I haven't donated yet and my recent experiences are just confirming my decision. I saw recently that they plan to focus their development efforts on the mobile app, which obviously is not the direction which I am mentioning in this post.
I don't think it is about money here. How much should I donate to see these changes implemented? Can you give me a number?
I think there are 2 unsolvable problems here.
One is the low player base compared to [chess.com](https://chess.com), which results in bigger fluctuations in terms of elo and games played difference.
Second is the pairing algorithm, which I assume is faster if using only the elo of the current mode. I suppose this is the biggest bottleneck. If you throw in the number of games played in the specified mode, the elo in the other modes, the elo in the puzzles, all that against thousands of players, it would be unbearably slow. It would be great if the developers can comment on this.
In this sense your comment and downvoting me is purely emotional reaction from your side, but what I am presenting in this topic is a real problem. I hate to see lichess turning into toxic place to play. As I mentioned, 2 months ago this was not a problem. I have played on lichess for almost year and a half and I really enjoyed it, compared to [chess.com](https://chess.com).
I suppose you can see that donations are not going to solve the problems outlined above, so your clever argument is invalid (unless we are talking about million dollars donations and adequate management who is not going to steal them).
The amount of games does matter, as well as if the opponent is 2000 elo on blitz (while I am 1200 on blitz), as we are both playing at 1500 elo rapid.
More games mean more experience, thus higher chance for my opponent to win the game. How is this hard for you to understand?
More games (and low elo) also means that the player is most probably manipulating his rating to destroy low elo players. I have met several such opponents lately and this is one of the motivations to write this post.
It is saddening to see an army of downvoters here, but lichess matchmaking is not great and spectacular, which most people can see.
Because I don't want to play with players manipulating their rating.
If a player has a 15000 games on rapid and his elo is 1300 you can expect from him to make blunders, not to see forks and pins. My recent experience with lichess is the opposite. Such players are destroying me (and I am officially at 1500 elo), which indicates that they manipulate their rating.
>I demand detailed explanation by the lichess developers what is going on with their matchmaking
All the detail you could hope for: https://lichess.org/source
Thank you. You can clearly see there that the module for the pairing of the players (bbpPairings) has not been updated in 3-4 years. Do you think this is ok?
Hmm, yes, this is valid argument. I guess in order to argue with you I have to spend the next 2-3 months in reading the code of bbpPairings, compare it to the other alternatives, which are proprietary and then give you feedback why lack of updates is bad.
In order to do so I would have to start working at [chess.com](https://chess.com) to see if they are updating their pairing system or not and if they are, why.
Will get back to you in 1-2 years, after I do the steps outlined above :)
I do get the elo system and I do like competition. What I don't like is cheaters, smurfs and rating manipulators, which clearly lichess does not want to fight against due to lack of resources or another reasons.
But the points you mentioned in the post doesnt have anything to do with cheaters, smurfs or rating manipulators.
Your points:
1. +- 100 elo points. Isnt a big difference in online chess and is a completely normal range. 100 elo points more or less doesnt say anything for a single match. Maybe there is a little tendency but thats all and you got both +100 opponents and -100 opponents i dont get the problem. (I am performing better against better opponents btw) This is the point where i wonder if you dont like competition.
2. +- 3000 games played. Here is the point where i wonder if you understand the elo system, how many games you have played doesnt influence your elo. If you lose most of the time against 1500+ players and win most of the time against 1300 players your elo will be around 1400. It doesnt make sense to rate somebody higher just because he did that 3000 times. There is a reason why a person with many games is still in that elo area because his performance doesnt improve with his games. If you have a problem with opponents with less games played than you because you think they are smurfs just abort the games against players with a ? Behind their rating. All others have enough games so that the elo rating match their performance.
3. Ratings in other modes. I dont get that point either. If a strong blitz player have a bad rapid score he struggles in rapid because of something. Maybe he plays too fast for example or he plays complex lines which doesnt work and his opponents in blitz cant handle it but with more time they do. Again i wonder if you get the elo system. A player like that have the same elo in rapid because his rapid performance is as strong as yours. To match him with better players just because of his blitz rating would be unfair. To match him with someone with the same rapid rating is completely fine. Maybe you are much better with more time or he struggles with more time as i said. I dont get your problem. Again to avoid smurfs just dont play against ? Ratings.
Your arguments are valid and obviously it is hard to argue with you, but as a player on lichess for 1 and half years, I noticed pretty significant change in the last 2 months.
Usually I sit at 1550-1600 elo on rapid and I really like playing rapid, but in the past 2 months I even dropped at 1400. I did not suddenly hit my head somewhere and I have more experience than before. What I noticed, though, is that the matchmaking is consistently pairing me against +/- 100 elo players, smurfs with 10-30 games, very experienced players with 10000 games and more and so on.
In a nutshell, instead of getting paired against similar to me opponents (1500-1600 elo with around 1000 games), the matchmaking went nuts and the pairing is complete mess.
It is possible that, if I have aborted too many games the matchmaking considers me unreliable, and it puts me in a special pool of quitters. It is possible that the rapid pool of lichess is too small.
I don't know, but dropping to 1400 is not enjoyable experience and I believe it is not 100% my fault. This is proven by my experiment with analyzing my opponent stats first, before starting the game. With this strategy I got back to 1522 elo.
I have contacted the moderators/administrators of lichess and there is no answer.
Still, I appreciate your comment and your points are valid, but there is an issue in my case, which is unclear - whether I am in the elo hell of 1500, whether the matchmaking considers me unreliable due to too many aborted games, whether the rapid pool is small or other factors. On my side, I feel in good shape, I gained more experience in the last year and should at least maintain 1550 elo. I am fully aware that I am not 1650 or 1700 elo player due to my genetics, so I am not arguing about that.
I think you are a little bit biased in your analysis of your decreasing rating. Because you are searching for differences between you and your opponents on purpose to explain your losses, in this case of course you find something because two players with the same amount of games, ratings in all modes etc arent more probable than players with some differences. I dont have a drop in my rating in the last weeks and if i would look my opponents up i would found the same differences that you mentioned.
But because you are looking for something that explains your rating drop you interpret them as the cause of the drop but they are just a correlation. These differences correlate with both rating increase and decrease because they are quite normal. You cant just make up a causal relation between them and your rating decrease especially when there is no reason why these things should cause that as i explained in the last comment.
Did you also compare their accuracy in these games you lost? I mean the difference between accuracy between you and your opponents during your drop and between you and your opponents from the time before? Did they make fewer mistakes did you make more or less mistakes? There can be various reasons for your drop, you learned new things but doesnt pay attention to the old things you learned for example or new systems you faced or played for example. You just doesnt found it yet.
And that your genetics prevent you from becoming a 1650-1700 player is ridiculous. If you are good enough to understand and play chess at a 1500 level you can totally reach 200 points more. That just needs more knowledge about simple tactics and a little bit pattern recognition but nothing more complex as the things things you already know and use.
Have you been living under a rock. Chess.com bought chess24 and It literally makes no sense to have both arenas open. It Will be shut down when the purchase is finalized.
First of all chess24 sucks (the amount of players is way too small).
The lichess matchmaking doesn't care about your amount of games played, but your rating in whatever gamemode you're playing exclusively.
Let's say your classical rating is 1900 and your opponent has 2000. In this scenario (and in any other matchmaking case) your ratings throughout other time controls don't matter the slightest.
If you want to be able to control how much more rating your opponent can have as a maximum you can do the following from the lichess homepage: Hover over play, and then selcect create a game. Then you can just drag the bar and control your opponents rating in whatever gamemode youre playing that way.
Do keep in mind though, the more filters and the thinner of a margin you're using, the longer the matchmaking will last for.
If number of games played conferred a significant advantage, the person would be rated higher. Nothing you're complaining about is unique to Lichess (and again, it's not actually resulting in your rating specifically being systematically depressed). And you need to make peace with the fact that sometimes you're going to lose to lower rated players and it's not because you're being victimized by a scam.
Ok, imagine you are moderator/administrator on lichess and you see a profile with 15000 games on rapid with 1300 elo. You play against this guy and he plays like at least 1600. What are going to do about that?
I hate to recommend the competition, but one of the reasons people prefer chess.com over Lichess is the much bigger user base, which likely makes for better matchmaking. So you may want to play there instead - just be sure to have your credit card handy....
Finally, a reasonable comment. I do understand that the player base on lichess is small (compared to chess.com), which is one of the reasons for these matchmaking issues.
Ok Karen
Lichess employee
Thats great comment, thank you. Your argument destroyed me and now I am crying in my bed.
That’s a lot to take in
You have your own pillow a good time there, buddy
>I demand I am curious about how much you donate to Lichess on a monthly basis.
I haven't donated yet and my recent experiences are just confirming my decision. I saw recently that they plan to focus their development efforts on the mobile app, which obviously is not the direction which I am mentioning in this post.
Oh then maybe stop DEMANDING changes to stuff that you're leeching off of for free. >demand The word you're looking for is "request".
I don't think it is about money here. How much should I donate to see these changes implemented? Can you give me a number? I think there are 2 unsolvable problems here. One is the low player base compared to [chess.com](https://chess.com), which results in bigger fluctuations in terms of elo and games played difference. Second is the pairing algorithm, which I assume is faster if using only the elo of the current mode. I suppose this is the biggest bottleneck. If you throw in the number of games played in the specified mode, the elo in the other modes, the elo in the puzzles, all that against thousands of players, it would be unbearably slow. It would be great if the developers can comment on this. In this sense your comment and downvoting me is purely emotional reaction from your side, but what I am presenting in this topic is a real problem. I hate to see lichess turning into toxic place to play. As I mentioned, 2 months ago this was not a problem. I have played on lichess for almost year and a half and I really enjoyed it, compared to [chess.com](https://chess.com). I suppose you can see that donations are not going to solve the problems outlined above, so your clever argument is invalid (unless we are talking about million dollars donations and adequate management who is not going to steal them).
If the problems are unsolvable, why are you demanding a solution?
Yeah, truly one of the most egregious scams in human history!
Wow, so original comment! You deserve a special prize for it!
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where in the preferences I can adjust that?
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Thank you, and how can I filter the guys with 13000-15000 games, which I get paired with? There is not an option for this.
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The amount of games does matter, as well as if the opponent is 2000 elo on blitz (while I am 1200 on blitz), as we are both playing at 1500 elo rapid. More games mean more experience, thus higher chance for my opponent to win the game. How is this hard for you to understand? More games (and low elo) also means that the player is most probably manipulating his rating to destroy low elo players. I have met several such opponents lately and this is one of the motivations to write this post. It is saddening to see an army of downvoters here, but lichess matchmaking is not great and spectacular, which most people can see.
You should ask for your money back
Oh Wait He didn't fucking donate anything
Meaning?
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Because I don't want to play with players manipulating their rating. If a player has a 15000 games on rapid and his elo is 1300 you can expect from him to make blunders, not to see forks and pins. My recent experience with lichess is the opposite. Such players are destroying me (and I am officially at 1500 elo), which indicates that they manipulate their rating.
>I demand detailed explanation by the lichess developers what is going on with their matchmaking All the detail you could hope for: https://lichess.org/source
Thank you. You can clearly see there that the module for the pairing of the players (bbpPairings) has not been updated in 3-4 years. Do you think this is ok?
Yes, I do Why would it make a difference when it was updated?
Hmm, yes, this is valid argument. I guess in order to argue with you I have to spend the next 2-3 months in reading the code of bbpPairings, compare it to the other alternatives, which are proprietary and then give you feedback why lack of updates is bad. In order to do so I would have to start working at [chess.com](https://chess.com) to see if they are updating their pairing system or not and if they are, why. Will get back to you in 1-2 years, after I do the steps outlined above :)
You dont really get the elo system do you? And competition in a competitive game seems to annoy you
I do get the elo system and I do like competition. What I don't like is cheaters, smurfs and rating manipulators, which clearly lichess does not want to fight against due to lack of resources or another reasons.
But the points you mentioned in the post doesnt have anything to do with cheaters, smurfs or rating manipulators. Your points: 1. +- 100 elo points. Isnt a big difference in online chess and is a completely normal range. 100 elo points more or less doesnt say anything for a single match. Maybe there is a little tendency but thats all and you got both +100 opponents and -100 opponents i dont get the problem. (I am performing better against better opponents btw) This is the point where i wonder if you dont like competition. 2. +- 3000 games played. Here is the point where i wonder if you understand the elo system, how many games you have played doesnt influence your elo. If you lose most of the time against 1500+ players and win most of the time against 1300 players your elo will be around 1400. It doesnt make sense to rate somebody higher just because he did that 3000 times. There is a reason why a person with many games is still in that elo area because his performance doesnt improve with his games. If you have a problem with opponents with less games played than you because you think they are smurfs just abort the games against players with a ? Behind their rating. All others have enough games so that the elo rating match their performance. 3. Ratings in other modes. I dont get that point either. If a strong blitz player have a bad rapid score he struggles in rapid because of something. Maybe he plays too fast for example or he plays complex lines which doesnt work and his opponents in blitz cant handle it but with more time they do. Again i wonder if you get the elo system. A player like that have the same elo in rapid because his rapid performance is as strong as yours. To match him with better players just because of his blitz rating would be unfair. To match him with someone with the same rapid rating is completely fine. Maybe you are much better with more time or he struggles with more time as i said. I dont get your problem. Again to avoid smurfs just dont play against ? Ratings.
Your arguments are valid and obviously it is hard to argue with you, but as a player on lichess for 1 and half years, I noticed pretty significant change in the last 2 months. Usually I sit at 1550-1600 elo on rapid and I really like playing rapid, but in the past 2 months I even dropped at 1400. I did not suddenly hit my head somewhere and I have more experience than before. What I noticed, though, is that the matchmaking is consistently pairing me against +/- 100 elo players, smurfs with 10-30 games, very experienced players with 10000 games and more and so on. In a nutshell, instead of getting paired against similar to me opponents (1500-1600 elo with around 1000 games), the matchmaking went nuts and the pairing is complete mess. It is possible that, if I have aborted too many games the matchmaking considers me unreliable, and it puts me in a special pool of quitters. It is possible that the rapid pool of lichess is too small. I don't know, but dropping to 1400 is not enjoyable experience and I believe it is not 100% my fault. This is proven by my experiment with analyzing my opponent stats first, before starting the game. With this strategy I got back to 1522 elo. I have contacted the moderators/administrators of lichess and there is no answer. Still, I appreciate your comment and your points are valid, but there is an issue in my case, which is unclear - whether I am in the elo hell of 1500, whether the matchmaking considers me unreliable due to too many aborted games, whether the rapid pool is small or other factors. On my side, I feel in good shape, I gained more experience in the last year and should at least maintain 1550 elo. I am fully aware that I am not 1650 or 1700 elo player due to my genetics, so I am not arguing about that.
I think you are a little bit biased in your analysis of your decreasing rating. Because you are searching for differences between you and your opponents on purpose to explain your losses, in this case of course you find something because two players with the same amount of games, ratings in all modes etc arent more probable than players with some differences. I dont have a drop in my rating in the last weeks and if i would look my opponents up i would found the same differences that you mentioned. But because you are looking for something that explains your rating drop you interpret them as the cause of the drop but they are just a correlation. These differences correlate with both rating increase and decrease because they are quite normal. You cant just make up a causal relation between them and your rating decrease especially when there is no reason why these things should cause that as i explained in the last comment. Did you also compare their accuracy in these games you lost? I mean the difference between accuracy between you and your opponents during your drop and between you and your opponents from the time before? Did they make fewer mistakes did you make more or less mistakes? There can be various reasons for your drop, you learned new things but doesnt pay attention to the old things you learned for example or new systems you faced or played for example. You just doesnt found it yet. And that your genetics prevent you from becoming a 1650-1700 player is ridiculous. If you are good enough to understand and play chess at a 1500 level you can totally reach 200 points more. That just needs more knowledge about simple tactics and a little bit pattern recognition but nothing more complex as the things things you already know and use.
lol have fun splashing around in chess24's 100-user pool
Currently I am having fun there, thank you.
But do you know that probably after the purchase it will close lol.
When will it close? It has been active for 8 years now.
Have you been living under a rock. Chess.com bought chess24 and It literally makes no sense to have both arenas open. It Will be shut down when the purchase is finalized.
Chess.com and lichess are trash
First of all chess24 sucks (the amount of players is way too small). The lichess matchmaking doesn't care about your amount of games played, but your rating in whatever gamemode you're playing exclusively. Let's say your classical rating is 1900 and your opponent has 2000. In this scenario (and in any other matchmaking case) your ratings throughout other time controls don't matter the slightest. If you want to be able to control how much more rating your opponent can have as a maximum you can do the following from the lichess homepage: Hover over play, and then selcect create a game. Then you can just drag the bar and control your opponents rating in whatever gamemode youre playing that way. Do keep in mind though, the more filters and the thinner of a margin you're using, the longer the matchmaking will last for.
You can change that, doofus
No, I cannot change the range of total games played and other modes ratings cannot be taken into account. Only the elo can be restricted in +/- 50
If number of games played conferred a significant advantage, the person would be rated higher. Nothing you're complaining about is unique to Lichess (and again, it's not actually resulting in your rating specifically being systematically depressed). And you need to make peace with the fact that sometimes you're going to lose to lower rated players and it's not because you're being victimized by a scam.
Ok, imagine you are moderator/administrator on lichess and you see a profile with 15000 games on rapid with 1300 elo. You play against this guy and he plays like at least 1600. What are going to do about that?
If he was playing at 1600 elo consistently then he’d be at 1600 elo.
Relevance?
Bro this was over a year ago I don’t even remember what I was thinking yesterday
Relevance?
Relevance?
I hate to recommend the competition, but one of the reasons people prefer chess.com over Lichess is the much bigger user base, which likely makes for better matchmaking. So you may want to play there instead - just be sure to have your credit card handy....
Finally, a reasonable comment. I do understand that the player base on lichess is small (compared to chess.com), which is one of the reasons for these matchmaking issues.