It Takes The Whole World To Stop Magnus From Winning

In the past four-plus weeks, GM Magnus Carlsen won not one but two major tournaments, and also concluded the strongest Titled Tuesday run of the past five months—although we were sure to see him in the Speed Chess Championship either way. But when it came to a game against the World, all he could do was draw.

Several competitions ruled the storylines this past month, which you can read all about below, and much more—like a different GOAT's newest Chessable course.

Here's what this update covers: 

• Events
• Product & Engineering
• Community
• Content
• Chessable
• ChessKid
• Fair Play
• Support

Events

• Carlsen claimed victory in the Chess.com Classic on May 23, which wrapped up the 2025 Champions Chess Tour. And speaking of wrapping up, 12 players guaranteed themselves a spot in the Esports World Cup (EWC) later this summer with their CCT performances: GMs Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Arjun Erigaisi, Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Vladislav Artemiev, Alireza Firouzja, Vladimir Fedoseev, Fabiano Caruana, and Wei Yi. See you in Riyadh! 
• Chess.com was at the DreamHack Dallas convention with some potential EWC chances on the line as GM Oleksandr Bortnyk won the qualifying event to put him one step closer to reaching the Esports World Cup.
• Congratulations to 2024-25 Women's Grand Prix winner GM Zhu Jiner and runner-up GM Aleksandra Goryachkina for earning their spots in the 2026 Women's Candidates Tournament.
• The Titled Tuesday Grand Prix ended on May 27, and with it, eight players qualified for the 2025 Speed Chess Championship (SCC), and eight more in the Women's Speed Chess Championship (WSCC). The eight in the SCC: Carlsen, Nakamura, GM Liem Le, Arjun, and GMs Denis Lazavik, Jose Martinez, Minh Le, and Hans Niemann. Minh Le qualified in his very last opportunity with a win in the late Titled Tuesday of May 27. The eight WSCC qualifiers: GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, IM Polina Shuvalova, Goryachkina, IM Karina Ambartsumova, IM Meri Arabidze, WGM Aleksandra Maltsevskaya, FM Anastasia Avramidou, and Zhu.
• Magnus also won Norway Chess... for the seventh time! (It's possible this was his last classical event ever, but we'll see.) GM Anna Muzychuk won the simultaneously held women's tournament in Stavanger.
• And don't forget to catch the 2025 Bullet Chess Championship starting June 23!
• The monthly Chess.com Community Championships haven't gone anywhere, either: GM Guha Mitrabha won King of the Hill in May. Who will take Hyberbullet in June?

Product & Engineering

• Been practicing your moves? And not only your chess moves? This June, the playable bots for June are karate-themed. Enter the battle today!

If you are in tech and would like to join our team, we're hiring!

Community

Congratulations to the Chess.com community for taking on the best player in the world... and holding your own with a draw that made headlines around the world!

• On May 21, it became official: more than 143,000 players participated as The World made a draw in its match versus Magnus Carlsen! Outlets as wide-ranging as CNN and the Guardian covered the story. Look out for future "versus the World" matches as well! Who will we take on next?
• WFM Anna Cramling was at TwitchCon EU, where she hosted a gala event. It was also a hand-and-brain tournament, won by GM Benjamin Bok and Ronny Berger.

My own chess gala!!!!! Starting very soon♟️ pic.twitter.com/PTdn9ZQv8m

— Anna Cramling (@AnnaCramling) June 1, 2025

• BlitzChamps IV is coming on June 16!
• To make the most of the ongoing Chess Improvement Challenge, join the club today and check out the club forum, too! Every month, we will recognize the top improvers and share improvement stories.

Content

• If the chess skill of a grandmaster intimidates you, just know that when it comes to drawing a map or even a piece they look at every single day, they are just like you or me.

• Firouzja continued our (borrowed) autocomplete interview format.

• We also had plenty of great articles for you this month, including pieces on GM Anish Giri and Ken Rogoff by our own Tarjei Svensen and Mike Klein, respectively. Giri spoke about the hidden downsides of chess stardom. And if you haven't heard of Rogoff, that's even more reason to read the interview: he retired from chess to become a world-renowned economist instead, and spoke about it all with Chess.com.

Chessable

• GM Judit Polgar, the consensus greatest woman chess player ever, and one of the greatest players bar-none—in 1991, she became the youngest-ever grandmaster, surpassing GM Bobby Fischer's previous record—returns to Chessable with a course based on her book, Judit Polgar Teaches Chess.   
• Another Chessable favorite, GM Eugene Perelshteyn, is out with his latest course, Lifetime Repertoires: Nimzo & Bogo-Indian Defense.

ChessKid 

• The ChessKid Youth Championships just wrapped up with GM Andy Woodward winning the under-16 championship on June 8, following GM Aaron Mendes becoming the under-13 champion in April.
• You can always see what's on the ChessKid docket at the ChessKid Events Calendar.

Fair Play

Fair Play Stats for April:

• 1,149,814 reports created
• 113,231 Fair Play closures (including 11 titled players: 2 IM, 6 FM, 1 WCM, 2 NM)
• 9,000+ mute actions
• 8,300+ accounts muted
• 235,000+ abuse closures
• 49,798,902 rating points refunded

Support

• Median Time to First Human Response: 1 day, 18 hours
• Users Helped: 23,741
• Average Quality by Member Rating: 91.5%
• Total Ratings: 4,563

Thank you for being part of the world's largest chess community. Let us know your thoughts and ideas in the comments below!

Missed any updates? Open the menu below for all past editions of the Community Update, or find last month's here.