Your network blocks the Lichess assets!

lichess.org
Donate

The Lichess Video team.

You may have noticed the lichess videos page. This page collects YouTube videos about chess and makes them searchable with a tag system. We may even try to integrate it into more of our features in the future. Imagine playing a game in the Catalan opening and then being able to quickly search for any videos that might feature that position.

These videos need to be found and evaluated by people to decide if they are worthy of appearing on this page. If you're interested in helping us out with this, we coordinate the effort on our discord server in the #videos channel. The workflow looks something like this:

#1 Finding the videos

The videos you submit to us should be of the very highest quality. Please watch the video in its entirety before submitting it.

  • Videos should focus on chess analysis.
  • Bad sound quality is an immediate disqualification.
  • A webcam for the presenter is not quite a requirement, but it helps a lot.
  • The material should be explained clearly and in an entertaining way if possible.
  • The presenter should probably be a titled player or at least very strong.
  • There is no requirement that the video use lichess software.
  • The overall production value should be very high.

#2 Tagging the video

Tags help users find exactly what they're looking for. Carefully study our Tags Guide and find the Tags that are appropriate for each video.

#3 Submitting the videos

Videos should be submitted in the same format that Lichess uses them. Make a spreadsheet with google docs and post the link in the discord for review and approval. You will have to set the sharing settings to allow others to view your spreadsheet.

Here is a sample spreadsheet, you can make a copy for yourself and use it if you like.

This is the information you will enter into the various columns:

  • Youtube ID: The alpha-numeric code that Youtube uses to identify a video. If the URL of a video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ then the Youtube ID is dQw4w9WgXcQ. Note that these ARE case sensitive.
  • Youtube Author: The video's presenter. In these cases what matters, is who is talking, not who the channel belongs to. When John Bartholomew makes a video from his own channel the author is John Bartholomew. When he makes one for Lichess' channel, the author is still John Bartholomew
  • Title: The title of the video.
  • Target: A subjective measure of what level of player will gain the most from the video. 1 is "beginner", 2 is "intermediate", 3 is "advanced," and 4 is "expert". Take a look at the current library to get a feel for which is which, or ask in the discord for assistance.
  • Tags
  • Language: The 2-letter code for the language spoken in the video, at the moment we only accept English videos(en).