Chess.com's 10 New Year's Resolutions
The heralding of a new year is an incredible time for reflection, both on the past and the future. We thought we'd ring in 2025 by sharing our resolutions for Chess.com this year.
It's always hard to predict what will happen, and we're sure there will be unforeseen opportunities, stories, and yes—drama—this year, but here are our commitments to you, the chess community, in anticipation of a huge year for chess.
- Players can wear jeans
- All championships will have a single champion (except bughouse and team chess…)
- MOAR armageddon!!!
- Provide the best possible Fair Play protections in online chess
- Work with partners across the chess community to help grow chess
- Make chess even more fun!
- Make Game Review and Analysis the best possible experience for all chess players!
- Integrate Courses by Chessable into Chess.com
- Welcome our 250 millionth member to Chess.com
- No crash
1. Players can wear jeans
Skinny jeans. Straight jeans. Jorts. You can even wear jeans with holes in them. You do you.
OOTD pic.twitter.com/9reOP6zuJv
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) December 28, 2024
2. All championships will have a single champion (except bughouse and team chess…)
We would have thought this one was obvious, but in case it needs to be clarified—no, there will not be two Speed Chess Champions in 2025.
3. MOAR armageddon!!!
Jokes aside on the recent events from New York, we've been fans of armageddon for a while and we humbly believe the format should have included some kind of "definitive end" like armageddon in the first place. We don't agree with the recent decision by FIDE or Magnus and Ian to split the World Blitz Championship title, but we think armageddon is helpful to avoid tough situations like the one both players and organizers found themselves in.
We see armageddon matches as a thrilling feature of chess—not a bug! In fact, we love armageddon so much that we are happy to announce that in 2025, we will be hosting the first “Armageddon Chess Championship”! It will be a $64,000, winner-takes-all knockout tournament featuring exclusively armageddon chess! More details to come on that soon!
4. Provide the best possible Fair Play protections in online chess
Cheating is an important issue in online chess. In 2024, we published multiple blogs from our Fair Play team looking at the scope of cheating, and we made multiple updates to our Fair Play policies that have helped reduce the amount of cheating we observe.
In 2025, we are committed to guaranteeing the cleanest events possible. This year we will be fully launching Chess.com Proctor for use by all players in all prize events. We believe that Proctor will have a big impact in deterring cheating in prize events, and we are excited to release it and report back to the community on the results we observe.
5. Work with partners across the chess community to help grow chess
The chess ecosystem is THRIVING. Previously, we've invested a lot of resources into organizing our own events, and while we will still broadcast and run great events in 2025, we will be putting more of our effort than ever before into supporting partners across chess to reach their audience through Chess.com. This includes organizers, creators, celebrities, clubs, coaches, bloggers, leagues, authors, and more.
There are so many organizations and people growing chess around the world, and we believe we are uniquely positioned to support with tools like Chess.com/events (which will soon have the ability to add your own events), Chess.com/clubs, broadcast and analysis tools, our constantly improving API, publishing tools, and more. We are investing here and committed to supporting those with a mission to serve and grow chess!
6. Make chess even more fun!
We have a lot of products coming down the pipeline in 2025. Some big, and some small, but one throughline you will see is that we are investing in a lot of features to make your experience on Chess.com more fun! This includes more animations, audio, achievements, haptics, and more to make your experience playing chess come alive. We really believe that playing chess on Chess.com in 2025 will be more fun, satisfying, and rewarding than ever before.
7. Make Game Review and Analysis the best possible experience for all chess players!
Game Review and Analysis are core parts of the Chess.com product. In 2024, we made some significant changes, and while a lot of members like these changes, many of you don't. We are listening to your feedback, and we are eager to release some major updates to both Game Review and Analysis in 2025 that we hope will satisfy both casual players and power users.
For Game Review, we are going to be adding audio from many different coach personalities. This is a big value add for new players and vision-impaired players, and we think all of our members are going to have a blast with Game Reviews narrated by Hikaru, Levy, Danny (that’s me!) and more! We are also responding to feedback to make Game Reviews easier to navigate, especially on apps—helping you get to those critical brilliant moves and blunders faster. Still, many power users may prefer a more "self-serve" experience. For these users, we are investing in Analysis—making it easier to get there from the Game Review screen, and adding lots of new features. We really believe the additions here will make a big difference to our members.
8. Integrate Courses by Chessable into Chess.com
Courses are now available in Beta, and we will soon launch Courses fully on Chess.com. We believe this will add a lot of value to Chess.com members as we integrate Courses into tools like Analysis and Game Review to help you master your material. Additionally, premium members will be able to get discounts on Courses. Chessable is its own platform and isn't going anywhere, but we are excited to integrate this incredible content into Chess.com.
9. Welcome our 250 millionth member to Chess.com
In November and December of this year, we've seen a significant uptick in new members joining Chess.com, and 2025 is packed with great releases across chess media—books, TV shows, and movies. There are also thrilling new events with Freestyle Chess and the Esports World Cup, and the current generation and the next generation of chess players are playing incredibly and winning fans around the world.
Early this year, we expect to pass 200 million members. Maybe it's too ambitious to see over 50 million more people pick up chess in just this year, but we really believe this is going to be a big year for chess!
10. No crash
We've made major investments in hardware and technology since the last chess boom in 2023. In 2025, we expect to complete migration to our globally distributed server for all core services, and while we don't want to jinx ourselves, we believe server latency and uptime will be the best it's ever been, even as we welcome a host of new chess fans!
Thank you to all of those who have been with us through an exciting 2024. The chess community is incredible, and we are excited to welcome in 2025 with all of you.
P.S. If you have chess goals you are working on in the New Year, be sure to join the 2025 Chess Improvement Challenge to get resources and support from the community!
—Danny and Erik
