Slogan(s) Play. Learn. Share. Alexa rank 1386 (December 2016) | Website chess.com Registration Yes | |
Type of site Internet chess server, Social media website Founder(s) Erik Allebest, Jay Severson | ||
Chess.com is an Internet chess server, Internet forum and social networking website; it is also the name of the company that runs the site. It is the most frequently visited chess website according to Alexa Internet rankings. According to the website, it has more than 16 million members.
Contents
History
The domain chess.com was originally set up in about 1995 by Aficionado, a company based in Berkeley, California, in order to sell a piece of chess tutoring software called "Chess Mentor". In 2005, internet entrepreneur Erik Allebest and partner Jarom ("Jay") Severson purchased the domain name and assembled a team of software developers to redevelop the site as a chess portal. The site was relaunched in 2007. Allebest plays chess at an amateur level. The site was heavily promoted via social media and grew quickly, attracting mainly casual players. In 2009, chess.com announced a takeover of a similar chess social networking site, chesspark.com.
In October 2013, chess.com acquired the Dutch-based chess news site chessvibes.com. In 2014, the site announced that over a billion live games had been played on the site, including 100 million correspondence games.
Chess.com has held regular "deathmatches" since January 2012, whereby two titled players are paid to play a series of blitz games over a non-stop 3-hour period (5-minute, 3-minute and 1-minute, all with a one-second increment). To date, there have been 37 deathmatches, some of them held between top grandmasters such as Hikaru Nakamura, Dmitry Andreikin, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Simen Agdestein, Lê Quang Liêm, Wesley So, Georg Meier, Arkadij Naiditsch, Loek van Wely, Fabiano Caruana, Judit Polgár and Nigel Short.
In November 2016, chess.com switched to the third version of the website after years of development.
Features
Chess.com operates a freemium business model: main site features are free, but players have to pay to get additional features.
Visitors to the site can play on a live chess server and correspondence style games, referred to on the site as "turn-based". Players may also play against chess engines, and participate in voting games, in which players form teams and vote on the best move. Additional features include tactics training, chess forums, articles, chess news, downloads, openings databases, groups, live broadcasts, daily puzzles, online coaching and a game database of over 2 million games.
On the site, players are able to learn to play at any level, take part in discussion forums and watch chess events. Another popular feature is clubs (or teams), which can play matches against each other.
The company publishes a large number of articles on a variety of chess-related topics, including chess strategy, opening theory and history. Regular contributors include Gregory Serper, Bruce Pandolfini, Rafael Leitão, Dan Heisman, Jeremy Silman, Petar Genov, Daniel Naroditsky, Natalia Pogonina and Daniel Rensch.
Chess.com has a policy against the use of chess engines in all forms of the game, except unrated games where both players agree. It utilizes certain undisclosed techniques to catch players using engines in games and bans many on a daily basis.
Chesskid.com
Chess.com also runs the site chesskid.com for chess players aged 13 and under. Chesskid.com runs an online championship which is recognized by the United States Chess Federation.