05.07.2007 History of Chess.com - Previous Versions Wayback Machine 2007-2025

Chess.com was established on Monday May 7th, 2007. It is 17 years old. The website was founded by Erik Allebest and Jay Severson. In 1994, the domain was registered by a company in Berkeley California named Aficionado. This company used a domain to sell a tutoring software called Chess Mentor. Back then, the website was a static sales site. It wasn't a site for playing chess. In 2005, the chess mentor was sold. The first daily chess puzzle was created on May 8th, 2007. Daily Chess was released in July 2007. The beta version of Live Chess was released in June 2008. Live Chess was officially launched in October 2009. In 2010, the website established the option to finish a game against the computer if the opponent resigned the game. It released the tactics trainer, opening explorer, and video lessons. In 2011, chess.com redesigned the website to make it modernized. It let users to play specific rating ranges and time controls. It allowed their users to keep a record of their games in the Game Archive feature. In October 2013, chess.com acquired the site chessvibes.com founded by Peters Doggers. In 2014, chess.com introduced the Titled Tuesday Tournament with a 3+2 Blitz time control in October of that year. Only titled players can compete in this tournament. Untitled players can play in the Untitled Tuesday tournament. The website added changes to the interface and improvements to gameplay in 2015. Chess.com launched version 3 of the website in January 2016. It updated computer game analysis, chess variants, statistics, game archives, messages, puzzle training, guess the move, and many other features. In the fall of that year, chess.com hosted its first Speed Chess Championship. GM Magnus Carlsen won that blitz championship. In 2017, chess.com made huge changes to tactics puzzles, allowed users to replay their games at a custom speed, and made updates to Live Chess. In November 2018, it launched Puzzle Rush. If a player gets 3 incorrect puzzles, the puzzle rush ends. Later in 2019, chess.com established Puzzle Battle and  added the 3 minute time control and survival to the puzzle rush feature.