Tony Rotella

The ECF regrets to report that GM Jonathan Hawkins, a former British chess champion, has lost his battle with cancer. Jonathan was British champion in 2014 and 2015. He was also a highly successful junior coach. Our sympathies go to his partner Angela Eyton and all his family

I know praising Lichess is as popular as ever. On chess Reddit, someone shows up every second Saturday to say Lichess is the best thing that ever happened to chess. I’ve actually contributed to Lichess myself as a streamer and blogger. I stopped because of their political stance – that’s a different story. I’m not pretending Lichess hasn’t done a lot of good. In fact, my own project, ChessEver, wouldn’t have progressed so fast without Lichess existing. Still, if you put the benefits aside for a moment, there’s something fundamentally wrong with the Lichess model: it destroys the chess market. Providing so many features for free makes it very hard for any chess business to charge for its services. If businesses can’t charge, they can’t pay professionals properly. If professionals can’t earn enough, they’re pushed to play in badly conditioned events. Conditions don’t improve for professionals, and that eventually hurts casual fans, too. That’s the vicious cycle. Nothing is truly free. Someone always pays — with money, time, or the opportunities that never get built because it stopped making economic sense to try.