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Chess.com, LLC

Chess.com homepage
Type of business	Internet chess server, Social media website
Type of site	Internet chess server
Available in	57 languages
List of languagesAfrikaans, azərbaycanca, Bahasa, Indonesia, Bahasa, Melayu, bosanski, Català, čeština, Dansk, Deutsch, eesti, English, Español, Français, Galego, Hrvatski, Íslenska, Italiano, Kiswahili, latviešu, lietuvių, Magyar, Nederlands, Norsk, Oʻzbekcha, Pilipino, polski, Português, Português, (BR), Română, shqipe, slovenčina, slovenščina, suomi, Svenska, Tagalog, Tiếng Việt, Türkmençe, Tϋrkçe, Vlaams, Ελληνικά, Белару́ская, Български, Русский, Српски, Українська, ქართული, Հայերեն, עברית, العربية, فارسی, हिन्दी, বাংলা, (baɛṅlā), 한국어, 中文, 中文（中華人民共和國香港特別行政區）, 中文（台灣）, 日本語
Founded	May 2007; 17 years ago (2007-05)
Headquarters	United States of America
Founder(s)	Erik Allebest Jay Severson
Key people	Erik Allebest (Co-founder & CEO) Jay Severson (Co-founder & Chief Technical Advisor) Daniel Rensch (Chief Chess Officer) Brenan Klain (Chief Marketing Officer)
Industry	Internet
Employees	200+
URL	www.chess.com
Registration	Optional
Users	77 million+
Current status	Active
Written in	Java, JavaScript, PHP

Chess.com is an internet chess server, news website and social networking website. The site has a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others for accounts with subscriptions. Live online chess can be played against other users at daily, rapid, blitz or bullet time controls, with a number of chess variants available. Chess versus a chess engine, computer analysis, chess puzzles and teaching resources are also offered.

One of the largest chess platforms in the world, Chess.com has hosted online tournaments including Titled Tuesdays, the PRO Chess League, the Speed Chess Championships, PogChamps, and computer vs computer events.

History

• 1995: The domain Chess.com was originally set up by Aficionado, a company based in Berkeley, California, to sell a piece of chess tutoring software called "Chess Mentor".
• 2005: Internet entrepreneur Erik Allebest and partner Jarom ("Jay") Severson bought the domain name and assembled a team of software developers to redevelop the site as a chess portal.
• 2007: The site was relaunched. The site was heavily promoted via social media.
• 2009: Chess.com announced a takeover of a similar chess social networking site, chesspark.com. Chesspark founders Jack Moffitt and Brian Zisk had moved to work on a web search startup.
• October 2013: Chess.com acquired the Amsterdam-based chess news site chessvibes.com, which provided coverage for chess tournaments. It was founded and owned by Dutch chess journalist Peter Doggers in February 2006.
• 2014: The site announced that over a billion live games had been played on the site, including 100 million correspondence games.
• January 2016: Chess.com announced "v3", the two-year overhaul of its previous interface. The site introduced new features including computer analysis of games, and the chess variants of crazyhouse, three-check chess, king of the hill, chess960 and bughouse.
• June 2017: The 2,147,483,647th (= 2-1) game was played, which caused the iOS app to stop working for those with 32-bit Apple devices. This occurred because of an integer overflow problem whereby the number was too large to be represented in the number of storage bits that were used.
• May 2018: Chess.com announced that it had acquired the 3300+ Elo-rated commercial chess engine Komodo, then ranked 3rd behind Stockfish and Houdini. In conjunction, the Komodo team announced the addition of the probabilistic method of Monte Carlo tree search machine learning, the same methods used by the recent chess projects AlphaZero and Leela Chess Zero.
• November 2020: Chess.com acquired the rights to broadcast the World Chess Championship 2021, which is broadcast on live streaming platform Twitch.

Features

Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free but others are limited or unavailable in some respects until a subscription is paid.

Visitors to the site can play on a live chess server and correspondence style games, called "daily chess" on the site. Players may also play against chess engines (computer chess), and participate in what the site calls "vote chess", in which players form teams and vote on the best move. Additional features include tactics training, puzzle rush, chess forums, articles, videos, lessons, chess news, downloads, opening databases, groups, live broadcasts, daily puzzles, team matches, online coaching and a game database of over 2 million games.

The company publishes a large number of articles on a variety of chess-related topics, including chess strategy, opening theory and history. Regular contributors include Gregory Serper, Bruce Pandolfini, Sam Shankland, Dan Heisman, Jeremy Silman, Simon Williams, Daniel Naroditsky, Natalia Pogonina and Daniel Rensch.

Users can play a number of variants on the live server, including crazyhouse, three-check, four-player, king of the hill, chess960, atomic, racing kings and bughouse.

Chess.com has a policy against the use of chess engines in all forms of the game, except where "specifically permitted (such as a computer tournament)". It utilizes algorithms and statistical data to catch players using engines in games and bans many on a daily basis, and employs six moderators to prevent cheating.

Subsidiary companies

ChessKid.com

Chess.com also runs the subsidiary site chesskid.com for chess players of all ages. ChessKid focuses on a child-friendly environment aimed towards chess improvement for beginners to club players. It also has a guardianship program in which parents and authorized coaches can overlook the child's progress over time, to see statistics about their progress in tactics or how many videos they watched so that they can give encouragement and tips on how to improve. ChessKid features no advertising.

ChessKid.com has run a yearly online championship called CONIC (the ChessKid Online National Invitational Championship), since 2012 which is recognized by the United States Chess Federation. According to David Petty, the event organizer in 2013,

The online component makes it unique because, normally, national championships require the players to fly in and stay in the same place. We had to ask special permission for the tournament because it is a rated tournament and there is a much higher chance for cheating.

ChessKid has made agreements and partnerships with chess associations to bring the educational benefit of chess to children in schools. In 2014, for a trial period, all signups to the ICA (Illinois Chess Association) included a free gold member subscription to ChessKid. They also have a long-term partnership with the NTCA (North Texas Chess Academy) which gives children access to online instructors.

Tournaments and events

US Chess League

The USCL was a nationwide national chess league in the United States between 2005 and 2016. Chess.com hosted the event in 2013.

PRO Chess League

The PRO Chess League was the result of the US Chess League changing its name and format, with faster time controls and a focus on the flexibility of forming and managing teams. Chess.com has hosted the PCL twice starting in 2017, having a regular and a summer series.

Titled Tuesdays

Titled Tuesday is a 11-round Swiss-system 3+1 blitz chess tournament held on every Tuesday. Grandmaster participants include Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Dmitry Andreikin, Wesley So, and Fabiano Caruana. The first event was held on October 28, 2014, with a prize fund of $500 and was won by Baadur Jobava. The prize fund was eventually upgraded to $1500. GM Hikaru Nakamura has won the most events with a total of ten tournament wins, followed by GM Georg Meier with seven, Magnus Carlsen has won three of the events in which he has partaken.

In June 2018, Chess.com held a special version of the tournament for which the winner would go on to participate in the Isle of Man International which had a prize fund of £144,000. Iranian GM Pouria Darini won the event.

Speed Chess Championships

Chess.com has held six Speed Chess Championships since 2016, all involving a single-elimination tournament featuring some of the world's best players in matches that continue on in the vein of the Death Match format, with the addition of one chess960 game each time control. Nakamura has won four championships, while Carlsen has won two.

Death Matches

Death Matches were introduced in January 2012. They feature titled players taking part in a series of blitz games over a non-stop 3-hour period (5-minute, 3-minute and 1-minute, all with a one-second increment). There have been 38 deathmatches, participants including the grandmasters Hikaru Nakamura, Dmitry Andreikin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Lê Quang Liêm, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Judit Polgár and Nigel Short.

Chess.com Computer Chess Championship

In November 2017, Chess.com held an open tournament, called the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship (CCCC, later CCC), with the ten strongest chess engines, with $2,500 in prize money. The top-two engines competed in a "Superfinale" tournament between the two finalists - Stockfish and Houdini. In the 20-game Superfinal, Stockfish won over Houdini with a score 10.5-9.5. Five games were decisive, with 15 ending in a draw. Of the decisive games, three games were won by Stockfish, and two by Houdini.

In August 2018, the site announced that the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship has returned, this time as a non-stop tournament for chess engines.

PogChamps

Chess.com has hosted PogChamps, an amateur online tournament featuring Twitch streamers, since 2020. The first PogChamps featured notable streamers including xQcOW, moistcr1tikal, Ludwig Ahgren, and forsen. Notable new participants from PogChamps 2 included itsHafu and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson. PogChamps 3, beginning in February 2021, debuted with a wider range of Internet personalities and celebrities, with new competitors including MrBeast, Neekolul, Myth, Pokimane, actor Rainn Wilson, and rapper Logic.

Reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

After publishing two articles that were critical of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and replacing Russian flags with a link to one of these articles, Chess.com was blocked in Russia. The site had blocked Sergey Karjakin over his support for the invasion, and Karjakin in turn supported Russia's block of the website.

See also

• List of Internet chess servers
• Top Chess Engine Championship

References

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External links

• Official website
• ChessKid.com

• 2007 establishments in the United States
• American social networking websites
• Android (operating system) software
• Chess databases
• Chess in the United States
• Companies based in Orange County, California
• Internet chess servers
• Internet properties established in 2007
• Multilingual websites
• Online video game services