[HN Gopher] Lichess and Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement
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Lichess and Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement
Author : stevage
Score : 168 points
Date : 2026-04-09 11:56 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lichess.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lichess.org)
| TheSilva wrote:
| This is huge, congrats to the lichess team.
| ddp26 wrote:
| The free open source model does have its competitive advantages!
| ForHackernews wrote:
| As it happens "Take Take Take Sign Cooperation Agreement" is also
| OpenAI's modus operandi when it comes to the publishing industry.
| sheiyei wrote:
| Lichess is incredibly well optimized [0] (and an amazing public
| service). I'm sure that this is very cost effective for TTT, so a
| win-win.
|
| [0] https://lichess.org/@/revoof/blog/optimizing-the-
| tablebase-s...
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Lichess is written in Scala and is hosted on dedicated OVH for
| a very significantly small amount of money (I think just a few
| thousand dollars per month) and hosts so many millions of
| players and games.
|
| It's an understatement how well optimized they are right down
| to the optimization techniques that they use and the infra
| providers that they use. The same thing even in something like
| AWS could cause significantly more amount of money.
|
| It also shows that you don't need AWS/GCP/Azure for basically
| just about everything, to be honest.
|
| Lichess is a beacon of hope and congrats to the lichess team
| for this cooperation with TTT.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > It also shows that you don't need AWS/GCP/Azure for
| basically just about everything, to be honest.
|
| That's where they won, people think AWS/GCP/Azure has to be
| the default while in reality, the number of platforms that
| actually need to be able to scale up/down fast are probably
| below 1% of all platforms out there. Most platforms would
| save money and run better with proper dedicated hardware
| rather than going for clouds by default.
|
| Flashback to a moment in my life where a team pushed
| (successfully) for building a distributed architecture for an
| app that we didn't even knew if it had product market fit
| yet. Fast forward 3 years to today and the app is no longer
| online, but while it had 5 users they were using really
| reliable infrastructure, I guess that's cool.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Depending on the development cost of being in the cloud, it
| was probably the right choice. Optimizing for cost per user
| when you don't have product market fit is probably the
| worse early optimization.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > That's where they won, people think AWS/GCP/Azure has to
| be the default while in reality, the number of platforms
| that actually need to be able to scale up/down fast are
| probably below 1% of all platforms out there. Most
| platforms would save money and run better with proper
| dedicated hardware rather than going for clouds by default.
|
| This. I kind of wish if more people knew about it. Also
| even 1% can be too big. I mean Lichess is literally having
| millions of people if not more, It's definitely within the
| 0.001% group.
|
| I kind of wish to do something in this space in the future,
| I do feel like its just that people don't know about it. I
| have been thinking to approach some companies and just tell
| them how much they can save if they migrate and use open
| source solutions and these dedi servers and setting things
| on top of these dedi's/vps's.
|
| I have been thinking of (within future), to contact a few
| companies and to actually have them save net money from
| migration while charging them a few hundred bucks a month
| and I can just have a very handful selection of companies
| (say 15-20) to have enough money so that I can eat french
| fries and manage their servers!
|
| It feels a win-win-win situation for everyone except
| AWS/GCP/Azure who wish to suggest that scalability is hard
| etc. and this false premise for most if not essentially*
| all businesses.
|
| Personally, I am also saying things like slack for example,
| I don't understand why people might want slack when things
| like matrix exist and can be self-hosted securely with
| proper 3-2-1 backups and for most intents and purposes is
| actually good if not better than slack.
|
| To me, a bit of concern though with this and I am not sure
| if it is well-founded is what if I set these servers for
| them, now I will wish to set them up so that they have as
| little errors as possible but what if the companies start
| to think that I am doing nothing and then they stop paying
| my contracts after I have set them up on these dedicated. I
| guess I hope that they believe in the value of human
| support and I guess I am also a bit unsure of where do I
| find such businesses are.
|
| My brother does some freelancing on the side and I ask him
| these things and he mentions that mostly he has to use AWS,
| I mention why not dedi and he says that he does what he is
| asked to do and that company wants him to use AWS so he
| uses AWS, so I guess within this context, I need companies
| who are atleast interested in being a bit more open about
| thinking about dedicated servers.
|
| I am sure that there would be companies interested in all
| of this and I am interested in doing things for them but I
| am not sure about the middle part of connecting the two. I
| would be genuinely interested to hear your thoughts on all
| of this and have a nice day emsh!
| lxgr wrote:
| It's the same principle that makes so many people
| unreasonably sympathetic to the concerns of those much
| wealthier than themselves: The statistically implausible
| assumption that they, too, will soon be part of the 1%
| somehow. Better start acting the part early!
| hxtk wrote:
| Cloud is more cost effective the less of it you have
| because it doesn't cost 3x more to maintain a kubernetes
| cluster with thrice the nodes, but it does cost 3x more to
| rent one. This is even more true for serverless.
|
| I can imagine a lot of small apps buy into serverless at a
| time where it's legitimately the most cost-effective
| solution and then they're stuck because serverless
| platforms are easy to lock yourself into.
| lxgr wrote:
| It also seems to have significantly better availability than
| chess.com, where I regularly had games end abruptly and be
| completely removed from my game history due to what I can
| only assume is a server restart.
| yewenjie wrote:
| I love Lichess more than anything, and I hope this brings a lot
| of donation to them that they can use independently, and that the
| Lichess brand does not get subsumed by Take Take Take and their
| corporate money.
| cjpearson wrote:
| The linked post on Take Take Take is interesting. Magnus Carlsen
| created a chess.com competitor and eventually sold it to
| chess.com and became a sponsor. While working as a sponsor he
| then created a new chess.com competitor.
|
| I'm a Lichess patron and happy to see them get support, but I do
| feel a bit bad for chess.com in this case. Magnus is such a big
| figure in chess that organizations like FIDE and chess.com feel
| they have no choice but to accommodate his whims, but that
| doesn't come with any guarantees. I hope Lichess does not find
| themselves in a poor position if Magnus decides to "alter the
| deal".
| SecretDreams wrote:
| All large systems are inherently weak when one individual has
| an outsized influence on their outcomes. The solution is not to
| hope Magnus is altruistic, but to not allow Magnus (or any
| individual) to drive meaningful outcomes directly or through
| their combined influence/followings.
| sigbottle wrote:
| Well for the chess world, open source world (BDFL), etc
| probably okay. For real world governments...
| jacobolus wrote:
| Magnus "drives meaningful outcomes" because he's really good
| at chess and members of the public enjoy watching him play,
| so various chess-related businesses will pay him money for
| sponsorship. How do you propose to "not allow him" that
| influence? Ban all use of people's names in marketing and
| products?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| My commentary goes above and beyond just Magnus. Re:
| Magnus. Sponsorships are fine. Him making money is fine. He
| shouldn't be able to dictate the rules of the game or the
| platforms by which it is played. IMO.
|
| He's not the first person to be "really good at chess".
|
| It's a broad statement meant to mean "celebrities have too
| big of a platform and too much influence over the average
| joe".
| kelipso wrote:
| Thank you being a rare sensible voice on this topic. The
| fanboyism of chess fans is insane these days. I get that the
| average age of chess fans these days is very low, probably 14
| or so, but it's still pretty annoying.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Business is business. Non-competes expire. Don't waste your
| feelings on chess.com.
| senko wrote:
| From TTT:
|
| > _Magnus Carlsen, co-founder of Take Take Take, will not be
| actively promoting the platform at launch. With Take Take
| Take now offering a full play and learning experience, it
| enters territory that conflicts with his ambassador agreement
| with Chess.com. He remains a co-founder and the company 's
| largest shareholder, and the team expects his involvement to
| resume once those contractual constraints change. For now,
| the product will have to speak for itself._
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Magnus has said multiple times in the past - through the
| predecessors he owned or was involved with that he is not
| involved in the business side much at all; he's mostly an
| investor and a promotional actor. Of course they didn't do this
| without his agreement. He's always been a fan of Lichess too
| and played lots of their tournaments.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| They have a choice: study chess and beat Magnus. Until then I
| will care about Magnus (and lichess) more then those
| businesses.
|
| The best thing they did was that they bought an amazing domain
| name.
| lxgr wrote:
| > I do feel a bit bad for chess.com
|
| I'm sure they'll be crying all the way to the bank.
|
| > I hope Lichess does not find themselves in a poor position if
| Magnus decides to "alter the deal".
|
| I also hope they manage to avoid becoming dependent on whatever
| this deal grants them.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| > FIDE and chess.com feel they have no choice but to
| accommodate his whims
|
| FIDE and chess.com did behave pretty shitty sometimes and I
| think its good Magnus is in a position to counter them a bit.
| kelipso wrote:
| I don't. Everyone ends up affected by the whims of a
| celebrity in this case.
| tartoran wrote:
| Big fan of Lichess here. Such a great and underrated service.
| k2xl wrote:
| Lichess has been absolutely fantastic platform. AS a chess
| enthusiast as an engineer of a chess website me and some others
| are building (shameless plug, https://chess67.com), they are the
| only platform I have worked with where so much is so easily
| accessible in terms of their APIs.
|
| Their Oauth requires to special app registration nor any oauth
| secrets - only platform I have seen that does that.
|
| I do wonder how this opens up ability for people to integrate
| Lichess' player pool to their own apps.
| CarterWilliams wrote:
| Yeah that's a really interesting point. The openness is mainly
| what makes Lichess so powerful for organizers and developers.
|
| chess67 looks interesting from my perspective as a coach and
| club organizer, especially for running tournaments and gaining
| exposure for my coaching and events.
|
| But I do wonder where the boundary is long term. If more tools
| start tapping into the player pool, there's probably a balance
| between staying open and preventing people from just free
| riding on the Lichess ecosystem.
|
| Either way, it's pretty unique. You don't really see that level
| of accessibility elsewhere in the chess world.
| TheRoque wrote:
| Huge respect to Lichess. Open source, no ads, super clean
| interface and super functional website. Chess.com is a pain to
| use compared to it.
|
| All their finances are also public: https://lichess.org/costs
| lxgr wrote:
| It's truly phenomenal.
|
| Even my diamond platinum extreme chess.com subscription (or
| however the third-best tier of a dozen or so is called) has
| much less functionality than Lichess's only tier.
| elAhmo wrote:
| Quite amazing to see that "French social security / pension
| contrib" are almost the same as their total server costs, and
| there is loads of them.
|
| With just a few employees, it is quite interesting to compare
| how much do some of these contributions cost, effectively
| affecting only a person or two, compared to a service like
| Lichess which is used by 5-10 million of users each month.
| DEDLINE wrote:
| 100%. Beautiful property. Thank you, Lichess, for everything
| you do.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Their lead developer is paid $72k/yr, and mobile developer
| $49k/yr.
|
| I'm not sure what to think, but that's definitely interesting.
| I wonder what chess.com is paying their engineers.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Could be part time
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I thought so too, but another entry in their sheet is
| "Sysadmin (part time)" for $18k/yr. So either they forgot
| to put part time in parens, or they're paid full time
| wages. I wonder which...
| static_motion wrote:
| Or full time. In some countries, those are pretty decent
| salaries. I earn EUR50k in one of the poorer European
| countries and that puts me in the top ~8%.
| fernandopj wrote:
| Both would be very decent salaries in South America also
| tumdum_ wrote:
| Can you explain what is interesting in those salaries?
| morcus wrote:
| They are extremely low (at least by the standard of
| Software Engineers based in the US)
| tumdum_ wrote:
| Lichess is a non profit from France (like it's author)
| and those salaries quite normal for France.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| No it is not. Yes it could be for your average everyday
| developer but if someone can run site with millions of
| active users alone, there is no difference in salary
| based on where the developer stays. Does Mistral pays
| $100k salary to researchers?
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Pretty sure OpenAI pays higher than chess.com
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| OpenAI doesn't pay 1 developer higher salary than all the
| chess.com developers combined.
| harlequinetcie wrote:
| Lichess, you guys rock.
|
| Above all, with everything that's happening in the software
| engineering world rn, I look at Chess as a place were we've seen
| it play out in the past decades. And Lichess is a big part of
| that.
|
| I hope this deal helps two things: (1) Bring more people to
| Chess, (2) Actually, help Lichess find out a way to reward those
| working in it as much as they deserve.
|
| Keep on the amazing work,
| NickC25 wrote:
| Love Lichess.
|
| The only thing I love about chess.com is the ability to create
| custom variants, edit them, and unleash them into the wild. Been
| loving minihouse lately, such a cool variant.
|
| Would love to see Lichess add bughouse, as its cousin Pychess
| recently debuted it and it seems to work fine. Chess.com has
| bughouse.
| elicash wrote:
| For anybody who watched the new chess documentary on Netflix
| about the Magnus vs Hans drama, you'll remember how pissed Magnus
| and his dad are at chess.com, which is what makes this
| partnership interesting to me. (Magnus is a TTT cofounder)
| chrisco23 wrote:
| Love Lichess. These days I haven't been playing very much but
| always watching chess streaming commentary. So I was surprised
| when I saw Take Take Take had a launch party Monday but no stream
| on Tuesday (getting dumped by chess.com). I never play chess on a
| phone but I was curious to see how Take Take Take might be
| incorporating LLM for English language explanation. Last fall I
| did a sort of proof of concept of this, not nearly fleshed out
| like the TTT app.
|
| So I literally dusted off an old Android tablet and played one
| game. Pleased to see I got logged right in to my lichess account,
| played a 10 + 5 unrated, did game review. I think this should be
| great for everybody all around, and as others have expressed I
| hope lichess doesn't get caught up in some business grief. The
| game review was not earth-shattering but decent move-by-move
| explanation that I think will help a lot of players, especially
| newer players.
|
| I will stick to playing on lichess in browser, on a 43" tv
| monitor, running and reading local Stockfish eval., without the
| English explan.
| vkr2020 wrote:
| Love lichess - I downloaded their chess puzzle database and built
| a simple app for my son to learn mate-in-3 puzzles. They are
| amazing and deserve all the love!
| dwa3592 wrote:
| Just came here to say that Lichess is amazing. Love it.
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