New Ways To Enjoy Chess (And The Truth On Danny Unplugging Our Servers)
It's a whopper of an update this month, with some exciting new features and improvements to make your Chess.com experience better than ever. How many visits did the website receive in January, and how many rating points were refunded by the Fair Play team? Find out below.
Here's what this update covers:
Product
Analyze your games with more insights than ever before, build a powerful empire with your chess puzzle skills, or create your very own super-tournament. The choice is yours.
- Use your chess skills to duel knights, defeat bandits, and build a mighty medieval kingdom in the Kingdom Chess app! Check out this fun new way to solve puzzles, practice your tactics, and play against rulers of other kingdoms.
- Prefer a more traditional chess experience? You can still enjoy the Kingdom Chess bots that have marauded their way onto Chess.com.
- Analyzing your games is now easier than ever with the new Explore tab. Compare your moves to those played by masters, see how other games ended, get engine evaluations, and more.
- You can now start your own chess tournament and share it with the world! Invite your friends, colleagues, classmates, and mortal enemies to compete in custom events.
- 10,101 new puzzles were added in January, bringing us to a total of 828,503 unique puzzles.
Engineering
In January, Chess.com received more than 1 billion site visits! While it's amazing to have so many people enjoying chess, this also means we are targeted from time to time.
Over the last year, we have experienced several DDOS attacks each month. This involves the site being struck by millions of malicious hits within minutes. When this happens, our systems kick in to mitigate the damage.
During a significant attack, some users may experience brief downtime. But, with our defense system, the vast majority are unaffected, and the attack is quickly stopped.
Our engineers are always working to make our platform even more resilient. If you are ever affected by an outage, our support team is happy to help.
If you are in tech and would like to join our team, we're hiring!
Events
2024 started with a bang, with several major events in the first weeks of the year.
- Faster and more furious than ever: The Champions Chess Tour is back for 2024. An all-new season of the CCT is underway... Can anyone stop the dominance of GM Magnus Carlsen?
- Titled Tuesdays are going strong, with competition heating up for the 2024 Titled Cup. GM Hikaru Nakamura leads the open section with 82 points, but the chasing pack is not far off.
- Two things are certain in chess: We will blunder our queens, and GM Ray Robson will win the Puzzles World Championship. That's five times in a row now, if you're counting.
- Tata Steel 2024 came and went in January, with impressive upsets and thrilling action. Who won, and what was the best game of this super-tournament? Get our 11 key takeaways.
Community
We've already seen a Superb Owl. Now it's time for the Super Bowl.
- Join the Super Bowl Hype Arena action on February 11 and be in to win a football signed by NFL legend Larry Fitzgerald Jr. If you love chess and American football, you're in luck.
- Are you feeling lucky, Chesspunk? Opening Roulette spins into another month, and February's focus is the Sicilian Najdorf! Join the next community arena and practice your moves.
- Streamers and chess variants community members rejoice: The Variants Community Series is back, with a focus on Crazyhouse chess.
Content
Lies, facts, and GOATs dominated the discussion last month.
- How much money does GothamChess make? IM Levy Rozman and IM Danny Rensch delve deep into their innermost truths in this funny and surprisingly wholesome lie detector session.
- On the topic of money, who were the chess world's top prizewinners in 2023, and how much did they make? Check out which top GMs are swimming in gold coins, Scrooge McDuck-style,
- Want to relax for a couple of minutes and learn some chess history in the process? Follow along with this video of the best chess players over time. Who's your GOAT?
Chessable
January featured some spectacular new content for beginners and intermediate players.
- GM Sam Shankland has returned with an all-new course for beginners. Learn chess tips and tricks from one of the world's very best in this free lesson on piece alignment.
- FM Kamil Plichta is back too, this time with a free lesson on the Queen's Gambit! Unleash your inner Beth Harmon and master key variations of this famous opening.
ChessKid
The ChessKid National Festival is happening in Charlotte, NC, from February 16-19. There's still time to get your tickets if you're lucky!
- We're almost there: under two weeks to go before the CK National Festival.
- The Botez sisters will be there, and we're about to see the world premiere of fencing chess! Somebody, please make sure FM Mike Klein doesn't get injured; we need him for videos.
- In case you missed it, ChessKid celebrated reaching 10 million members in January. That's 10 million kids all learning the game and starting a lifelong passion.
- Speaking of lifelong passion, there's a Valentine's Day promo happening right now. Until February 14, save 30% on a ChessKid Gold membership!
Fair Play
Fair Play applies to regular community members and titled players alike. The 2024 CCT Play-ins saw more players than ever before on two cameras, providing additional security.
Fair Play stats for January:
- 399,635 reports created
- 66,591 Fair Play closures (including 11 titled players; 3 NMs, 2 FMs, 3 IMs, 2 CMs, 1 WCM)
- 80.9K mute actions
- 71.2K accounts muted
- 109.2K abuse closures
- 28,523,335 rating points refunded
Support
The team faced a bug that led to missing emails (which were recovered), meaning the first response time was slightly longer than usual. Don't worry; things are back to normal now!
- Average Time to First Response: 2 days, 19 hours
- Total Requests Received: 112,219
- Average Quality by Member Rating: 95%
- Total Ratings: 7,716
Thank you for being part of the world's largest chess community. Let us know your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!
Missed an update? You'll find last month's edition here.
