Everything "Fall"ing Into Place As Titled Tuesday Autumn Split Underway

The Chess.com train rolls on as we enter the last quarter of 2025 and barrel toward 2026. In the past month, the Autumn Split of Titled Tuesday began, we saw four players complete the next steps to the World Championship, released the schedule of everyone's favorite speed chess championship (hey, maybe that's what we can call it...), set a new record for vote chess participation, went to Budapest for the Global Chess Festival... and even with all that, we probably still didn't have as busy a month as WFM Anna Cramling.

Here's everything this update covers: 

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

Events

• After six weeks of the new Titled Tuesday, GM Magnus Carlsen has the CCT standings lead. Although Magnus already qualifies for the 2026 Esports World Cup, the top six in these standings at the end of the season will all make it, so every Titled Tuesday is huge.
• Titled Tuesday isn't the only long-running Chess.com tournament to get an overhaul. Arena Kings is now a multi-club arena, adding a team and community element to the tournament. The first new edition of Arena Kings was held on October 1. 
• The Speed Chess Championship returns October 13, featuring Carlsen, GM Hikaru Nakamura, and 14 other amazing blitz players! It will run until another epic live final, this time in London, in February 2026. Read all about it in our SCC announcement. 
• Variants beast IM Nhat Minh To swept both September's Duck Chess Championship and October's Seirawan Chess Championship—congrats! Can he make it three in a row in November for the Crazyhouse Championship?
• Four players got one step closer to the World Championship last month! GMs Anish Giri and Matthias Bluebaum finished top two in the open Grand Swiss tournament, and GMs Vaishali Rameshbabu and Kateryna Lagno did the same in the Women's Grand Swiss. (Next up in the World Championship cycle is the FIDE World Cup, which will decide three more spots in the World Championship and starts November 1.)
• Congrats are also in order for GM Fabiano Caruana, who won the Grand Chess Tour Finals and $150,000.

Product & Engineering

• It's October, so you know what that means: Halloween is just around the corner. Here's question, then: What's scarier, how our October bots look or how they play? Only one way to find out!!

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

Community

• GM Judit Polgar's Global Chess Festival enjoyed another successful rendition in 2025. Polgar herself played a live simul against several chess communities and won in a dominating 6-0 sweep.
• Every game between a chess star and the World team—made up of you, you, you and, yes, even you—sets a new record. The latest, GothamChess vs. the World, is underway with a whopping 165,000 players and counting! Vote on just one move in the game and you too can be part of this record!
• 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

• Chief Chess Officer IM Danny Rensch's memoir, Dark Squares, is out now! FM Mike Klein also talked with Danny for the occasion. Why not read both the book and the interview?
• Last month, we showed you grandmasters reacting to their viral moments. But did you catch video of the single greatest grandmaster reacting to his? If not, you're in luck:

• But if you can't get enough of all the best GMs, try this video of them analyzing freestyle chess starting positions.

Chessable

• Anna Cramling made her Chessable debut with her 1.d4 opening repertoire. With help from Anna's mom, the legendary GM Pia Cramling, this course offers grandmaster-level opening prep made easy!
• Chessable also introduced a huge new benefit to PRO: every PRO member now has a minimum 30% discount on any course, any time! As of publication of this update you can get a seven-day free trial of PRO, including the discounts!

ChessKid

• Custom avatars, resigned puzzles, faster games, and more: Whether on web, iOS, or Android, your ChessKid experience has gotten a whole lot better! FunMaster Mike made one of those custom avatars himself (see below) and you can too!

• Would you rather go skydiving or play chess against four great, young prodigies? Anna Cramling was a big deal for ChessKid this month, too, the most recent star in the hit Kids vs. Stars simul series, where she won 2.5-1.5. Congrats to Zac Chua for winning his game against Cramling!

Fair Play

Fair Play Stats for September

• 969,495 reports created
• 124,908 Fair Play closures (including 11 titled players: 4 CM, 1 WFM, 1 NM, 5 FM)
• 2,400+ mute actions
• 2,100+ accounts muted
• 247,800+ abuse closures
• 36,816,475 rating points refunded

Support

Support Stats for September

• Median Time to First Human Response: 22 hours, 8 minutes
• Users Helped: 121,000
• Users Helped By Humans: 24,112
• Average Quality by Member Rating: 93.7%
• Total Ratings: 4,085

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.