Birds are singing in Paris, grand masters are cheating in tournaments, and coders are coding on lichess.

Let's review together the improvements that popped up on lichess recently, shall we?

Kid mode

Are your kids ready to learn the best board game ever? Or maybe you're a coach or a school teacher?

You will like the new "Kid mode" we just introduced. This mode is all about children safety: it removes all communication features from lichess, leaving only the best part left: chess.

Just create an account for the kid (or login with their existing account), and head to the kid mode page.

When kid mod is enabled, a smiley appears next to lichess logo, so you know at a glance that the child is safe.

Simultaneous exhibitions

Lichess.org innovates again, and offers the first online simul organizer with an easy web interface!

Simuls have a single player facing several players at once. The concept is taken from real world events, where the simul host moves from table to table to play a single move.When the simul starts, every player starts a game with the host, who gets to play the white pieces. The simul ends when all games are complete.

Everybody can create a simul, choosing the clock settings and one or many chess variants. Players can then apply to the simul, and the host gets to choose who gets in, and when the simul starts.

Horde chess v2

According to statistics extracted from the database, pieces had the upper hand in Horde chess. Two weeks after the release, pieces had won 44.7% of the 26,442 Horde games. Pawns won 37.2%, and 18.0% of the games were drawn.

To improve balance and make the game more exciting, we made a couple modifications to the rules. Pawns are now white and get the first move. Additionally, pawns on the first rank can now advance two squares on their first move, just like pawns on the second rank.

Video library text search

By popular demand, our chess video library now supports text search! We still think you should use the tags on the left side, thought. Did you know you can select multiple tags to refine your search?

KABOOM

Atomic chess variant now has explosion sounds :)

Keyboard shortcuts

We added a few bindings for the keyboard lovers!

• <esc> Open the main menu
• <g><h> Go to Homepage
• <shift><right> in analysis: enter variation
• <shift><left> in analysis: quit variation
• [EDIT] <f> flip board (in play, analysis, and editor)
• and the famous easter egg code that all gamers know and love ;)

What keyboard shortcuts would you like us to add?

And of course...

The usual improvements, speed optimizations, style tweaks, and bug fixes!

There's more coming, so stay tuned. Oh, and by the way, the t-shirt design contest ends in a week, you still can win.

With love and pride to give chess the free website it deserves,

Lichess team