chess.com has a pretty nice free tier, but for some crazy low price like 2-4 dollars per month you get infinite game analysis (lichess has this for free but I prefer how chess.com does it), you can do puzzle rush stuff if you’re into it, and some other perks like no ads. I think their fully featured opening explorer is worth the price of a subscription alone.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is the ratings differ a lot between the two sites. For blitz 1900 on lichess is like 1700 on chess.com, although it narrows a bit as you go up.
Created a lichess account. They start you off as a 1500 not 1200 which explains the ratings differential with chess.com.
Played a blitz game - the game interface is much smoother and better but you don’t get the extras like game explorer db, “key moments” engine analysis etc.
OK I think consensus seems to be Lichess (which makes adjusting time easier as well) and it seems like consensus is for a sort of compromise time format, I think 5+3 would be a good idea. There are 41% of people wanting 10 minute games so even though the majority are for blitz, a good chunk of people want longer time. However I also like the idea that any pairing can play whatever time format they want, as it’s a tournament for fun. 5+3 can be the compromise if there’s no agreement on what else to play.
It’s midnightish here but tomorrow I’ll put together a Google Sheet for recording the tournament, also I’ll make a Discord server just for text chat to organise games, but you’re welcome to use the thread/PM for that instead (and if you record results in the thread someone will put them on sheet for you).
Chess.com players who have not played on Lichess, I recommend checking out how premove works, as it has quite a different feel to on chess.com. I think it’s limited to one move, I don’t think you can multiple premove. And as a result, it has the option of leaving your piece where it is and just highlighting the premove, letting you continue to see the position as it really is. I had a bad time adjusting to this when I came over to chess.com, premoves still feel really counterintuitive to me.
Regading analysis, I think I should be able to upload games to chess.com and analyze them and make the analysis publicly available via link. Don’t think it should take very long.
