Volunteer Your Lichess Puzzle Activity for Academic AI Research

Help advance chess player rating analysis – quick, anonymous, and voluntary.

Project Description

This research is part of my MSc dissertation in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Aberdeen, supervised by Professor Nir Oren.

The project aims to estimate or predict player strength or rating based on chess puzzle attempt behavior, such as success rates conditioned on puzzle difficulty and themes, and other signals like attempt outcomes.

We already use the public Lichess puzzle database and user rating endpoints, but need anonymized attempt-level data (e.g., timestamps, puzzle IDs, outcomes) to answer the core research questions.

Data will be used to train AI models for better chess player rating analysis and player improvement tools. No personal information is collected or needed.

Ethics Permission

This study will be reviewed and approved by the University of Aberdeen Ethics Committee.

We adhere to principles of voluntary participation, data minimization, anonymity, and privacy protection in line with GDPR and university guidelines.

Consent and Participation

By sharing your data, you consent to its use in this research. Participation is voluntary. Data is anonymized—no usernames or identifiers are needed.

How to Withdraw Consent

You can withdraw your consent at any time, even after submitting data.

To withdraw, email swastidas008@gmail.com with a description of your submission (e.g., approximate number of puzzles or date submitted).

We will delete your data from our records within 15 days of the request.

Withdrawal will not affect any aggregated or published findings that do not identify you.

Instructions

To share your data easily:

1. Click the button below to authorize with Lichess (you must be logged in there).
2. Grant permission for "Read puzzle activity" and "Read preferences" (ratings).
3. The page will fetch your data and provide an option to send it anonymously to the researcher via secure email (no manual emailing needed).

Privacy and Data Use

Your access token is used only for fetching and is not stored.

Data includes puzzle attempt timestamps, IDs, outcomes, and your current puzzle/rapid/classical ratings.

All data is anonymized upon receipt (assigned a pseudonym like 'volunteer_001') and used solely for this research.

No data is shared with third parties. Questions? Email swastidas008@gmail.com.

The process uses secure services like StaticForms for emailing attachments.

Thanks for supporting AI research in chess! Your contribution helps improve educational tools for players.