Data from Reddit About New Users & Flux

this was commented on reddit. i thought it was interesting.

I've been going over some data recently, and I'd invite you to take a look something:

CHROME:

[removed -- MS] claims over 10,000 users, and a (* rating)

[removed]  has 100,000 users (* - over 700 ratings)

FIREFOX:

"removed] boasts 1977 users

"" has 4682 (*)

Above you have add-ons that show you best positions in live games (watch the userbase increase). Of these four add-ons (of which there are many others that are BIG and small), have a combined user count beyond the 116,659+ listed here.

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Furthermore, there are other add-ons that range between 1000 - 100,000 users all over Safari, Opera, Edge, Firefox, Chrome.

I’ve read that Chess close 2,500–2,800 daily. However, in an April 2023 blogpost they also claimed to get 250,000 new accounts daily. You’ve toted 75,000 bans per month in the past. This number does not add up.

In 2023 they posted an article titled “Chess Is Booming! And Our Servers Are Struggling.” Where they admit to having a hard time with the flux of users. These users are likely re-registering under new email addresses (not hard to get a new email address these days, I’m afraid). They count active users by “logging in withing 30 days” – so you can analyse games, and not plat, and count as an active user – interesting, right?

If you are unsure why, I’ll put it like this: In Feb 2025 100,000 people were banned (3,333 bans per day). Though the average for new users is 150,000. There are a lot of alts, and a separate browser, VPN, or even just a small amount of time will take you off the Chess.com radar. They claim to be blocking cheaters, and yet the same percentage of cheaters are active – by the way, it's a false claim that they there are very aware of the.

*Did you know that accounts get banned for swearing, arguing, being racist, sexist, scammers, trollers, quitting, stalling, stalking, and rating manipulation/sandbagging (aka cheating). -- While these are all valid reason to ban a user. My question is:

What is the scale of cheaters being banned?

What is the scale of “sandbagging”

What is the scale of trolls?

Are they the same scale?

They have given no comprehensive data differentiating the bans, at all.

I'll add more below:

Their flux is from multiple accounts. The chess boom ended in Covid. Chess.com are ignoring people. They are taking their money, and snuffing at them, and when users say boo a moderator will link the same article written in 2020 about how there is less than 2% of users cheating, and everyone else is just bad at chess.

That number is insanely wrong, and top people are very aware of it. If all 200 million accounts were unique people, then that would mean % of the entire global internet population has signed up to Chess.com. That’s more than there are First Nations people in Australia.

Here’s the kicker: They claim 10 MILLION analyzed games a day, with 4 MILLION daily users.

The volume of these hundreds of thousands of new accounts a day makes it easier for cheaters to continually re-register after bans.

Chess has lost control of the wheel. There’s a lot more to this, with a lot more data. I have spent a lot of time talking to people about it, and I am publishing an article soon on this.