Chess.com reaches a brand new membership milestone because it nears its twentieth birthday.
Chess.com, the web chess platform that was based in 2005 and launched in 2007, has surpassed 200 million members. Of these 200 million members, 1.5 million are paying customers. Greater than 6 million video games of chess are performed daily on the platform.
“[Chess has] bought this sturdiness to it,” Albert Cheng, the chief progress officer at Chess.com advised TechCrunch. “It’s been performed for over 1,500 years, which is simply superb. And even Chess.com isn’t a model new firm. It’s been round for nearly 20 years. It feels actually dynamic.”
The corporate has expanded lots since its roots as an internet discussion board for IRL chess gamers to debate their matches. Chess.com now affords full chess matches towards different folks or bots, every day video games and puzzles, information in regards to the chess world, the flexibility to stream chess competitions, and extra.
Cheng credit the corporate’s continued product innovation as one of many causes it has seen sturdy and sustained progress. For instance, the corporate launched an AI recreation evaluate characteristic in 2021 — sure, there’s at all times an AI angle — that makes use of AI to summarize how a participant did in a recreation and to flag potential enhancements. He added that almost all of recent customers on Chess.com are freshmen, and whereas the platform is designed for gamers of all ranges, such options may help foster a love for the sport for these new members.
The corporate has additionally been capable of journey the elevated curiosity in chess over the previous few years. Chess, together with many different video games, gained numerous reputation in the course of the pandemic as folks appeared for on-line methods to entertain themselves by means of COVID-19 lockdowns. In response, Chess.com needed to bulk up its infrastructure to have the ability to help the brand new demand.
Netflix’s chess-focused miniseries, “The Queen’s Gambit”, additional fueled curiosity when it was launched in 2020. Since then, quite a few occasions have sparked new curiosity within the recreation. In 2022, the chess world was rocked by a dishonest scandal involving five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen. Aggressive chess can even be featured within the Esports World Cup for the primary time this 12 months.
The sport has additionally gotten more and more world, Cheng mentioned, with round 85% of recent consumer registrations coming from outdoors the U.S. The present grand grasp, Gukesh Dommaraju, hails from India.
Cheng — the previous head of product, progress and monetization at Grammarly and Duolingo — added that he appears to listen to of a brand new “high-profile” chess participant daily and cited the latest chess match between F1 racing stars Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc taking part in on-line chess towards one another.
“I believe the the sky’s the restrict right here, and the extra that we are able to proceed to develop the sport by leveraging that natural curiosity that already exists in these adjoining communities, we’d be silly to not discover it,” Cheng mentioned. “So I’m actually excited by these alternatives.”
