Frequently Asked Questions

Lishogi is powered by donations from patrons and the efforts of a team of volunteers.

Become a Patron.

Here are many other ways you could contribute to Lishogi.

Lishogi has strong detection methods and a very thorough process for reviewing all the evidence and making a decision. The process often involves many moderators and can take a long time. Other than the mark itself, we will not go into details about evidence or the decision making process for individual cases. Doing so would make it easier to avoid detection in the future, and be an invitation to unproductive debates. That time and effort is better spent on other important cases. Users can appeal by emailing contact@lishogi.org, but decisions are rarely overturned.

One minute after a player is marked, their 40 latest rated games in the last 3 days are taken. If you are their opponent in those games, you lost rating (because of a loss or a draw), and your rating was not provisional, you get a rating refund. The refund is capped based on your peak rating and your rating progress after the game.
(For example, if your rating greatly increased after those games, you might get no refund or only a partial refund.) A refund will never exceed 150 points.

If your opponent frequently aborts/leaves games, they get "play banned", which means they're temporarily banned from playing games. This is not publically indicated on their profile. If this behaviour continues, the length of the playban increases - and prolonged behaviour of this nature may lead to account closure.

It’s not possible to apply to become a moderator. If we see someone who we think would be good as a moderator, we will contact them directly.

On Lishogi, the main difference in rules for correspondence shogi is that an opening book is allowed. The use of engines is still prohibited and will result in being flagged for engine assistance. Although ICCF allows engine use in correspondence, Lishogi does not.

Lishogi time controls are based on estimated game duration = 60 × (clock initial time in minutes) + 60 × (clock increment) + 25 × (clock byoyomi) × (clock periods)
For instance, the estimated duration of a 5+3|4 game is 60 × 5 + 60 × 3 + 25 × 4 = 580 seconds.

• < 60s = UltraBullet
• < 300s = Bullet
• < 600s = Blitz
• < 1500s = Rapid
• ≥ 1500s = Classical

No.

This honorific title is unofficial and only exists on Lishogi.

We rarely award it to highly notable players who are good citizens of Lishogi, at our discretion. You don't get the LM title, the LM title gets to you. If you qualify, you will get a message from us regarding it and the choice to accept or decline.

Do not ask for the LM title.

In general, usernames should not be: offensive, impersonating someone else, or advertising. You can read more about the guidelines.

Ratings are calculated using the Glicko-2 rating method developed by Mark Glickman. This is a very popular rating method, and is used by a significant number of chess organisations (FIDE being a notable counter-example, as they still use the dated Elo rating system).

Fundamentally, Glicko ratings use "confidence intervals" when calculating and representing your rating. When you first start using the site, your rating starts at 1500 ± 700. The 1500 represents your rating, and the 700 represents the confidence interval.

Basically, the system is 90% sure that your rating is somewhere between 800 and 2200. It is incredibly uncertain. Because of this, when a player is just starting out, their rating will change very dramatically, potentially several hundred points at a time. But after some games against established players the confidence interval will narrow, and the amount of points gained/lost after each game will decrease.

Another point to note is that, as time passes, the confidence interval will increase. This allows you to gain/lose points points more rapidly to match any changes in your skill level over that time.

The question mark means the rating is provisional. Reasons include:

• The player has not yet finished enough rated games against opponents of similar strength in the rating category.
• The player hasn't played enough recent games. Depending on the number of games you've played, it might take around a year of inactivity for your rating to become provisional again.

Concretely, it means that the Glicko-2 deviation is greater than 110. The deviation is the level of confidence the system has in the rating. The lower the deviation, the more stable is a rating.

In order to get on the rating leaderboard you must:

1. have played at least 30 rated games in a given rating,
2. have played a rated game within the last week for this rating,
3. have a rating deviation lower than 75, in standard shogi, and lower than 70 in variants,
4. be in the top 10 in this rating.

The 2nd requirement is so that players who no longer use their accounts stop populating leaderboards.

It is best not to think of ratings as absolute numbers, or compare them against other organisations. Different organisations have different levels of players, different rating systems (Elo, Glicko, Glicko-2, or a modified version of the aforementioned). These factors can drastically affect the absolute numbers (ratings).

It's best to think of ratings as "relative" figures (as opposed to "absolute" figures): Within a pool of players, their relative differences in ratings will help you estimate who will win/draw/lose, and how often. Saying "I have X rating" means nothing unless there are other players to compare that rating to.

Enable Zen-mode in the display preferences, or by pressing z during a game.

Unfortunately, we cannot give back rating points for games lost due to lag or disconnection, regardless of whether the problem was at your end or our end. The latter is very rare though. Also note that when Lishogi restarts and you lose on time because of that, we abort the game to prevent an unfair loss.

Lishogi can optionally send popup notifications, for example when it is your turn or you received a private message.

Click the lock icon next to the lishogi.org address in the URL bar of your browser.

Then select whether to allow or block notifications from Lishogi.