Chess.com Update: Exciting Events, Fabulous Features, And 100K New Puzzles
The first half of 2022 is almost over, and what a start to the year it’s been. So much has happened over the last few months that it can be hard to keep track of all the amazing events, tournaments, and updates we’ve seen. Let’s take this opportunity to look back at the first five or so months of 2022, as well as look ahead to exciting new Chess.com features, community events (including the Global Chess Championship), and more. Going forward, we’ll be updating you on a monthly basis!
Here's what this update will cover:
Product
Our Product team is working hard to bring you useful new features, as well as improve existing ones to make everything smoother, faster, and better than ever. The team’s focus this year is on quality and performance. Here are some of the highlights so far:
- We’re actively making the chessboard faster than ever—for your everyday use, and for more moments like this.
- UI updates and improvements were made for Arenas and Bughouse, as well as the Play page itself.
- We added approximately 100,000 new puzzles to our library to keep you on your toes. We’re now at a grand total of 443,963 unique puzzles!
- The team created lots of dynamic social images, meaning that when you share a link to Chess.com, there will be a cool image generated from that link featuring things like your game with someone, your stats, tournament results, top players, etc.
- We released a newer and more intuitive version of the navigation bar, featuring a search functionality that makes it easier than ever to find exactly what you're looking for.
- Chess.com V4 is now live on iOS as well as Android, ensuring that everyone can have the same beautiful mobile experience.
Engineering
Lots of the above wouldn’t be possible without our hard-working engineers, who do so much of the heavy lifting in the background. They’re always focused on maximizing the quality and performance of our site and app. In 2022 so far, they’ve focused on things including:
- Improvements to the chessboard & live gameplay.
- Making our site and API speed faster than ever.
- Diligently hunting and fixing bugs, big and small.
- Making pretty big UX improvements across the board.
- Helping out with many of the new products and features found above!
Events
It’s no exaggeration to say that 2022 has had some of the most exciting events we can remember in recent history, as well as some BIG announcements.
- The 2022 Chess.com Global Championship was announced: our biggest ever online tournament with a $1,000,000 prize pool (open to anyone verified on Chess.com).
- GM Hikaru Nakamura defended his Bullet Chess Championship title.
- Arena Kings Season 9 had 376 unique streamers participating, and we’re planning some exciting things for the next season.
- Titled Tuesday has been a popular fixture, with 19 different winners—including a surprise appearance by GM Magnus Carlsen.
We’ve also had some excellent new additions to our broadcast coverage team:
- GM Jeffery Xiong has hosted the Junior Speed Chess Championship, bringing top-tier commentary to the table.
- FM Anna-Maja Kazarian debuted on the Speed Chess Championship series, providing great insights and observations during the Bullet Chess Championship.
- IM Teddy Coleman joined the commentary team for the 2022 Rapid Chess Championship and will be sharing his expertise on more broadcasts going forward.
Community
Call us biased, but we think Chess.com has the best community on the internet. But it’s not just one gigantic chess hivemind (now there’s a terrifying thought); Chess.com is made up of many different sub-communities, all of which have their own unique contribution to what makes this such a special place to play, learn, and make friends. Here are some of the community-based highlights from the last few months:
- Up/downvoting exists on Chess.com now. We want our forums and comment sections to be a great place to share your thoughts and discuss chess. Therefore, you now have the power to vote on content that you enjoy or dislike!
- New articles like Streamer of the Month, Coach of the Month, and Club of the Month all spotlight some of the amazing individuals and clubs found on Chess.com.
- The Chess.com Discord has grown into a community of more than 25,000 people, with fun community activities (like playing IM Danny Rensch) as well as a handy weekly digest full of news, stories, and updates.
- Fantasy Chess is slowly becoming the next Fantasy Football (okay, for us at least); where else are you able to test your chess prediction skills against experts like Hikaru?
Content
Our Content team works hard every day to provide you with up-to-date news, insightful articles, and the finest chess memes found anywhere that isn’t Lularobs’ Twitter profile.
- Chess.com’s YouTube series featuring the dynamic duo of GM Daniel Naroditsky and GM Robert Hess has been one of our most popular so far—their high-level analysis and unique talent of making complex positions understandable (and exciting) for viewers makes videos like these so special:
- 2022 has also seen Chess.com start to take over TikTok, with this video alone receiving over 1.3 million views.
- But our content hasn’t just been videos and images— it’s also included things like this serious deep-dive into who will win the next Candidates tournament, featuring some serious statistical analysis.
Overall, we’re looking to create things that are as relevant and interesting to you as possible—so if there’s anything you want to see, let us know. We're listening.
Fair Play
Finally, let's talk about Fair Play. Something you might not know about Chess.com is that we have a whole team of people who spend every day working to make sure your games are fair. If someone cheats against you, there’s a very good chance we will catch them. If we do, they don’t just get banned (for good), but we will give you back any rating points that you lost by playing them.
- So far this year, 116,354 accounts have been closed for fair play.
- This includes 48 titled players.
Fair Play doesn’t just involve cheating to win. Playing fairly also means not being rude to your opponent. Sure, we all try some sneaky tactics every now and again when time is running out, but directing abuse and hateful comments towards your opponent (or other members of the community) is not acceptable. So far this year:
- 280,649 mute actions were taken.
- 236,250 individual accounts were muted.
- 277,826 accounts were closed for abuse.
What’s Next For 2022?
We really care about the quality of your experience on Chess.com. As a team, we’re always focused on improving, and we want to hear from the community when things aren’t working well! Instead of pushing out as many new features as possible, we want to make sure that all of the existing features are smooth, easy-to-use, and work the way they should. Our goal is to provide all of our users with a quality product, as well as a fun and welcoming environment for everyone to participate in.
Have any ideas? Is there something that you think could be better? Whether it’s a small issue like a minor bug fix, or a bigger thing that would really make life easier for lots of people, we’d love to hear from you.
Lastly, we just want to give a huge shout-out to everyone who is playing in leagues, participating in clubs, playing variants, joining tournaments, sharing in our forums, analyzing their games, and streaming chess online—we appreciate you so much! Please accept our gratitude for making Chess.com the biggest and best place to play chess online.
