One of the classic games, chess has been around for almost 1500 years now. It evolved during the years, but most of the time it was still that game where players would face each other at the same table. During the 20th century, people also started playing the so called correspondence chess by sending their moves in letters to opponents. This is still happening today, although the means of communication are more diverse - email, apps, etc.

The most popular type of chess today is the one you play online, real-time, on free websites like lichess.org. This requires being connected to the server while playing the game. As we all know, an Internet connection can fail when you're least expecting - when you're about to win. So what can you do about it? How to fix and avoid Lichess connection problems? Read below. 

If you're using lichess.org, you may have experienced connectivity problems. These include messages that you lost the Internet connection, impossibility to play bullet and blitz games. And, of course, it's most frustrating when you're in a winning position!

When you have a bad connection to Lichess, it's highly likely you will get disconnected. And that will register as you abandoning the game, thus losing it. Even if you were one move away from victory.

There are multiple causes why this could happen:

• lichess.org servers are down or are laggy
• temporary infrastructure issues with your ISP
• slow and flaky Internet on your side - being too far away from the Wi-Fi hotspot or having poor cellular coverage

To rule out Lichess related connection issues, check their Twitter account for announcements regarding outages.

If you see lichess.org losing connection and it's not them, then it's you. You can view the latency between you and Lichess servers on their website. Also test your online speed. Is the speed close enough to what you're paying for? And, most important, is your lag (latency) higher than 1000ms (1 second)?

Assuming that everything is fine, here's how you can avoid / fix Lichess losing connection and "reconnecting":

1. Restart your modem, router and device you’re playing on chess.com – computer, smartphone. You may also update your router’s firmware, if that’s available.
2. Move closer to the Wi-Fi router or, better yet, use a wired Ethernet connection if possible.
3. Move around till you get better cellular coverage, if no other connections are available.
4. For best results, make sure no other apps are hogging bandwidth or memory o your device.
5. Check if your ISP is having temporary issues. They should have a status page or at least a social media account to communicate that.

If you want to avoid wasting time going through all the steps above, you can just use all of your Internet connections at once. This is what the Indian chess team did to deal with their connectivity issues at the Online Olympiad of 2020, which they also won.

Most likely, you have cellular data available on your smartphone, so you can combine that with your home Internet. You’ll need a channel bonding app like Speedify for that.

Speedify uses a technology called channel bonding that allows you to use multiple Internet connections at once. On your smartphone – it’s the Wi-Fi and cellular data that can be bonded. On a computer, there’s more flexibility about the number and type of connections.

Speedify also routes data when something happens to one of your connections. When you stumble upon a bad Wi-Fi hotspot, or your connection suddenly goes out, you will stay connected. Speedify intelligently and automatically reroutes your data through the other available connection(s) until you are connected again to both networks. Best of all, you don’t notice anything because Speedify works seamlessly.

The beauty of it is that Speedify does more than just manage your Internet connections. It is also a fast bonding VPN. It encrypts all of the data you send and receive from your device. This helps keep your private information and conversations secure from digital eavesdroppers and cyber thieves.

Problems like Lichess losing connection are a thing of the past with Speedify. As long as you're connected to 2 or more connections at once, you're a sure win... at infrastructure; you still have to be better than your opponent to win