The chess platform Chess.com is almost 20 years old. And it alone now has 200 million players, a sign that the ancient game is truly timeless. It has never had so many members, since it replaced its physical pieces with digital ones.
Five years after the lockdown and the success of the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, Chess.com has become a true social platform and a place of learning, where players meet for Blitz games lasting a few minutes to games lasting several hours or even several days, so that everyone can find their own rhythm and enjoyment.
The Chess.com platform surpassed the 100 million player mark in December 2022, and announced in April 2023 that it now had 11 million daily active players. Today, with 200 million players (much more than League of Legends), it boasts 1.5 million premium members, who have subscribed to a paid subscription to access additional services. Every day, the chess gaming platform reportedly totals 20 million games on average. In this veritable ecosystem, the reigning champion is not Magnus Carlsen, but an Indian named Gukesh Dommaraju.
From Duolingo to Chess.com, Albert Cheng is aiming for the moon
To continue growing, Chess.com is surrounding itself with the best. So much so that the platform has appointed a Director of Growth, named Albert Cheng. To fill this role, the man arrived with solid foundations, crowned with success. Indeed, he held the role of Product Manager at Grammarly and Duolingo. Remember that the famous language learning platform The little green owl is now listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, with a valuation of nearly $17 billion and a stock that has risen nearly 180% since Duolingo Inc. was listed in July 2021.
Thanks to Twitch in 2020, Chess.com became known and saw the emergence of new personalities who continue to attract new players. Big names on the web, like Inoxtag and PA from Popcorn in France, also attracted a young audience (during the , as well as stars like F1 drivers Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc. Albert Cheng exclaimed, in an interview with Tech Crunch: "I think the possibilities are limitless, and the more we can grow the game by exploiting the interest already present in adjacent communities, so I'm very excited about those opportunities."
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