lichess.com does have a snappier feel. Using the chrome performance tools it seems that lichess takes about 2ms to go from mouse click to the piece selection repaint and lichess takes 12ms. (screenshots of traces: https://imgur.com/a/iUkGm8F)

Lichess also uses zero-time premoves and chess.com uses .1 second premoves. I think these also contribute to lichess feeling snappier.

> Lichess also uses zero-time premoves and chess.com uses .1 second premoves. I think these also contribute to lichess feeling snappier.

Having played competitively, zero-time premoves make no sense and they should cost.

Andrew Tang would probably disagree

For the past couple of months he's been exclusively on chess.com, with the exception of exactly 1 15 second game he played on Lichess, so I think his position might also be a bit more nuanced!

Lichess is great if enjoy the flagging meta, and not so great if you don't. It's made even more extreme by their interpretation of sufficient mating material. A single knight is generally counted as sufficient mating material so you end up scenarios where you're forced to play N v N along with 0 second premoves and that's not something I much enjoy.

I understand some folks like this sort of stuff, which is why it's great that there are multiple sites competing instead of a single site monopoly.

Probably and I was nowhere near that level, I just played for my county and tried for my country as a kid, but it changes blitz massively and should be it’s own game. It’s not a thing you can do IRL, so unsure why it should be a thing in the online representation of that.