Chess.com

Chess.com is an internet chess server, internet forum and social networking website.[3] 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 rapid, blitz or bullet time controls, with a number of chess variants available. Chess versus an AI, computer analysis, chess puzzles and teaching resources are also offered.

Chess.com, LLC
Chess.com homepage
Type of businessInternet chess server, Social media website
Type of site
Social networking service
Available inMultilingual (57)
FoundedMay 2007 (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)
IndustryInternet
Employees158[1]
URLwww.chess.com
RegistrationRequired
Users50 million +
Current statusActive
Written inJava,[2] JavaScript, PHP

The site additionally has news articles and tournament coverage. It 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".[4]
  • 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 in 2007.[3] 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.[5]
  • 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.[6][7]
  • 2014: The site announced that over a billion live games had been played on the site, including 100 million correspondence games.[8]
  • 2016 January: 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.[9]
  • 2017 June: The 2,147,483,647th (= 231-1) 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.[10][11][12]
  • 2018 May: Chess.com announced that it had acquired the 3300+ Elo-rated commercial chess engine Komodo, then ranked 3rd behind Stockfish and Houdini.[13] 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.[14]

Tournaments and events

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).[15] 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.[16]

US Chess League
Main article: United States Chess League § 2013

The USCL was a nationwide national chess league in the United States between 2005 and 2016. Chess.com hosted the event in 2013.[17]

Titled Tuesdays

Titled Tuesday is a 11-round Swiss-system 3+1 blitz chess tournament held on every Tuesday.[18] Grandmaster participants include Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Dmitry Andreikin, Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana.[18] The first event was held on October 28, 2014, with a prize fund of $500 and was won by Baadur Jobava.[19] The prize fund was eventually upgraded to $1500.[18] GM Hikaru Nakamura has won the most events with a total of eight tournament wins, followed by GM Georg Meier with seven,[20] Magnus Carlsen has won three of the events in which he has partaken.[21]

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.[22] Iranian GM Pouria Darini won the event.[23]

Speed Chess Championships

Chess.com has held five Speed Chess Championships since 2016, all involve 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 three championships, while Carlsen has won two.[24]

Winner Runner-up Final Score Prize Fund
2016[25] Magnus Carlsen Hikaru Nakamura 14.5–10.5 $40,000
2017[26] Magnus Carlsen Hikaru Nakamura 18–9 $50,000
2018[27] Hikaru Nakamura Wesley So 15.5–12.5 $55,000
2019[28] Hikaru Nakamura Wesley So 19.5–14.5 $50,000
2020[29] Hikaru Nakamura Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 18.5–12.5 $100,000

PRO Chess League
Main article: Professional Rapid Online 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.[30] Chess.com has hosted the PCL twice starting in 2017, having a regular and a summer series.[31]

Winner Runner-up Final Score
2017[32] St. Louis Arch Bishops Norway Gnomes 9 - 7
2018[33] Armenia Eagles Chengdu Pandas 12 - 11
2019[34] St. Louis Arch Bishops Baden-Baden Snowballs 10 - 6
2020 St. Louis Arch Bishops Canada Chessbrahs/Chengdu Pandas

Computer chess tournaments

In November 2017, Chess.com held an open tournament of 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.[35][36]

In August 2018, the site announced the Chess.com Computer Chess Championship (CCCC, later CCC), a non-stop tournament for chess computers.[37]

List of CCC seasons
Season Date Winner Title Participant

count

 Time control

(minutes+seconds)

1 September 2018 Rapid Rumble[37][38] 24 15+5
2 Stockfish Blitz Battle 33 5+2
3 January 2019 Stockfish Rapid Redux[39][40] 16 30+5
4 Stockfish[41] Bullet Brawl 8 1+2
5 Stockfish[42] Escalation 10 10+5
6 Stockfish[43] The Winter Classic 24 10+10
7 March 2019 Leela Chess Zero[44] Blitz Bonanza 24 5+2
8 Stockfish Deep Dive 24 15+5
9 Stockfish The Gauntlet 5+2, 1+1, 10+5
10[45] September 2019 Leelenstein Double Digits 13 10+3
11 December 2019 Leela Chess Zero 12 30+5
12 January 2020 Leela Chess Zero 18 1+1
13[46] March 2020 Leela Chess Zero 26 3+2, 5+5, 10+5, 15+5
14[47] June 2020 Leela Chess Zero 16 15+5
15[48] 17 1+1

PogChamps
Main article: PogChamps

Chess.com has hosted PogChamps, an amateur online tournament featuring Twitch streamers. PogChamps 1 featured top streamers such as xQcOW, NymN, moistcr1tikal, ludwig, forsen and many more. PogChamps 2 brought in many more huge streamers such as, itsHafu and Hafthorjuilius.[49] PogChamps 3, February 2021 featured the biggest streamers and creators yet, such as MrBeast, Myth, pokimane, and other big streamers from prior events. The event also featured notable celebrities such as actor Rainn Wilson and rapper Logic.

Features

Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free,[50] but players have to pay to get additional features.

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 voting games, in which players form teams and vote on the best move. Additional features include tactics training, chess forums, articles, videos, lessons, chess news, downloads, opening databases, groups, live broadcasts,[51] 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.[52]

Users can play a number of variants on the live server, including crazyhouse, three-check, four-player, king of the hill, chess960 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)".[53] It utilizes certain undisclosed techniques to catch players using engines in games and bans many on a daily basis.[54][55]

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 unique guardianship program whereby 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.[56] 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.[57][58] According to David Petty, the event organizer in 2013,

The online component [of CONIC] 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 many 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.[56] They also have a long-term partnership with the NTCA (North Texas Chess Academy) which gives children ready access to online instructors.[59]

See also

References
  1. "Chess.com Staff". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  2. "Chess.com chooses Azul Zing to enhance real-time gaming experience". marketwired.com. 2016-04-26. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  3. "Chess.com: A Social Networking Site For...Well You Can Probably Guess". TechCrunch. 2007-07-08. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
  4. "Chess Mentor by Aficionado". Web.archive.org. 1997-07-10. Archived from the original on July 10, 1997. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
  5. "Chesspark And Chess.com Put Their Pawns Together". TechCrunch. 2009-12-22. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
  6. Peter Doggers (2013-10-03). "Breaking: Chess.com to acquire". ChessVibes. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
  7. Mike Klein (2013-10-03). "Chess.com to Acquire ChessVibes". USCF. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  8. Pete Cilento (2014-12-15). "Chess.com: 1 Billion Games Served". Chess.com. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
  9. "Introducing The New Chess.com (Version 3)". Chess.com. 2016-01-21. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  10. Angelica Cabral (2017-06-15). "Chess.com App Crashes on Older Apple Devices After People Played One Game Too Many". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  11. Keith Collins (2017-06-14). "A popular chess app inadvertently broke the mathematical limits of older Apple devices". QZ. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  12. "Why Chess.com Broke on 32-bit iOS Devices". Drinkingcaffeine.com. 2017-06-13. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  13. "Chess.com Acquires Komodo; Launches New 'Monte Carlo' Version Similar To AlphaZero". Chess.com. 2018-05-24. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  14. "Komodo 12 with AlphaZero techniques". Chessbase. 2018-05-28. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  15. "Deathmatch historical archive". Chess.com. May 17, 2012. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  16. Klein, Mike (30 May 2013). "Death Match 15: Caruana vs. Aveskulov". USchess.org. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
  17. Klein, Mikepublisher=Chess.com (5 August 2013). "Chess.com to Host 2013 US Chess League". Retrieved 22 August 2020.
  18. John Lee Shaw (2017-02-08). "Safarli Wins Chess.com 'Titled Tuesday' for February". hotoffthechess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  19. Mike Klein (2014-10-28). "Jobava Stays Up Late, Routs Chess.com's First Titled Tuesday". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  20. Mike Klein (2014-11-30). "Titled Player Tuesday Historical Archive". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  21. Dennis Monokroussos (2017-11-15). "Carlsen Wins November's "Titled Tuesday"". thechessmind.net. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  22. "Announcement of the 2018 Chess.com Isle of Man International". Isle of Man International. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  23. Sam Copeland (2018-06-09). "Iranians Darini, Hejazipour Win IoM Trips In Titled Tuesday". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  24. Mark Crowther (2016-10-27). "Carlsen-Nakamura chess.com GM Blitz Battle Final 2016". TWIC. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
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  26. Pete Cilento (2017-05-02). "2017 Speed Chess Championship Schedule, Results, Information". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  27. "Speed Chess Championship 2018 - Official Information". Chess.com. 2018-08-18. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  28. "Nakamura Defeats So To Repeat As Speed Chess Champion". Chess.com. 2018-04-20. Retrieved 2020-10-22.
  29. "Nakamura Wins 2020 Speed Chess Championship Final Presented By OnJuno". Chess.com. 2020-12-15. Retrieved 2021-01-03.
  30. Peter Doggers (2016-08-25). "U.S. Chess League Becomes PRO Chess League". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  31. Isaac Steincamp (2019-05-22). "PRO Chess League Summer Series: 16 Teams, 16 Stories". Chess.com. Retrieved 2019-05-26.
  32. Mike Klein (2017-03-26). "St. Louis Arch Bishops Win Inaugural PRO League Title". Chess.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  33. Devanshi Rathi (2018-04-11). "The PRO Chess League Finals: The biggest event in Chess e-sports history". sportskeeda.com. Retrieved 2018-09-05.
  34. Mike Klein (2019-05-08). "Arch Bishops Capture 2nd PRO Chess League Title". Chess.com. Retrieved 2019-05-26.
  35. Pete Cilento (2018-11-18). "Chess.com announces computer chess championship". Chess.com.
  36. Pete Cilento (2017-11-18). "Stockfish wins chess.com computer championship". Chess.com.
  37. Pete (Pete). "Live Now: The New Computer Chess Championship". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  38. Pete (Pete). "Machine-Learning Lc0 Joins 'Big 3' Engines Atop Computer Chess Championship At Half". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  39. Pete (Pete). "Computer Chess Championship Back For Rapid Redux". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  40. Pete (Pete). "Stockfish Wins Rapid Computer Championship Over Lc0; Bullet Chess Next". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  41. Pete (Pete). "Stockfish Wins Computer Chess Championship Bullet; 'Escalation' Next". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  42. "TCEC S14 Final, CCC5/-6; Part 2/2". Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  43. Pete (Pete). "Computer Chess Championship Plays Blitz After Stockfish Defends Title". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  44. Pete (Pete). "Lc0 Wins Computer Chess Championship, Makes History". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  45. (b1wein). "CCC10 Attempt 2 Up and Running". Chess.com. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  46. v2.png "CCC13 results" Check |url= value (help).
  47. Results.png "CCC14 results" Check |url= value (help).
  48. Brackets.png "CCC15 results" Check |url= value (help).
  49. "Chess.com Launches PogChamps With Top Twitch Streamers". Chess.com. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
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  55. "Cheating at Chess on Chess.com - Questions and Answers". Retrieved May 11, 2017. "We won't disclose our exact methods for catching cheaters (to prevent cheaters from adapting their methods), but it involves cutting-edge technology and human judgement. ... We don't make huge public statements about catching cheaters, but we close many accounts each week for cheating, including accounts for Premium Members who are cheating. We are constantly going through our top players and submitting them to our cheat detection process.
  56. "ICA Offers Free ChessKid Gold Upgrade to K-12 Members". Illinois Chess Association. Archived from the original on 2018-09-05. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
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  58. "Bay Area kids look to checkmate opponents from a computer screen". Contra Costa Times. 2013-06-15. Retrieved 2013-11-30.
  59. "ChessKid Gold Membership". NTCA. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
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