Hey lemmy folks, some of you might know me as the developer of RDX for Reddit an open-source, free, ad-free Reddit client that is quite popular here. Two months ago i release. an offline-first, ad-free chess puzzles app that hit Hackernews #1. I thought I should share it with you people too.

Presenting OffChess, Built by me because I got frustrated with needing WiFi just to practice chess, thought, why not train anywhere: on planes, trains, even in sketchy tunnels. So OffChess aims to be a clean, distraction-free way to sharpen your tactics, even when fully offline.

Here are the main highlights:

1. 100,000+ real-game puzzles, neatly curated.
2. Offline first: no connection required to play puzzles.
3. Adaptive difficulty: as you improve, puzzles get tougher.
4. Rich stats tracking: streaks, accuracy, puzzles solved.
5. Themes & clean UI: something comfortable to look at.
6. For iPhone & Android (and totally usable offline).

Download on:

• 🍏 App Store — iPhone/iPad
• 🤖 Google Play — Android

Would love feedback, bug reports, feature suggestions from you all. Especially what you like / dislike in similar apps (and how OffChess could try to stand out more.

Edit: One more thing you get 7 free puzzles every day for as long as you want, if you want to unlock all the puzzles there is a one time purchase(no subscription) of $3.99 that unlocks all the puzzles in the app forever. You can even share it on your other devices if you use the same apple/google account by just hitting restore purchases.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for all the support so far.

I have a Chess.com account where my rating is 1500 in all modes.

I've switched to Lichess a few months ago, and been mostly playing Bullet 2 + 1. Based on what I've read, I would expect my rating to be around 1800, but despite (I believe) playing at a similar level, my rating is hovering around 1550.

It could just be me, maybe I was lucky on Chess.com to get that rating, but it seems everyone says your rating on Lichess should be around 200-300 more than on Chess.com, is that your experience as well? Has it maybe changed a bit?

This question was posed to me, and I was surprised that I could not find a solution (as I thought that all rook tours [open or closed] were possible). Starting from a8, could a rook visit every square on the board once, ending on f3?

I tried a few times, with a few different strategies, but I always ended up missing one square.

It's really easy to burn pairs of rows or columns, so the problem space could be reduced...

...but at some point (4x4), I was able to convince myself that it is impossible (at least at this size and state):

...but it might be possible that shaving off column or row pairs is also discarding a solution?

basically, I have a lot of anxiety when playing with people, and my ranking is around 600ish, but whenever i play a bot the analysis suggests that i paid played at level 1100 or 1500.

Just got this puzzle on Lichess and there's a gorgeous reply to this check threat from white.

Jerry is the best :)

He has passed at age 88, cause not specified.

AP report: https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/boris-spassky-soviet-chess-champion-who-lost-20192861.php

8 games, 60 minutes + 30 second increment for Benjamin, i.e. classical TC though a bit quicker than some. Benjamin gets N odds in all games. Leela will play at bullet speed. The hardware is not specified in the thread I linked. Leela will apparently be running a network specially trained to play with knight odds. Match will be livestreamed on Youtube with GM Matthew Sadler commentating. It will take place over 3 days, January 25 through 27th.

For those not familiar, Leela is a neural net chess engine inspired by Alpha Chess Zero. GM Sadler is a co-author of "Game Changer", a book analyzing a bunch of games of Alpha Chess Zero, so he's just about an ideal commentator for this event. It should be interesting.

Added: official page about match: https://lczero.org/blog/2025/01/leela-vs-gm-joel-benjamin/

Results of first 5 rounds: 0-1, 0-1, .5-.5, .5-.5, 1-0. Leela has white in all games so this means Benjamin won the first two, drew the next two, then lost one (game 6 now in progress). Maybe he is getting tired. He said after the first day that he was "knackered".