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New Records, New Champions, New Bots

New Records, New Champions, New Bots

CHESScom
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The 2023 Speed Chess Championship ran its course, the Chess Clash event concluded after some spectacular battles, and Billie Joe Armstrong has awoken from his slumber—September has ended.

Enjoy a recap of everything that happened over the last month, and find out what's happening now!

Here's what this monthly update covers: 


Product & Engineering

The month of Clash may be over, but October's bots have arrived!

Image promoting the October bots on Chess.com

  • Paul Morphy is among the terrifying new bots haunting Chess.com's servers. Morphy was once known as ''the pride and sorrow of chess''; will it be pride or sorrow for you as you play him?
  • Spell Chess remains a playable chess variant on Chess.com. The rules are the same as the classic game we know and love, with the addition of two magic spells: Freeze and Jump.
  • In the excellent month that was September, we added 18,265 new puzzles, bringing our total up to 760,564.
  • The team has also worked on various behind-the-scenes optimizations to make sure your Chess.com experience is smoother and faster.

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

Events

Last month was full of new records and new champions, and we might see even more soon.

Image of GM Magnus Carlsen as he wins the 2023 SCC.

Community

Photo editing stars, here's your chance to shine. 

Image with details on the 2023 Photoshop contest on Chess.com.

Content

Chess is for everyone. New prodigies, former champions, and adult improvers all have a valuable place in our world. Check out some of our favorite content from the last month below.

Chessable

It's not too late for you to become the internet's new favorite chess teacher. Check out the details below.

GM Maurice Ashley wearing a Chessable shirt, with text on the image promoting the 2023 Create Your Own Course competition.

  • The 2023 Create Your Own Course Contest continues, and is open to Chessable PRO members of all levels. Whether you create a course for beginners or are eager to share your advanced opening prep with other tournament players, try your hand at teaching and be in to win amazing prizes.
  • The third and final part of GM Sam Shankland's complete 1.c4 repertoire has been released. Check out this free preview of the course to learn directly from one of the top American grandmasters.

ChessKid

ChessKid is coming to a town near you (assuming you live near Charlotte, North Carolina).

A promo image for the ChessKid National Festival in 2023.

  • ChessKid has announced its first major in-person event: the ChessKid National Festival! IM Danny Rensch, IM Levy Rozman (GothamChess), and FM Mike Klein will be among the attendees, with plenty of family-friendly activities and events planned.
  • ChessKid superstar IM Alice Lee played board one for the USA women's team at the FIDE World Women’s Team Championship 2023, earning an individual gold medal for her exceptional performance.
  • National Chess Day won't go by unnoticed: ChessKids can tune into a live stream on October 14, hosted by FM James Canty III on the official Twitch channel.

Fair Play

The Fair Play team stayed vigilant in keeping Chess.com a safe and fair place to play for everyone.

Fair Play stats for September:

  • 54,398 Fair Play closures (including 6 titled players)
  • 88.1K mute actions
  • 78.3K accounts muted
  • 106.9K abuse closures

Support

The support team is always here to help and dealt with almost 90,000 requests in September.

  • Average Time to First Response: 1 day, 10 hours
  • Total Requests Received: 89,612
  • Average Quality by Member Rating: 94%
  • Total Ratings: 6,806

As always, thank you for making Chess.com such an amazing place, and thank you for the comments you leave on these updates. Stay tuned—your thoughts might be featured in one of these updates soon...

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