volunteer staff assembled over time to help Thibault build and maintain the site.

Today, Lichess users play more than a million games every day. Lichess is one of the most popular chess websites in the world while remaining 100% free. With no investors demanding profits, and a commitment to never show advertisements or charge for features, Lichess staff can focus on improving the site as their only goal.

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press kit 2018All photos in this press kit are courtesy of lichess.org and are

available for free use when credited.

.orgDespite Lichess's humble origins, playing a chess game is far from the only thing you can do on Lichess.

After finishing a game, you can request computer analysis using the latest Stockfish chess engine and learn from your mistakes or compare your game against a massive database of chess masters’ games.

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Win by losing all your pieces – captures are

forced!

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Crazyhouse

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Chess960 Antichess Atomic

Racing Kings King of the Hill Three-Check Horde

8 chess variants are also available

Place captured pieces back on the board.

Random starting position for the back

rank pieces.

Pieces explode when captured, taking their neighbours with them.

Get your king to the other side of the board

first.

Get your king to a central square first.

Just check three times to take the victory.

A normal chess army against a horde of

pawns.

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You can watch top players battle it out live and discuss the game with your friends; even World Champions play on Lichess!

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Lichess users Bombegranate (GM Fabiano Caruana) and DannyTheDonkey (GM Magnus

Carlsen)

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Players looking to improve can hire a coach and also use real-time collaborative “studies” to share games, positions, annotated variations and chat.

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.orgA site the size of Lichess requires a significant number of people to maintain it. It also requires money for expenses, such as servers and other hosting services. The number of people who have contributed to these things is difficult to count precisely but fall into the following categories:

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Volunteers - Lichess would not exist without the thousands of hours of time from volunteers, both from devs, who create new features and/or bugs, and our administrative team, who police the site and help with long-term vision.

Patrons - Patrons are regular users who donate money to Lichess and provide a steady stream of income to the site, sufficient to run the servers and handle expenses.

Players - Finally, the players who come to Lichess to have fun, relax and learn, without whom this would all be pointless!

Lichess meet-up 2017

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18,000 active registered users at one time

28,000 simultaneous active users

1,000,000 games per day

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press kit 2018Figures correct as of February 2018

98 different languages

1,000 moves per second

918 verified FIDE and national titled players

1150 Patrons donating to Lichess

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Users can also support Lichess through our store at lichess.org/swag

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.orggithub.com/ornicar/lila

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@lichess

/lichessdotorg

lichess.org/yt

/lichessdotorg

discord.gg/hy5jqSs

contact@lichess.org