Lichess - black pieces

General
1

Hello,
My son is currently practising chess openings with black pieces.
To do this, we go to lichess and select “play with black pieces” in the settings. This is extremely convenient when practising certain openings!
However, after 2-3 games with black, we saw an error message on the screen. Something like, ‘Hey, stop playing with black pieces. Now play with white.’ Logging out of lichess and logging back in didn’t help.
We had to go to the settings and select a random colour for the pieces.
This is a little frustrating, as it interferes with our goals.

So my question is: does this error message come from lichess or chessUp2?
If you are the ones blocking it, could you please unblock it? This would have a positive effect on the learning process.

Thank you!

2

Are you playing rated or unrated games? And, does the same behavior happen when playing on desktop/mobile?

3

Hello dillontking,
This applies to both rated and unrated games.

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Regarding the same option on a computer, I am not sure about your situation, but on my computer, the colour selection option is essentially blocked. Only random colours are available.

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4

In short, this error comes from Lichess, and is expected. The solution is to play some games from both sides. When you get this message, I’d suggest practicing from white’s perspective for a while. Read on for more details.

So my question is: does this error message come from lichess or chessUp2? If you are the ones blocking it, could you please unblock it?

This error message comes from Lichess. ChessUp2 learns about it when attempting to find a game and displays the error you see.

Logging out of lichess and logging back in didn’t help.

The accounting is tied to your user-account, and would probably even follow if you if signed in to a different board.

Regarding the same option on a computer, I am not sure about your situation, but on my computer, the colour selection option is essentially blocked. Only random colours are available.

At this time, choosing the colour for certain games is a board-API feature not available to players on LichessDotOrg’s website.

Some historical context:

  1. Lichess wants the ability for e-board player to specify the colour, so they don’t have to flip the board around whenever they get the opposite color from how they’re sitting.
  2. Some players only wanted to play one side. If too many do this, it can interfere with matchmaking and scoring. So they took it out.
  3. But that was no fun, so they added it back with a compromise - you can play some games as one color, but not too many. Once you play too many as one color, you get this message, and you need to play some as the other colour to balance things out.
  4. These changes mostly occurred within the last year or two, and may continue to change.
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5

Hello Richard,
Thank you for your comprehensive response.
Have a pleasant day.

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6

@ChessUA Not sure this helps but is you follow/friend a Maia Bot on Lichess I think you can play as black all you want without any restrictions.

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