An unbounded supply of Chess⌗

I used to play chess only on lichess everyday. Lichess is great, it’s free, open source, and I’ve been donating to the site monthly for years.

I prefer Lichess to Chess.com in nearly everyway, but, recently, I’ve been playing/practicing on chess.com. Why? Because it offers a stopping point.

Chess offers me a slippery slope. On one hand it’s an outlet for deep thought and creativity and on the other its an aggravating time suck that leaves me infuriated with little improvement in my abilities to show for it. Often times, I’ll play blitz or bullet chess for hours. I play these time controls poorly and find myself sliding into the “just one more game mentality”.

Lichess offers me unlimited puzzles, variants, and studies. I can play and practice as much as I want without ever having an advertisement or banner to “subscribe” thrown in my face.

On Chess.com I only get to solve 4-5 puzzles a day before reaching a limit and being told I need to “upgrade to premium”. Unless I create a new account, I wont be able to solve another puzzle on the site for 24 hours… this is exactly what I need.

I need a stopping point. I need someone to tell me that I’ve done enough. Scarce supply incentivizes me to take my time and leverage each puzzle to the maximum.

Being restricted is a feature⌗

Unbounded supply is dangerous… it feels valuable, but requires a high level of self discipline. The same self discipline that is chipped away at from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed.

Restriction is a feature. I’m enabled to gamble on nearly anything, eat/smoke/drink as much as I want, I can watch sports for hours a day on all of my devices, I can scroll short form videos until my brain is mush, play video games until my fingers are numb, and read information (both true and false) until I’ve developed myopia… in the kind of abundance we live in today, restriction is a feature. Being told to STOP is a feature.

Though not realizing it, Chess.com’s subscription model has offered me a small respite from the onslaught of abundance. The restriction of my actions keeps me coming back to solve my four puzzles everyday. For that, I’m grateful.