--- Personal Lichess FAQ ---

1) How do I get better?

Try solving a lot of puzzles. Play classical games with long time controls (also for improving your blitz). Use your time in those time controls. Study master games. Study endgames and mating techniques. Analyse your games after you have played them to understand where your weaknesses are and in which area you need to improve the most. If you are still below 1500 rating your main goal should be to avoid obvious blunders like losing a piece.

2) Why did I lose so many rating points lately?

This can have many reasons some of them are:
- Bad mood or condition
- Too much bullet or blitz
- New people joined to lichess with a higher rating making yours automatically worse

3) What is better - a knight or a bishop?

Generally the bishop is better in open positions, while the knight is better in closed ones. Bishops are considered to be slightly stronger in general. Reasons could be:
- Endgames open up often
- The bishop pair is strong
- Bishops move faster

4) What is better lichess.org or chess.com

The answer is pretty obvious. Especially if you ask it on lichess. On lichess everything is free and the design is better. chess.com is more of an entertainment and social media platform - it's for fun. It has courses on it to improve, but they exist in other places too, like chessable.com. Lichess has an amazing study section instead.

5) How do I embed my game in the forums?

Go to your game, copy the link of it and copypaste it in the forums. I think both game and analysis link work. For flipping the board type /white or /black behind it. If you want to show a position in the game, type #30 behind it for move 15.

6) Who is the best chess player of all time?

It is hard to tell as computer assistance changed modern day chess and it depends on what makes someone the best in your opinion. Choose between Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen.

7) What should I play against E4 and what against D4?

Against e4 you should move your e-pawn or your c-pawn one or two squares. You can also try the d-pawn, but I don't recommend it.
Against d4 you should develop your kingside knight or move your d-pawn. f5, c6 and fianchetto are possible too.

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8) Why is this a draw?

A draw can be complex to understand as a beginner on lichess. Automatic draws happen when the same position appears 3 times on the board with the same side to move (it doesn't have to be 3 consecutive moves) - this is called threefold repetition. A draw also happens if one side can't move any piece including the king - without being in check. This is called Stalemate. A draw also happens if no pawn moves and no piece is being captured for over 50 moves. Apart from those chess rules, lichess makes it a draw when your time runs out, but the enemy couldn't mate you in eternal moves. If there is just one pawn left you'll lose on time. Now the interesting part is that there is a position, where just a knight or a bishop alone could mate you in theory aka the game might be lost with your opponent only having a knight and you having a pawn left - and not a draw. That might be confusing, because usually just a knight or a bishop isn't enough to mate your opponent. When your opponent has a knight and you have nothing, it is a dead draw no matter what happens. So sometimes having a piece LESS can save a draw. Lichess doesn't use tablebases or engines to determine who won and who lost, but only looks at the pieces left on the board. If one side has a knight and the other has a pawn - both can still mate. The safest way to avoid any losses in short time controls when winning is to capture ALL of your opponent's pieces.

9) Why can't I join the <1500 tournament - my rating is below 1500!?

You need to be below it for a week in order to be able to join the <1500 tournaments. This has been done to reduce sandbagging.