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ThomasCM

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Lichess.org vs. Chess.com – Analysis of Chess Grandmaster Activity (2008-2025)

chessmonitor.com
3 points·by ThomasCM·el año pasado·1 comments

Show HN: ChessMonitor – Analytics for Chess Players

chessmonitor.com
2 points·by ThomasCM·hace 2 años·0 comments

Show HN: ChessMonitor – Analytics for Chess (connect Lichess or Chess.com)

chessmonitor.com
5 points·by ThomasCM·hace 4 años·1 comments

comments

ThomasCM
·el año pasado·discuss
This is the first large-scale analysis of Grandmaster activity across Chess.com and Lichess from 2008 to 2025, based on years of data collection and millions of games. I explored which platform top chess players prefer and how Chess.com and Lichess have evolved over the years.

All data comes from my project ChessMonitor, which maintains one of the largest chess databases in the world. Feel free to check it out! :)
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Chess.com Insights are similar to what my project is doing. However, Lichess has nothing similar. They do have something called "Chess Insights" but it's not really comparable IMHO.

That said, there are also some unique features like "Openings" which allows you to quickly identify your best/worst openings.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Shameless plug: f you're looking for a similar way to compare your online rating with the FIDE rating, take a look at my project: https://www.chessmonitor.com/

Like the author, I also use regression, but extended to non-title players. More information: https://www.chessmonitor.com/blog/2023-elo-calculation
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Both features are already on my TODO list. That doesn't mean they are coming soon, though... ;)
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Thanks, I'll look into this!
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
That is where some of the inspiration came from. Years ago, I was an avid Dota player and always loved Dotabuff (and OpenDota, too).
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Thanks for the feedback! Always good to hear from chess players with a FIDE rating that it's working :)

If anyone wants more info on how this works, check out this post with more details: https://www.chessmonitor.com/blog/2023-elo-calculation
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
I'm aware of Chess960, but this will probably never be supported on ChessMonitor for three reasons: First, Chess960 basically tries to prevent players from preparing (by having a random starting position) which does not align well with providing statistics. Second, it would require major UI and storage changes on ChessMonitor (like adding an option to select the starting position to compare games). And third, Chess960 is simply not as popular amongst non-professional chess players.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
There are many similar features. Overall the UI on ChessMonitor is much more focused on statistics.

Another key feature Lichess does not have, is the Openings page. It is very powerful when used correctly. You can look at your openings and immediately see for which openings you might need to consume more theory (or which you should not play at all).

Here is an example: https://www.chessmonitor.com/u/cdPiOkUArRJ7shVNJcT3/openings...
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Thanks, I just like it when all state is in the URL and you can just bookmark it. Also using the browser back/forward button should work well thanks to that. I'll check out your library!

My code for that is rather simple. I'm using Next.js and the code looks something like this (a little simplified):

  const router = useRouter(); // get the router/location object
  const information = useFetch({ position: router.query.position }); // fetch information from the server
  
  function changeChessPosition(newPosition) { // called when position changes
      router.replace({ query: { postition: newPosition } }); // replaces the state in the URL
  }
In addition, I have some caching in place so that each position is only downloaded once and the change function looks a little more complicated in my case as there are multiple values that can be change for each page.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
I'm currently not doing Stockfish evaluations (everything is based on simple win/loss-rate) but I hope I'm able to integrate this in the future. Then I can show much more in-depth statistics like the one you mention.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Hi everyone, author here. Please let me know if you have feedback or questions.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Yes, in contrast to storing the board (which can be a fixed size), this depends on the length of the game of course.

That said, there are some optimizations you can apply that will compress moves even further (for example the order of the moves as explained in the Lichess blog post is important). In the end it's a tradeoff between (de)serializing the game fast and reducing the size (even more).
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Thanks for your feedback!

I guess OAuth is relatively fast as I don't have a middleman (like Auth0) in there. It's just Passport.js.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Yes, ignoring compression each (half-)move takes up one byte. So if you want to store a sequence of 10 (half-)moves it would take only 10 bytes.
ThomasCM
·hace 3 años·discuss
Surprisingly, storing a game (with all moves) can take less space than encoding a single board. This is because you can effectively encode a move in a single byte (as there are less than 255 moves possible in each position). Applying compression to the resulting binary string will allow you to reduce the space even more.

Check out this great blog post of Lichess for more information: https://lichess.org/blog/Wqa7GiAAAOIpBLoY/developer-update-2...

And shameless plug: Using this encoding, I'm storing millions of games on https://www.chessmonitor.com/ There you can link your Chess.com or Lichess account and view all kind of statistics of your games.
ThomasCM
·hace 4 años·discuss
I created a website to analyze chess games. By connecting your Chess.com/Lichess account you can access all kind of statistics related to your chess games. You can even link more than one account.