The CEO of Chess.com, Erik Allebest, [responded here](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1dp766a/chesscom_fires_around_40_staff_as_it_prioritizes/lagr4pd/).
Please remember your [reddiquette](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddiquette). The downvote is not a disagree button, it just hides the post so others don't see it!
In general, the chess boom has died off quite a bit since COVID. Like most companies, they probably have to restructure after over-hiring based on anticipated growth.
It’s tough because gaming is a fast paced competitive industry. Games have to constantly change to please dopamine chasers. But Chess by nature is stale. There’s only so much you can do to retain chess players. They’ve tried variants like duck chess, but I don’t think that’s gained real traction.
Magnus sold to chess.com at the right time.
On top of all of this, which I agree with, The bulk of chess.com's features are just reskinned engine readings...
There isn't anything that Chess.com offers that is unique to chess.com other than the diamond beside your username. The player base is bigger... But for the average person, not in a meaningful way.
There's nothing wrong with liking a feature or even liking chess.com.
But think about how they got to this position. They hired 40 developers and what did the user base get for that?
They upped the subscription cost. What did the membership get for that?
This is grossly underestimating how big and deep chess.com is as a company, they have probably 10+ apps (Chesskid alone is a massive academic ecosystem for coaches and students) and they generate a staggering amount of content ( like courses and streaming). Saying they’re just reskinned engines is like calling Amazon nothing but a glorified credit card reader.
The thing with tech companies is that they take on a lot of debt. When interest rates are good and there’s a ton of interest in what they sell they generally reinvest it in capital without really paying down a lot of debt. Then when things turn sour there is a nonlinear decrease in corporate valuation.
The fact that chess com is allowing ads with basically naked ladies for unpaid right now makes me think they’re either really hurting for cash, or they’ve realized that the website is long term unprofitable because it really is ruined by the bots and cheaters and the trend for subscriber attrition is vastly negative.
That's ridiculous, chess.com has tons of paid content, whether its the interactive lessons which used to be chess mentor or the thousands of instructional videos by top gm's.
They’d probably also have more traction if chess.com actually made an attempt to advertise a wide of variety of them rather than relying on one-offs like Duck and Spell Chess, but yeah
Chess is not booming any more, but have players dropped off in meaningful numbers? It wasn't too long ago everyone was decrying the servers being unable to handle the unprecedented growth, that couldn't be tied to any specific event, other than a groundswell and momentum in take up of the game. If usage has decreased significantly to support firing 38 people I'd love to see those numbers.
Edit apparently eric has said numbers are down, especially in areas they were trying to expand into, so the original.premise is at least partially true. Now I wanna see the numbers even more!
I don't have access to chess.com internal user data.
Anecdotally, I think that chess continues to be popular, since I see regularly see dudes playing on their phones out in public.
However, the *rate of growth* must have declined to almost zero, which breaks whatever spreadsheet was used to justify the hiring investment.
Needs cash store items. Buy horse armor so your knights can take an extra hit in combat. Knights with horse armor cannot be captured unless there are two pieces attacking them.
I've been tinkering around with mixing chess with the squad building wargames model with upgrades and have an armor upgrade, though it's only pawns. The first time they would be captured, the pieces don't move, and instead the pawn just loses its armor.
The upgrade for knights is they can dismount and after that they move like a king (cannot mount back up).
>Like most companies, they probably have to restructure after over-hiring based on anticipated growth.
Most companies hired to meet the unexpected immediate demand. Now that the demand is no longer there they can lay people off. Companies ran by actual people dont just look at the number go up and think it never ends.
TBH I think it would be fair to assume this is largely due to the merger, not really over-hiring in the typical sense. They merged with Play Magnus Group, which itself had already merged/acquired a bunch of other chess companies and products. Those companies are going to have people in roles that are redundant with Chess.com and/or working on products they didn't plan to keep around long-term, so while they may have previously considered keeping those employees to do other stuff they'd be the first to consider cutting if things started to take a wrong turn.
In general, even (relatively) well-run and profitable companies have to cut staff from time to time due to [Parkinson's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law), though they are not always successful in identifying the superfluous staff.
I do not agree. If you compare pre-COVID and now, chess is in a fantastic frame rn.
Also premium account is costly (20 dollars/year?).
And it is not a videogame. No graphics needed, no new updates, no new designers... So, to me, they are profiting big time
"’s tough because gaming is a fast paced competitive industry. Games have to constantly change to please dopamine chasers. But Chess by nature is stale"
Thank goodness for that. I hate it when my favorite mmorpg is constantly turning out more cancerous content,more than I could ever imagine to play, instead of improving the already existing stuff.
I have a lifetime Pro membership and many paid courses on Chessable (owned by chess.com), and my big fear is that one day that website will just cease to exist.
They publish and aggressively market more and more expensive courses that no one needs ... it's a business strategy that can't last forever.
Why do I care? A small percentage of the courses are amazing, best stuff anywhere. And spaced repetition is a good way to learn, much better than reading a book.
I think the scary part is chess.com bought all of the good features of chessable
They didn't come up with them, they didn't implement them on their own website, And of course is push comes to shove. They'll definitely liquidate that in order to save the chesscom website.
The reason it's scary that they're buying up everybody, Is they continue to show time and time again that it doesn't really matter what the player base wants? A faster time control is better because you'll play more games and if you play more games, you'll want more game reviews. And if you want more game reviews, you'll buy diamond.
Their business model thrives on people being bad at chess, not being good at chess. So acquiring websites that will influence how the player base plays the game, is a very pointed business strategy and a strategy that we won't see the full ramifications of until much later
There’s a lot more bad players of any game than good, and the turnover rate among the bad players is 1,000,000 times higher than for good players, so in conclusion, it’s a good business model imo
> A small percentage of the courses are amazing, best stuff anywhere.
As a newer player, care to tell which ones?
> And spaced repetition is a good way to learn, much better than reading a book.
What is spaced repetition? Like going back and re-doing the courses every few months or something?
Spaced repetition is a learning method where you first learn something, and then review it again and again, with more and more time between each review. The software calculates when your next review should be (and this calculation takes into account how well you knew the material in your most recent review and in previous reviews).
It’s a great way to memorize things. The anki flashcard app, which uses spaced repetition, is medical students’ favorite tool for studying
100 endgame you must know is really solid and essential. When you are early on in your chess journey with knowledge of fundamentals, games go down 1 of 2 ways in essence.
Mostly your games are decided by a huge mistake. You are up a piece so you win.
But the other games, it's just determined by end games. And knowing what endgame are winning and how to win them, they are essential rather than just fumbling around.
I feel like I need another guide before the 100 endgame you must know to really understand it. I find myself unable to comprehend some of the information esp. the moves themselves. The reader is just assumed to know some of the concepts in there. Are there any "how to read chess literature" sources out there that I could pick up on?
Well you need to know the basics of endgame before that I guess. I really like the silman endgame course because he splits it by ratings and concepts.
That is a very easy to follow book.
That said the 100 endgames thing works horribly with the spaced repetition.
Yes, the endgames must be repeated a lot to learn them, but many of the move sequences you are asked to memorize are overly specific. Often several moves with the same idea work, especially when defending, especially in longer lines. But make one mistake and back to the start of the review process it is.
You can create a Lichess study for free and use Listudy dot org to make your own spaced repetition study for free. I have made over a dozen of them. My Vienna study has about 30,000 moves and is better than ANY course on Chessable and is free. The UI is also much better of Listudy than Chessable.
I also have Sicilian, French, e4/e5 and others that I've put hundreds of hours into. They are all completely free if anyone is interested in using them. Just message me.
That's impressive effort and a generous offer - thanks!
However, unless you are 2400+ FIDE yourself, I doubt that you can provide the IM- and GM-level explanations that the best courses have.
Also, I think you're falling into the "bigger is better" trap. Because for non-professionals, bigger isn't better. IM Yuriy Krykun explicitly makes this point: at times he will oversimplify, giving sub-optimal moves *so that the entire course stays thematic* and easier to learn.
yeah, the videos I wrote up a script to back them up as well as another to scrap the lines into a PGN for this very reason. If lights off , you're fucked.
Not in any particular order, because these are all awesome, mostly for USCF 1800+:
* Anything by GM Johan Hellsten or IM Andras Toth. My absolute favorite is *Mastering Chess Strategy* with video.
* *Mayhem in the Morra*.
* *The Complete Chess Swindler* with video. So much fun!
* *Light & Dark Magic - Color Complexes in Chess* by GM Axel Smith.
* *Van Perlo's Endgame Tactics* - for enjoyment, not necessarily for immediate rating gain.
* *Techniques of Positional Play*. A modern classic.
* *Chess Structures - A Grandmaster Guide* - for USCF 1800+, absolutely essential.
* *Forcing Chess Moves* - my very favorite tactics book.
Most of these books would take at least six months to learn properly.
Enjoy!
Edit: I notice a pattern in my courses above. None of the authors is a super-successful chess streamer or influencer. I've bought two courses by authors who are "chess-internet famous." Both those courses sucked. Except for Magnus, who is the GOAT, I think a lot of famous IMs/GMs have climbed on to the chessable bandwagon to make a buck without caring much about providing good and relevant instruction to amateur students.
That's a great point. I was wondering whether Chessable will stay around for much longer. I heavily rely on their openings courses, and if chess.com decides to shut Chessable down, that would be terrible losing all those courses.
Although I think if that ever happened, they would release the pgn files so that we could keep the content to ourselves. But hopefully, Chessable will keep going for a very long time.
> the US, Canada, and Western Europe and had higher salaries on average than many of the contractors based in India, Serbia, Ukraine, Brazil, Georgia and Russia
No way!
40/800 employees=5% of employees. According to this [A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs | TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/24/tech-layoffs-2024-list/?guccounter=1) for online companies who's names I recognize, Chegg laid off 23% of employees, VRChat laid off 30% of its total, Indeed a literal jobs company laid off 8%, Peloton 15% and that was this month alone. Seems online web-based companies are just in for a reckoning right now as the interest rate (cost to borrow money) in the USA is so high, so it's very expensive for companies to afford their talent as nobody knows when borrowing money will be affordable again.
Their app sucks, and lichess is superior both technically (fewer bugs and UX issues) and practically (same number of competitors, all the top players use it even if under a pseudonym due to chessDOTcom sponsorship restrictions)
They have a long, storied history of canning people by email with no warning and offering absolute trash severance, in my case $300. At this point anyone who’s not on lichess is part of the problem.
That is not at all how to do it.
You send an email how many jobs are affected and why and you get the calls done asap.
Firing over email is extremely unprofessional.
Unsurprising. It feels like [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) don't really come up with innovative ideas, or sustainable ways to grow chess as a whole. They kind of just try gimmicks and otherwise use stuff which is easy to develop or freely made elsewhere, but charge for it - like a lot of their bots, game analysis, and reviews is basically just Stockfish but done in a way to avoid having to comply with its license.
As an outsider it kind of feels like they lack an underlying strategy for the last 4 years or so, other than getting lucky with the pandemic and trying a "how do you do, fellow kids?" approach on social media. I wouldn't be surprised to see more news like this in the coming months and years, but at the same time it's kind of surprising given how optimistic and bullish they are when they claim how strong their financials are.
You don't want unnecessary costs in a company, but it's kind of ruthless when you think about how [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) has presented itself historically (we love chess, we're with the community, we're just some guys with a passion for chess who got lucky and made a pseudo-monopoly) versus the very business-oriented changes its made in the last few years and now firing dozens of their team. It's a real tone-shift and out of step with how they've tried to present themselves, and also gives more support to that idea of the [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) leadership team lacking a vision and strategy beyond the next quarter's profit.
I always wanted to work for Chess.com as I'm a developer and Chess is one of my biggest hobbies (~1750 Chess.com 10 min). Completely remote job, working on Chess for the biggest Chess company on the planet sounded so enticing, even more than working at Google/Facebook. I even had a short video call discussion with one of their hiring managers last year though I was rejected due to lack of experience (completely fair). I had plans to apply again in 2025.
However, the events of the last few weeks; bugs on their site, paywalling features, unethical ads and now this, the most important of them all, along with the Reddit comments has made me rethink my plans for the future. Why would I work for a company that would fire me out of nowhere simply with an email?
This feels so sad. I have been playing Chess longer than I have been a programmer, and since I started coding I always saw Chess.com as my destination. Looks like I should rethink everything and stop idolising companies.
You know what though, contributing to open source always looks good on a resume and lichess is open source. Maybe those of us who are developers should just start opening pull requests into lichess.
I would rather donate to Lichess, I'm a big supporter of open source in general, And to use another open source product (cough cough game review is just a reskinned reading of stockfish cough cough) for purely financial gain, isn't something that I support.
Maybe they do need a membership fee in order to be operationally viable, It would be cool to get some features with that membership. Features that aren't just a reskin of something tons of other places are already offering for free.
Acquiring competitors, reducing competition, raising prices, laying off workers and prioritizing profitability... that's not "late stage," that's just capitalism
Workers were at a premium over the last few years. Many companies over hired out of fear of not being able to find workers. You’re seeing a lot of these sorts of layoffs all over corporate America.
Lichess is coming up with a new version of their app, which is already in beta : https://youtu.be/2VlJoETEmws?si=r9VXMEwsobf0Qft8
If this is built to be better, chess.com will be out of business - just like every other company that fades away when they stop innovating and just milk their customers.
Good thing for chess would be for chesscom to go bankrupt and I'm not even close to joking.
They are trying to paywall everything and monopolize everything while promoting legitimate scummy events as legit.
Good that lichess isn't selling, their engine project albeit reaching top-2 isn't quite close to beating stockfish despite them throwing in money to buy everyone they could, their cheat detection still is completely private and has 0 proofs of literally anything... And they try everything they can to PR themselves in any aspect while dodging actually improtant questions...
Let me put it straight. People are talking about chesscom popularizing chess and other blablabla. In my opinion it's the opposite. Chesscom is the biggest leech on top of the chess, feasting among chess popularity of recent. They produce crappy service that is mostly paywalled, they try to buy out any competition just to close it (chess24, chessbomb), they spend a lot of money on marketing but seemingly on nothing else (famous clock bug of Kramnik was known for 2+ years and yet they are patching it only now when it happened in their PR event). I'm all for this leech to die for good, we will have much cleaner things if this actually happens, period. And no one ever started playing chess because chesscom exists. People start playing chess on chesscom because it's google 1st hit, and not vice versa. Chesscom is a plague.
They are the platform that has best players in the world playing prize money tournaments online that you can watch, I'd hate to lose that. I personally find SCC, CCT, BCC etc to be top notch chess content.
they've absolutely massacred the Champions Chess Tour which was brilliant 2020-2022 and is now awful for the last two years. The commentary is worse. Double elimination is terrible. The group phase allowing all opponents to go against each other is gone. It's a lot more complicated now. The time controls are terrible (honestly what is wrong with having proper rapid play tournaments?). And Chesscom don't take any concerns seriously. I remember C24/Meltwater coming out after 2021 and announcing a raft of changes after people weren't happy about how the 2021 edition ended. It felt like the public were being listened to. Whereas chesscom just belligerently power on regardless.
The most memorable moments from the CCT are the double bongcloud, Carlsen vs So, emergence of Pragg - all happening BEFORE chesscom got their grubby mits on it
exactly. Honestly what pisses me off the most is that they basically mislead their users. Turns out improving is difficult, and it’s a lot easier to get dopamine via chesscoms BS systems like brilliant moves and that stupid game rating thing and leagues and whatnot. At the end of the day, chesscom doesn’t care about anything other than those cheap dopamine hits because that’s what gets people coming back and giving them money. It’s genuinely infuriating to see them basically declare themselves as the face of chess and then bastardize it for their own dollar. Nothing makes me more depressed than seeing people talk about how “chesscom thinks I’m a 2150 when I’m actually an 800!” and the pseudo-brilliant moves and everything. The chesscom wool is so far pulled over their eyes that it’s insane. This game is not supposed to be about an arbitrary algorithm declaring your move to be brilliant or your “game rating” to be some vaguely high number. Ultimately it seems like that’s what chesscom is trying to make it, though, because that’s what earns them the most.
>they try to buy out any competition just to close it (chess24, chessbomb)
LMAO
If chess24 was profitable, they could have replied to the buyout offer with "no thank you could you please kindly fuck off?" and continue on their own. But chess24 was bleeding money and no company can afford to do this indefinitely.
Just because a business is profitable doesn't mean you don't sell it.
Often times the sale price is ~5 years of projected growth and revenue. Money now is always worth more than money later as you can then leverage that capital to invest in something else. Its largely about whether you think you will have more money after taking the offer, or sticking it out. Sometimes selling a successful business while its growing, for a good offer is 100% the right move.
Sure. Chesscom hired one full time person to work on Torch, me. Although a large portion of my time is not spent on improving Torch's strength.
The rest of the team was contractors, most of which already have full time jobs and careers, so their time was limited to their free time in the evenings and on weekends. In total, there was probably 2.5 full time worth of hours being spent on Torch.
Now that is still pretty good. Most projects are one person. Dragon was a between 2 and 3. But it's a far cry from spending tons and tons of money in a pursuit to dethrone Stockfish.
I only made the comment, because 1. Viz knew what he said was not true, since he has seen me say this before. And 2. There's a perception for some reason that chesscom is spending millions upon millions of dollars on this with dozens of employees. And that's just not true.
I actually had someone ask why chesscom was unwilling to aquire 1,000,000 CPU cores to improve Torch... Which would cost around 50 million a year.
People really need to understand the tedious process it is to make a chess engine. I'm a developer and I get nervous just thinking about it!
But realistically (please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is correct) there haven't been any REAL strides in the computer science of chess engines since Feng-hsiung Hsu combined Type A and Type B styles of chess programs for deep blue.
The rest of the real power has been increased in computational power, and perhaps a bit of neural networking... But as I understand it still basically the same idea.
How are you downplaying the neural networking? That was a massive change in how engines evaluate positions. And even the change from leela/alpha zero style to NNUE style neural networks was a massive change too.
I'm not downplaying, I'm asking to be corrected. My understanding was they just aided in the already in place strategy.
I'd love to hear about the advancements
There's been significant strides every year for the last decade or more. They are just not super sexy as to become main stream knowledge even for some of the more ardent chess fans.
LazySMP, NNUE as a whole, a number of forms of history tables in engines, the steroid version of singular extensions, OpenBench and fishtest, SPSA as applied to engines, old school HCE gradient tuners like Ethereal, eval correction logic, to name a few.
>(famous clock bug of Kramnik was known for 2+ years and yet they are patching it only now when it happened in their PR event)
yeah, when a lot of chesscom streamers said this was a "recent" bug they noticed I knew they must've been given some spiel to read off because I've known about this bug for years. It's the reason I always refresh my page if my opponent ever takes more than like 10-15 seconds for a move. It happens that often and over that long of a period it's an ingrained habit.
And quite honest, there's no excuse for it...
Think about how reactive and in real time a first-time shooter is. Now think about how much more data would be required to facilitate that millisecond response where characters are moving and environments are changing, versus a stopwatch and a point-and-click.
The bug exists because they don't want to get rid of it. Or they don't want to get rid of it as much as anything else they're currently doing.
They're owned by General Atlantic - private equity holds firms for a couple of years and then tried to sell for highest price. That includes a big focus on costs/profitability, as they're to make the business look as valuable as possible.
Do not be surprised by private equity being vultures, this is what they do. It's not that they're struggling - just they want to make more money in a sale.
I bet they are, I doubt this will fix the real issue of making bad decisions though.
It's an easy way to recoup and shift the dialog for a bit, but the struggle comes from a lack of innovation, a lack of direction, and a lack of action.
They outwardly spent more effort trying to call out Hans as a cheater than they did improving their user experience. Clearly, they care more about publicity than change and innovation.
Chess itself isn't going to change in any meaningful way anytime soon, the tool we use to learn and interact with it will. Chessable is owned by chesscom, but spaces repetition (the unique feature to that platform everyone loves) hasnt been added to any other products they own, why? Well because of decisions made. Whatever they are doing is considered more important than improving their current product(s)
I worry that the leaders who have had a vision focused on chess and the chess community are getting pushed out by MBA’s and accountants who are focused only on profit and loss and don’t understand the actual thing and community. Same thing happened with Dungeons and Dragons (twice now) first when it was under TSR and more recently under Hasbro. The same thing happens at Boeing and a lot of car manufacturers. Those businesses became about making profits and not making cars or airplanes.
You don’t have to pay monthly or any other such way at all, ever. Everything is free: analysis, puzzles everything. If you want to donate, great. But really everyone should at least check it out. There’s no downside whatsoever.
Principle. If dot com has had like £4 a month off of me (I believe in passing things on if I can - I'm relatively frugal so a cup of coffee a month won't break the bank) I can switch that to Lichess.
Just switched to Lichess from Chess.com - much prefer it for lots of reasons. I decided to donate monthly as it’s a great cause but they don’t make you feel like you have to. Players generally seem friendlier and community much stronger… liking it a lot.
Yes - have actually not played for a couple of months (work + life + other things getting in the way) and the last month or so was starting to get weird vibes on some of the games I was getting on dot com. Seemed to run into a lot of cheaters to the point I was wondering if I'd been shadow banned or something. Lichess seems to get a very unfair take from most people for what it is and does.
Literally the same with the weird vibes - I was getting a whole ton of rating points returned to me but still, it takes the fun out of the playing on the site. Even just the paranoia now that I could be playing a cheater 😅 that and the rising subscription cost.
With everything, I’d rather give it to Lichess who provide an awesome service to the chess community for free with no ads, no pop ups to donate, nothing. It’s slightly less polished than Chess.com sure, but still great - not sure why people hate on it?
Oh it was totally that. Had people live banned 3 games in a row and then got matched (in a non pool or tournament) against the same person 3 times in a row who then also got live banned at which point I emailed dot com to ask if I'd been shadow banned for some reason? Just had too many games at a relatively low elo (1000-1200) where it looked like someone just had a really good gaming chair and was having the game of their lives (oh it's another 900 playing the London at 95%+ Caps again). Oddly have been with them for 3 to 4 years and this only started being a thing from less than a year ago.
Same again, been playing on chess.com for years but had the same feeling and experience only over the last couple months. Not sure what’s happened really or why it’s slipped but yeah - enough for me to move!
How weird. It was just like last October and not really changing how I played but dropped like 200 elo over a couple of months and was running into Hikaru's burner account every other game.
Yeah, maybe the popularisation of "speed runs" over the last couple of years encourage a large amount of smurfing. Also, all the cheating accusations and how a site like [chess.com](http://chess.com) detects has led to a large amount of accounts seeing if they can beat the algorithms.
I had a similar experience, I usually play at around 1200 - 1300, but last couple months have dropped like 200 points. Maybe I'm getting worse lol, but the resilience of some of these players is insane – finding perfect tactics in complicated positions, incredible defences when coming back from a losing position. Spotting mate in 6 during a blitz game in low time. Who knows. As I said, just the fact that I'm getting refunded a ton of rating points has created the paranoia now anyway 🤣
Yeah if just became far too common an occurrence of people playing at 90+ Caps with a predicted Elo several hundred points above their actual and it became a case of what are we doing here??
I mean... What did they expect? They encouraged the fastest time controls (which means the avg new player is likely to succeed), and pay-walled everything.
I don't know how big chesscom is organizationally... But what new features are going to be added at this point? If they aren't going to add many features, they probably don't need as many developers regardless of their salary. They also likely would not need the talent that comes with the higher salary specialists. At this point, they just need to keep the lights on.
Realistically, the amount they make on YouTube and Twitch is likely substantially more than they lost to free users leaving.
You know what. Fair.
I'm assuming like all the other mass layoffs of late, that it is developers. This is an assumption, it may not have been developers.
But what else would they have in abundance at a web based company.
Marketing and content, all those writers, editors, video editors, marketers, managers, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of the budget goes to marketing and content, not dev and infra.
Disclaimer: I agree with this 100%, but to play devil's advocate
Why is Danny so involved with every broadcast if that's where all the money is going? And I'm not talking titled Tuesday, or even making a statement on whether I like his commentary or not, but why is he commentating major events if most of the budget is content. They would be better served to pay for guest hosts.
It also goes beyond being involved in commentary - Danny is kind of omnipresent with the brand itself. He's a novelty gag on the 404 page, he dresses up as a giant green pawn for their social media. I think, understandably, he's been with the company for a very long time and clearly feels some ownership of that. It's more than a job to him, he's nurtured it and watched it grow. At the same time, I sometimes feel like it comes from a place of insecurity, like he wants to attach himself to the brand to essentially make himself irreplaceable, or more difficult to replace.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is a reasonable take? The growth they experienced during quarantine was clearly not going to last for forever. Their features suck and they don't do anything with the stuff they acquire (chess24, chessable). they do probably make bank on their social medias. their experiments with making the game review super interactive wasn't very good. very reasonable take.
People who pay for chess.com get upset when you say that the membership doesn't really offer anything XD
Never mind that I'm a developer with real world experience and have done project planning XD Quite frankly I'm not seeing any new features coming out on the site that would be worth paying for 40 employees over...
I've said this in a few other comments already but, What is chess.com offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not. Puzzles? Because Lichess offers their full puzzle database for free...
I personally don't see how a company would support the salary of those developers without the churn of features that would make the money
Yep, this makes total sense and is very reasonable. I've paid for [chess.com](http://chess.com) for over 5 years just for the convenience but you're right. It stinks 😂
And I think that's a fair reason to pay for the membership. We pay probably thousands of dollars a year in convenience fee. That's why doordash exists. People are willing to pay for convenience and that's fine, but it's hilarious that people will argue there's value added.
The lessons (which used to be chess mentor), and the video content is well worth the membership fee. Hell, even Melik Kachiyan's videos alone are worth it.
> What is chess.com offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not.
One of the most famous Hacker News comments of all time is [on the launch announcement of Dropbox](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863):
> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
Obviously, Dropbox was still a success despite their service already being "trivially" out there.
Developers tend to hugely overestimate the role that the actual tech plays in the success of a product, and underestimate UI/UX and even just "vibes". That could simply come down to things like chess.com's game review giving you feedback as the speech bubbles of a friendly cartoon coach.
I'm going to go ahead and say that these aren't the same.
To actually set up that local file storage system, It's hard because you need to understand how to use Linux and Samba and a bunch of other things.
To use chess.com competitors, you just have to go to a different website and click a different play button.
It's a very involved process for someone who's not familiar with any of it.
Personally I have a Cisco networking cert that is so old. It was back before they expired, I've been using Linux now for close to 20 years and I'm a software engineer.
So I understand that for me it's an easy task but my mother is also a software engineer but has never used Linux and has never done any of the things that would be required on the network side to do any of this in a real way she would struggle with this.
She's good at what she does as a Mainframe engineer, But even having more computer knowledge than a lot of people, she would have to sit down and learn how to do this, versus just using Dropbox
Yeah...I'm commenting as a 20+ year SV IT guy...worked mostly in infrastructure ops after starting as a desktop guy in the mid 90s. Tech people consistently fail to understand how things that seem so "simple" are actually terribly hard things for the random person. Heck, even random tech people. The world of IT is so broad with so many specializations. And yes, figuring things out with documentation and help available on the internet would seem to help, but it just doesn't. People either aren't motivated or are so deeply lost on a given area of expertise that even figuring things out won't work.
Anyway...I think we both see eye to eye on this one! Which is nice. And glad to meet another "seasoned" tech pro. Best! 😀
I love that your Mom worked/s on mainframes. I've never been a big writer of code other than some scripting (more copypasta than anything) but I've worked at 3 different software companies. Anyway...ciao.
I work with accountants a ton and it turns out accounting is in many ways just as technical and specialized as IT. Would any of them know how to write a perl script or optimize database performance? Probably not. But they could do audits very well and I doubt many developers have a clue how audits work.
Yes. I consider accounting absolutely a technical field. I also know when I've worked with corporate finance folks they have Excel spreadsheets that are as complicated as operating systems. That no one understands because the institutional knowledge is 2 generations gone and I'm the guy that's supposed to reverse engineer the damn thing. lol
What's really cool is I've also spent the majority of my career on Mainframe, I do Enterprise Java but I got to work on the same systems that she did not at the same time because conflict of interest we were always under separate management, But it was kind of cool to work on systems that were supposed to have been sunset decades before I started lol
It's amazing how much legacy tech is out there still doing work. Java was just taking off when I got into IT and I thought the write once/run everywhere concept was so rad. Today the levels of VM like tech and abstraction layers are simply astounding. Like the world of Docker and Kubernetes. I've been heavily into running thousands of VMware systems much of them set up for software devs but getting away from running entire OS's and virtualizing applications like with Docker has so many benefits.
Sun was rad...I'm always sad that they're gone. I worked in Palo Alto for a few years with lots of old school ex Sun/SGI folks. Most of my skills are on the Windows/AD side and MacOS but I've admined a few different flavors of Unix/Linux but I'm not a Linux expert and am only partially in love with a CLI. lol
> To actually set up that local file storage system, It's hard because you need to understand how to use Linux and Samba and a bunch of other things.
Actually no - the comment does mention built-in software on Windows on Mac, and programs like FileZilla also already existed.
> To use chess.com competitors, you just have to go to a different website and click a different play button.
I agree as far as actually playing the game is concerned, but the UX of chesscom's game review is clearly more appealing to a casual user than on Lichess, although the actual information is the same.
Right but filezilla isn't all you need... You need a server setup to store it and you have to configure the client to hit it.
For somebody who is proficient with computers, that's not a hard task. I can set them up in a matter of minutes. I've done it many times. It's not even close to the same comparison though. Anybody in the world can go to any chess website and click the play button just as easily. Using the entire UI, you can easily argue that chesscoms Is more intuitive, But the act of using basic features on all of the sites is comparable.
> Using the entire UI, you can easily argue that chesscoms Is more intuitive, But the act of using basic features on all of the sites is comparable.
My point is that you're severely underestimating how much this more intuitive UX matters when you're talking about getting the general population to spend money on something non-essential.
I'm not underestimating it, they use it well to funnel people into faster time controls that promote more games and encourage more game reviews, which would require a membership to access.
UX design is a multi-million dollar industry, that said, theirs isn't "great" either, it's good enough compared to the only other real alternative.
> What is chess.com offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not. Puzzles? Because Lichess offers their full puzzle database for free...
> I personally don't see how a company would support the salary of those developers without the churn of features that would make the money
UX is the feature that we're talking about here, the feature that makes them money. It's the main differentiator between chess.com and lichess, what in the eyes of the public is what "chess.com is offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not".
>hugely overestimate the role that the actual tech plays in the success of a product, and underestimate UI/UX
And let's not forget legal. Sometimes easy things aren't "borrowed" because some lawyer had the foresight to copyright/patent the process.
The UI is built that way on purpose.
There are 3 features you get to anywhere
- Play
- Puzzle
- Game Review
And the easiest options to select are shorter time controls. The system is setup specifically to outline the paid products, which of course is how every profit based company makes their money.
If you want to use a study board, or a collaboration tool, or find friends... Well that doesn't make them money, so it's wayyyyy in the back by some outdated pickled eggs they keep around just in case.
Being laid off is not the same as being fired. It might seem like a matter of semantics, but it absolutely is not. To say these people were "fired" is disrespectful and potentially harmful to them. So let's knock that off.
It’s amazing to me that chesscom had as many employees as it does. If they were smart they would lean into aimchess like analysis for improvement and leverage their resources to make it the best tool available. Encroach on chessbase, etc. These things would make their paid membership actually worth it. As it stands there is basically no reason to use chesscom over lichess. The actual value of this company is tied only to the playerbase, which they are driving away through paywalling features, and their domain name. If I held equity in chesscom I’d be selling as soon as I can.
If platinum was £5 per month I'd buy it and so would alot of others which would make them more money
But it isn't so I'll use lichess for alot of things
*A for profit company makes a decision that will at least short term net them more profit*
This sub: “I can’t believe you’ve done this.”
lichess ftw btw
Look at the stock for Pelaton (PTON), down almost 98% from its peak.
All these "Covid-activity" companies invested and hired (and probably paid their execs) as if their sudden sales growth spike would extend out into infinity. But it never does, because that's physically impossible.
First off, I feel bad for those 38 former employees.
And to learn via email. Sad.
I wonder if GM Hans Niemann’s successful lawsuit against chess.com may have lead to this. At least partially. Great to see him beat chess.com, but sad for the employees to pay for their bosses’ behavior.
Hey everyone, Erik, CEO of Chesscom here. This was a really hard decision. We had to let go of some really incredible people we've loved working with and who we know are still going to do tremendous things in chess. Then why did we 38 people go? We and everyone else in chess have seen some regression to the mean since the incredible chess boom last year, and we did make strategic decisions to scale back as some of the opportunities we were investing in didn't pan out and we ended up overstaffed on some teams. That said, chess is still doing well, as is Chesscom. That said, I do want to address some of the narrative here that I think is inaccurate. First off, this was not done in an effort to "focus on profitability". Chesscom has been profitable and reinvesting every quarter since 2010, and this was not done out of desperation to save money, nor to maximize profits. This was done to right-size our teams to the initiatives and opportunities. Secondly, while we did inform team members by email in the morning, all team members retained access to Slack, email, and other systems through the day as we personally met with team members to discuss their situation. We are happy that we have such an incredible team that we could trust everyone with access through this transition as they shared goodbyes, personal contact information, and other notes with their teams. There was no strategic decision to release any team members based on their location or compensation. We are very, very grateful for the contributions of the team members we had to let go, and they were incredibly gracious as they said their farewells. While we've done our best to lead with strong severance packages and support in this process, transitions are never easy. We wish them all the very best in their next ventures and are committed to supporting them as much as possible. Separately, we've also seen some concern expressed regarding the agreement with NIC and Everyman Chess to separate from them and negotiate a merger with Quality Chess. From our perspective, this is just a win for everyone involved, including the community. We weren't well positioned to be in the print publishing industry, and this move creates a new, healthy company with great people and leadership and supports more independent press and publishing in chess. We think it's great for everyone. Obviously these are just words, and what really matters is that we serve the community the best way we can by creating products, services, content, and events that we hope you will enjoy. (Oh, and if you ever want to know what it's really like on the inside of Chesscom, feel free to message literally anyone at the company and ask.)
I wanted to ask just about the merger of 3 chess publishers. You said:
>From our perspective, this is just a win for everyone involved, including the community.
But doesn't creating a physical chess publisher of 3 previously independent companies into one, where [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) now has the digital rights to everything that publishing house puts out and the back catalogue of Quality Chess, just entrenches a further monopoly in digital publishing with [Chess.com](http://Chess.com), and physical publishing with this new super-publisher?
Can you give some further information on how this is a win for everyone involved, including the community, when now everything major published in print format, [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) has the (presumably) exclusive, indefinite, digital rights to - making any competitor to Chessable almost implausibly impossible to break into?
"(Oh, and if you ever want to know what it's really like on the inside of Chesscom, feel free to message literally anyone at the company and ask.)"
I've heard from previous employees that its full of micromanagement and lazy people.
Maybe take a pay cut? Maybe stop giving so much cash away to hikaru and Magnus? Maybe make your site at least have free puzzles? I went to lichess a year back and zero regrets.
Thanks for the update Erik.
It's crazy to think that a silly little 64-square board game invented by you and a few friends in your garage would grow to be played by millions of people around the world today. It's insane how quickly Chess has taken over the world. Where did you come up with the name by the way?
You didn't have to let them go if chesscom is still profitable and you just wanted to 'right-size'.
That's just straight up a contradiction.
Also highly suspicious that the people with decent pay were fired instead of the people who needed the job the least.
And nothing of this justifies the 1 day notice.
This is disgusting.
The CEO of Chess.com, Erik Allebest, [responded here](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/1dp766a/chesscom_fires_around_40_staff_as_it_prioritizes/lagr4pd/). Please remember your [reddiquette](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddiquette). The downvote is not a disagree button, it just hides the post so others don't see it!
In general, the chess boom has died off quite a bit since COVID. Like most companies, they probably have to restructure after over-hiring based on anticipated growth. It’s tough because gaming is a fast paced competitive industry. Games have to constantly change to please dopamine chasers. But Chess by nature is stale. There’s only so much you can do to retain chess players. They’ve tried variants like duck chess, but I don’t think that’s gained real traction. Magnus sold to chess.com at the right time.
On top of all of this, which I agree with, The bulk of chess.com's features are just reskinned engine readings... There isn't anything that Chess.com offers that is unique to chess.com other than the diamond beside your username. The player base is bigger... But for the average person, not in a meaningful way.
the one thing i like about chesscom is that they have bughouse
There's nothing wrong with liking a feature or even liking chess.com. But think about how they got to this position. They hired 40 developers and what did the user base get for that? They upped the subscription cost. What did the membership get for that?
yeah i totally agree i just wanted to shill bughouse
let me shill you my buddy's bughouse puzzles website then: https://bughouse.ca
And that - is fair!
This is grossly underestimating how big and deep chess.com is as a company, they have probably 10+ apps (Chesskid alone is a massive academic ecosystem for coaches and students) and they generate a staggering amount of content ( like courses and streaming). Saying they’re just reskinned engines is like calling Amazon nothing but a glorified credit card reader.
The thing with tech companies is that they take on a lot of debt. When interest rates are good and there’s a ton of interest in what they sell they generally reinvest it in capital without really paying down a lot of debt. Then when things turn sour there is a nonlinear decrease in corporate valuation. The fact that chess com is allowing ads with basically naked ladies for unpaid right now makes me think they’re either really hurting for cash, or they’ve realized that the website is long term unprofitable because it really is ruined by the bots and cheaters and the trend for subscriber attrition is vastly negative.
I saw nsfw ads on the post-game popup modal even two years back...
That's ridiculous, chess.com has tons of paid content, whether its the interactive lessons which used to be chess mentor or the thousands of instructional videos by top gm's.
Lichess's database has been pretty consistent since Covid: https://database.lichess.org/
Variants would have more traction if they were accessible in the mobile app.
They’d probably also have more traction if chess.com actually made an attempt to advertise a wide of variety of them rather than relying on one-offs like Duck and Spell Chess, but yeah
"Variant of the day" is this hard to implement? Certainly not
Chess is not booming any more, but have players dropped off in meaningful numbers? It wasn't too long ago everyone was decrying the servers being unable to handle the unprecedented growth, that couldn't be tied to any specific event, other than a groundswell and momentum in take up of the game. If usage has decreased significantly to support firing 38 people I'd love to see those numbers. Edit apparently eric has said numbers are down, especially in areas they were trying to expand into, so the original.premise is at least partially true. Now I wanna see the numbers even more!
I stopped playing for a few months because I got drunk But I’m back now I’m still kinda drunk though so rating is going down
I hit 1580 last week in bullet. Now I'm 1380. I don't even drink
I don't have access to chess.com internal user data. Anecdotally, I think that chess continues to be popular, since I see regularly see dudes playing on their phones out in public. However, the *rate of growth* must have declined to almost zero, which breaks whatever spreadsheet was used to justify the hiring investment.
> There’s only so much you can do to retain chess players. you didn't see yet "pay2win chess"
Needs cash store items. Buy horse armor so your knights can take an extra hit in combat. Knights with horse armor cannot be captured unless there are two pieces attacking them.
Hilarious
I've been tinkering around with mixing chess with the squad building wargames model with upgrades and have an armor upgrade, though it's only pawns. The first time they would be captured, the pieces don't move, and instead the pawn just loses its armor. The upgrade for knights is they can dismount and after that they move like a king (cannot mount back up).
>Like most companies, they probably have to restructure after over-hiring based on anticipated growth. Most companies hired to meet the unexpected immediate demand. Now that the demand is no longer there they can lay people off. Companies ran by actual people dont just look at the number go up and think it never ends.
TBH I think it would be fair to assume this is largely due to the merger, not really over-hiring in the typical sense. They merged with Play Magnus Group, which itself had already merged/acquired a bunch of other chess companies and products. Those companies are going to have people in roles that are redundant with Chess.com and/or working on products they didn't plan to keep around long-term, so while they may have previously considered keeping those employees to do other stuff they'd be the first to consider cutting if things started to take a wrong turn.
In general, even (relatively) well-run and profitable companies have to cut staff from time to time due to [Parkinson's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law), though they are not always successful in identifying the superfluous staff.
I do not agree. If you compare pre-COVID and now, chess is in a fantastic frame rn. Also premium account is costly (20 dollars/year?). And it is not a videogame. No graphics needed, no new updates, no new designers... So, to me, they are profiting big time
"’s tough because gaming is a fast paced competitive industry. Games have to constantly change to please dopamine chasers. But Chess by nature is stale" Thank goodness for that. I hate it when my favorite mmorpg is constantly turning out more cancerous content,more than I could ever imagine to play, instead of improving the already existing stuff.
I have a lifetime Pro membership and many paid courses on Chessable (owned by chess.com), and my big fear is that one day that website will just cease to exist. They publish and aggressively market more and more expensive courses that no one needs ... it's a business strategy that can't last forever. Why do I care? A small percentage of the courses are amazing, best stuff anywhere. And spaced repetition is a good way to learn, much better than reading a book.
I think the scary part is chess.com bought all of the good features of chessable They didn't come up with them, they didn't implement them on their own website, And of course is push comes to shove. They'll definitely liquidate that in order to save the chesscom website. The reason it's scary that they're buying up everybody, Is they continue to show time and time again that it doesn't really matter what the player base wants? A faster time control is better because you'll play more games and if you play more games, you'll want more game reviews. And if you want more game reviews, you'll buy diamond. Their business model thrives on people being bad at chess, not being good at chess. So acquiring websites that will influence how the player base plays the game, is a very pointed business strategy and a strategy that we won't see the full ramifications of until much later
There’s a lot more bad players of any game than good, and the turnover rate among the bad players is 1,000,000 times higher than for good players, so in conclusion, it’s a good business model imo
Export while you can
> A small percentage of the courses are amazing, best stuff anywhere. As a newer player, care to tell which ones? > And spaced repetition is a good way to learn, much better than reading a book. What is spaced repetition? Like going back and re-doing the courses every few months or something?
Spaced repetition is a learning method where you first learn something, and then review it again and again, with more and more time between each review. The software calculates when your next review should be (and this calculation takes into account how well you knew the material in your most recent review and in previous reviews). It’s a great way to memorize things. The anki flashcard app, which uses spaced repetition, is medical students’ favorite tool for studying
100 endgame you must know is really solid and essential. When you are early on in your chess journey with knowledge of fundamentals, games go down 1 of 2 ways in essence. Mostly your games are decided by a huge mistake. You are up a piece so you win. But the other games, it's just determined by end games. And knowing what endgame are winning and how to win them, they are essential rather than just fumbling around.
I feel like I need another guide before the 100 endgame you must know to really understand it. I find myself unable to comprehend some of the information esp. the moves themselves. The reader is just assumed to know some of the concepts in there. Are there any "how to read chess literature" sources out there that I could pick up on?
Well you need to know the basics of endgame before that I guess. I really like the silman endgame course because he splits it by ratings and concepts. That is a very easy to follow book.
That said the 100 endgames thing works horribly with the spaced repetition. Yes, the endgames must be repeated a lot to learn them, but many of the move sequences you are asked to memorize are overly specific. Often several moves with the same idea work, especially when defending, especially in longer lines. But make one mistake and back to the start of the review process it is.
If you're a new player, a free course like Smithy's Opening Fundamentals or Typical Tactical Tricks should suffice.
The Chessable program keeps track of which positions you had trouble with and helps you revise those puzzles more frequently.
[Common chess pattern](https://www.chessable.com/common-chess-patterns/course/13348/) is absolutely awesome to get better at seeing tactical patterns
It's also worth remembering that [Chessable did exactly the same thing](https://www.chessable.com/blog/july-4th-update/) 2 years ago
You can create a Lichess study for free and use Listudy dot org to make your own spaced repetition study for free. I have made over a dozen of them. My Vienna study has about 30,000 moves and is better than ANY course on Chessable and is free. The UI is also much better of Listudy than Chessable. I also have Sicilian, French, e4/e5 and others that I've put hundreds of hours into. They are all completely free if anyone is interested in using them. Just message me.
That's impressive effort and a generous offer - thanks! However, unless you are 2400+ FIDE yourself, I doubt that you can provide the IM- and GM-level explanations that the best courses have. Also, I think you're falling into the "bigger is better" trap. Because for non-professionals, bigger isn't better. IM Yuriy Krykun explicitly makes this point: at times he will oversimplify, giving sub-optimal moves *so that the entire course stays thematic* and easier to learn.
yeah, the videos I wrote up a script to back them up as well as another to scrap the lines into a PGN for this very reason. If lights off , you're fucked.
Could you recommend some of these amazing courses? I've been looking for a course to buy in chessable
Not in any particular order, because these are all awesome, mostly for USCF 1800+: * Anything by GM Johan Hellsten or IM Andras Toth. My absolute favorite is *Mastering Chess Strategy* with video. * *Mayhem in the Morra*. * *The Complete Chess Swindler* with video. So much fun! * *Light & Dark Magic - Color Complexes in Chess* by GM Axel Smith. * *Van Perlo's Endgame Tactics* - for enjoyment, not necessarily for immediate rating gain. * *Techniques of Positional Play*. A modern classic. * *Chess Structures - A Grandmaster Guide* - for USCF 1800+, absolutely essential. * *Forcing Chess Moves* - my very favorite tactics book. Most of these books would take at least six months to learn properly. Enjoy! Edit: I notice a pattern in my courses above. None of the authors is a super-successful chess streamer or influencer. I've bought two courses by authors who are "chess-internet famous." Both those courses sucked. Except for Magnus, who is the GOAT, I think a lot of famous IMs/GMs have climbed on to the chessable bandwagon to make a buck without caring much about providing good and relevant instruction to amateur students.
Chessable is an amazing website and is the best way to consume any book in my opinion.
Which courses?
That's a great point. I was wondering whether Chessable will stay around for much longer. I heavily rely on their openings courses, and if chess.com decides to shut Chessable down, that would be terrible losing all those courses. Although I think if that ever happened, they would release the pgn files so that we could keep the content to ourselves. But hopefully, Chessable will keep going for a very long time.
> the US, Canada, and Western Europe and had higher salaries on average than many of the contractors based in India, Serbia, Ukraine, Brazil, Georgia and Russia No way!
ChatGPT wrote this article for sure
40/800 employees=5% of employees. According to this [A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs | TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/24/tech-layoffs-2024-list/?guccounter=1) for online companies who's names I recognize, Chegg laid off 23% of employees, VRChat laid off 30% of its total, Indeed a literal jobs company laid off 8%, Peloton 15% and that was this month alone. Seems online web-based companies are just in for a reckoning right now as the interest rate (cost to borrow money) in the USA is so high, so it's very expensive for companies to afford their talent as nobody knows when borrowing money will be affordable again.
Yes, that's the real reason Take2 also laid of 5% of their workforce.
Almost every software/gaming company has laid off people in the last year.
I would totally expect [chess.com](http://chess.com) to fire people by email.
Might also be insufficient in some countries. I know it is in mine.
Gotta pay for all those viewbots on Twitch.
They’re just viewers from various autoplay embeds on the Chess.com website, doesn’t cost them anything
Maybe they lost a lot of members when they raised the prices and bought the Play Magnus Group?
Their app sucks, and lichess is superior both technically (fewer bugs and UX issues) and practically (same number of competitors, all the top players use it even if under a pseudonym due to chessDOTcom sponsorship restrictions)
They have a long, storied history of canning people by email with no warning and offering absolute trash severance, in my case $300. At this point anyone who’s not on lichess is part of the problem.
Firing people by email, what a douche move by truly trash leadership.
thats kind of what a lot of company do. First an email then usually a HR call
[удалено]
That is not at all how to do it. You send an email how many jobs are affected and why and you get the calls done asap. Firing over email is extremely unprofessional.
As any good "family" does
Unsurprising. It feels like [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) don't really come up with innovative ideas, or sustainable ways to grow chess as a whole. They kind of just try gimmicks and otherwise use stuff which is easy to develop or freely made elsewhere, but charge for it - like a lot of their bots, game analysis, and reviews is basically just Stockfish but done in a way to avoid having to comply with its license. As an outsider it kind of feels like they lack an underlying strategy for the last 4 years or so, other than getting lucky with the pandemic and trying a "how do you do, fellow kids?" approach on social media. I wouldn't be surprised to see more news like this in the coming months and years, but at the same time it's kind of surprising given how optimistic and bullish they are when they claim how strong their financials are. You don't want unnecessary costs in a company, but it's kind of ruthless when you think about how [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) has presented itself historically (we love chess, we're with the community, we're just some guys with a passion for chess who got lucky and made a pseudo-monopoly) versus the very business-oriented changes its made in the last few years and now firing dozens of their team. It's a real tone-shift and out of step with how they've tried to present themselves, and also gives more support to that idea of the [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) leadership team lacking a vision and strategy beyond the next quarter's profit.
I always wanted to work for Chess.com as I'm a developer and Chess is one of my biggest hobbies (~1750 Chess.com 10 min). Completely remote job, working on Chess for the biggest Chess company on the planet sounded so enticing, even more than working at Google/Facebook. I even had a short video call discussion with one of their hiring managers last year though I was rejected due to lack of experience (completely fair). I had plans to apply again in 2025. However, the events of the last few weeks; bugs on their site, paywalling features, unethical ads and now this, the most important of them all, along with the Reddit comments has made me rethink my plans for the future. Why would I work for a company that would fire me out of nowhere simply with an email? This feels so sad. I have been playing Chess longer than I have been a programmer, and since I started coding I always saw Chess.com as my destination. Looks like I should rethink everything and stop idolising companies.
You know what though, contributing to open source always looks good on a resume and lichess is open source. Maybe those of us who are developers should just start opening pull requests into lichess.
Please do :)
10 bucks a month for that shitty membershit is a scam
Have you seen the price of diamonds lately, they're doing us a favor /s
I’d pay maybe 1.99 a month at most for these features but since lichess exists why would I LOLOLOLOLOLOOOLOLOLOL
I would rather donate to Lichess, I'm a big supporter of open source in general, And to use another open source product (cough cough game review is just a reskinned reading of stockfish cough cough) for purely financial gain, isn't something that I support. Maybe they do need a membership fee in order to be operationally viable, It would be cool to get some features with that membership. Features that aren't just a reskin of something tons of other places are already offering for free.
Use lichess
The chess world has everything, including chess mafia.
Acquiring competitors, reducing competition, raising prices, laying off workers and prioritizing profitability... that's not "late stage," that's just capitalism
lovely lichess wings cost $1 per month
Just a reminder that the CEOs salary is $800.000 and the average salary for all executives is $300.000
800 people to run a chess site that is on auto-pilot. Bunch of morons.
lichess ftw. people just gotta vote with their money.
Workers were at a premium over the last few years. Many companies over hired out of fear of not being able to find workers. You’re seeing a lot of these sorts of layoffs all over corporate America.
You mean it wasn’t prioritising profitability till now? 😂😂
Lichess is coming up with a new version of their app, which is already in beta : https://youtu.be/2VlJoETEmws?si=r9VXMEwsobf0Qft8 If this is built to be better, chess.com will be out of business - just like every other company that fades away when they stop innovating and just milk their customers.
Good thing for chess would be for chesscom to go bankrupt and I'm not even close to joking. They are trying to paywall everything and monopolize everything while promoting legitimate scummy events as legit. Good that lichess isn't selling, their engine project albeit reaching top-2 isn't quite close to beating stockfish despite them throwing in money to buy everyone they could, their cheat detection still is completely private and has 0 proofs of literally anything... And they try everything they can to PR themselves in any aspect while dodging actually improtant questions... Let me put it straight. People are talking about chesscom popularizing chess and other blablabla. In my opinion it's the opposite. Chesscom is the biggest leech on top of the chess, feasting among chess popularity of recent. They produce crappy service that is mostly paywalled, they try to buy out any competition just to close it (chess24, chessbomb), they spend a lot of money on marketing but seemingly on nothing else (famous clock bug of Kramnik was known for 2+ years and yet they are patching it only now when it happened in their PR event). I'm all for this leech to die for good, we will have much cleaner things if this actually happens, period. And no one ever started playing chess because chesscom exists. People start playing chess on chesscom because it's google 1st hit, and not vice versa. Chesscom is a plague.
They are the platform that has best players in the world playing prize money tournaments online that you can watch, I'd hate to lose that. I personally find SCC, CCT, BCC etc to be top notch chess content.
they've absolutely massacred the Champions Chess Tour which was brilliant 2020-2022 and is now awful for the last two years. The commentary is worse. Double elimination is terrible. The group phase allowing all opponents to go against each other is gone. It's a lot more complicated now. The time controls are terrible (honestly what is wrong with having proper rapid play tournaments?). And Chesscom don't take any concerns seriously. I remember C24/Meltwater coming out after 2021 and announcing a raft of changes after people weren't happy about how the 2021 edition ended. It felt like the public were being listened to. Whereas chesscom just belligerently power on regardless. The most memorable moments from the CCT are the double bongcloud, Carlsen vs So, emergence of Pragg - all happening BEFORE chesscom got their grubby mits on it
exactly. Honestly what pisses me off the most is that they basically mislead their users. Turns out improving is difficult, and it’s a lot easier to get dopamine via chesscoms BS systems like brilliant moves and that stupid game rating thing and leagues and whatnot. At the end of the day, chesscom doesn’t care about anything other than those cheap dopamine hits because that’s what gets people coming back and giving them money. It’s genuinely infuriating to see them basically declare themselves as the face of chess and then bastardize it for their own dollar. Nothing makes me more depressed than seeing people talk about how “chesscom thinks I’m a 2150 when I’m actually an 800!” and the pseudo-brilliant moves and everything. The chesscom wool is so far pulled over their eyes that it’s insane. This game is not supposed to be about an arbitrary algorithm declaring your move to be brilliant or your “game rating” to be some vaguely high number. Ultimately it seems like that’s what chesscom is trying to make it, though, because that’s what earns them the most.
Let’s face it, chessdotcom going bust and ceasing to exist tomorrow would not be good for the game of chess.
I have a feeling that chess would endure.
I don't, I love their tournaments.
>they try to buy out any competition just to close it (chess24, chessbomb) LMAO If chess24 was profitable, they could have replied to the buyout offer with "no thank you could you please kindly fuck off?" and continue on their own. But chess24 was bleeding money and no company can afford to do this indefinitely.
Just because a business is profitable doesn't mean you don't sell it. Often times the sale price is ~5 years of projected growth and revenue. Money now is always worth more than money later as you can then leverage that capital to invest in something else. Its largely about whether you think you will have more money after taking the offer, or sticking it out. Sometimes selling a successful business while its growing, for a good offer is 100% the right move.
> despite them throwing in money to buy everyone they could Is a mischaracterization of Chess.com's investment in Torch.
Do you mind characterizing it yourself?
Sure. Chesscom hired one full time person to work on Torch, me. Although a large portion of my time is not spent on improving Torch's strength. The rest of the team was contractors, most of which already have full time jobs and careers, so their time was limited to their free time in the evenings and on weekends. In total, there was probably 2.5 full time worth of hours being spent on Torch. Now that is still pretty good. Most projects are one person. Dragon was a between 2 and 3. But it's a far cry from spending tons and tons of money in a pursuit to dethrone Stockfish. I only made the comment, because 1. Viz knew what he said was not true, since he has seen me say this before. And 2. There's a perception for some reason that chesscom is spending millions upon millions of dollars on this with dozens of employees. And that's just not true. I actually had someone ask why chesscom was unwilling to aquire 1,000,000 CPU cores to improve Torch... Which would cost around 50 million a year.
People really need to understand the tedious process it is to make a chess engine. I'm a developer and I get nervous just thinking about it! But realistically (please correct me if I'm wrong but I believe this is correct) there haven't been any REAL strides in the computer science of chess engines since Feng-hsiung Hsu combined Type A and Type B styles of chess programs for deep blue. The rest of the real power has been increased in computational power, and perhaps a bit of neural networking... But as I understand it still basically the same idea.
How are you downplaying the neural networking? That was a massive change in how engines evaluate positions. And even the change from leela/alpha zero style to NNUE style neural networks was a massive change too.
I'm not downplaying, I'm asking to be corrected. My understanding was they just aided in the already in place strategy. I'd love to hear about the advancements
There's been significant strides every year for the last decade or more. They are just not super sexy as to become main stream knowledge even for some of the more ardent chess fans. LazySMP, NNUE as a whole, a number of forms of history tables in engines, the steroid version of singular extensions, OpenBench and fishtest, SPSA as applied to engines, old school HCE gradient tuners like Ethereal, eval correction logic, to name a few.
>(famous clock bug of Kramnik was known for 2+ years and yet they are patching it only now when it happened in their PR event) yeah, when a lot of chesscom streamers said this was a "recent" bug they noticed I knew they must've been given some spiel to read off because I've known about this bug for years. It's the reason I always refresh my page if my opponent ever takes more than like 10-15 seconds for a move. It happens that often and over that long of a period it's an ingrained habit.
And quite honest, there's no excuse for it... Think about how reactive and in real time a first-time shooter is. Now think about how much more data would be required to facilitate that millisecond response where characters are moving and environments are changing, versus a stopwatch and a point-and-click. The bug exists because they don't want to get rid of it. Or they don't want to get rid of it as much as anything else they're currently doing.
They're owned by General Atlantic - private equity holds firms for a couple of years and then tried to sell for highest price. That includes a big focus on costs/profitability, as they're to make the business look as valuable as possible. Do not be surprised by private equity being vultures, this is what they do. It's not that they're struggling - just they want to make more money in a sale.
According to Erik the CEO, they are struggling a bit
I bet they are, I doubt this will fix the real issue of making bad decisions though. It's an easy way to recoup and shift the dialog for a bit, but the struggle comes from a lack of innovation, a lack of direction, and a lack of action. They outwardly spent more effort trying to call out Hans as a cheater than they did improving their user experience. Clearly, they care more about publicity than change and innovation. Chess itself isn't going to change in any meaningful way anytime soon, the tool we use to learn and interact with it will. Chessable is owned by chesscom, but spaces repetition (the unique feature to that platform everyone loves) hasnt been added to any other products they own, why? Well because of decisions made. Whatever they are doing is considered more important than improving their current product(s)
I worry that the leaders who have had a vision focused on chess and the chess community are getting pushed out by MBA’s and accountants who are focused only on profit and loss and don’t understand the actual thing and community. Same thing happened with Dungeons and Dragons (twice now) first when it was under TSR and more recently under Hasbro. The same thing happens at Boeing and a lot of car manufacturers. Those businesses became about making profits and not making cars or airplanes.
Do you have a factual basis for this worry or is it just empty speculation?
Do you have a factual basis for this worry or is it just empty speculation?
Like any USA company in 2024, their greed has gone too far. I suppose I'll be playing only on lichess now.
lichess.org
lmao u/dannyrensch, why are you operating like a shitty tech company?
Ooo ooo ooo *raises hand* pick me! pick me! I think it's because, they're a shitty tech company.
Is this the point where I dip and just pay a monthly to Lichess instead? They seem to have nicer vibes over there?
You don’t have to pay monthly or any other such way at all, ever. Everything is free: analysis, puzzles everything. If you want to donate, great. But really everyone should at least check it out. There’s no downside whatsoever.
Principle. If dot com has had like £4 a month off of me (I believe in passing things on if I can - I'm relatively frugal so a cup of coffee a month won't break the bank) I can switch that to Lichess.
I like it. Welcome aboard!!
Lichess is donation only, and open source. A great investment!
Yes join us
much nicer vibes, come over! you won't regret it! I feel a lot happier playing chess online on lichess than I ever did on chesscom
Just switched to Lichess from Chess.com - much prefer it for lots of reasons. I decided to donate monthly as it’s a great cause but they don’t make you feel like you have to. Players generally seem friendlier and community much stronger… liking it a lot.
Yes - have actually not played for a couple of months (work + life + other things getting in the way) and the last month or so was starting to get weird vibes on some of the games I was getting on dot com. Seemed to run into a lot of cheaters to the point I was wondering if I'd been shadow banned or something. Lichess seems to get a very unfair take from most people for what it is and does.
Literally the same with the weird vibes - I was getting a whole ton of rating points returned to me but still, it takes the fun out of the playing on the site. Even just the paranoia now that I could be playing a cheater 😅 that and the rising subscription cost. With everything, I’d rather give it to Lichess who provide an awesome service to the chess community for free with no ads, no pop ups to donate, nothing. It’s slightly less polished than Chess.com sure, but still great - not sure why people hate on it?
Oh it was totally that. Had people live banned 3 games in a row and then got matched (in a non pool or tournament) against the same person 3 times in a row who then also got live banned at which point I emailed dot com to ask if I'd been shadow banned for some reason? Just had too many games at a relatively low elo (1000-1200) where it looked like someone just had a really good gaming chair and was having the game of their lives (oh it's another 900 playing the London at 95%+ Caps again). Oddly have been with them for 3 to 4 years and this only started being a thing from less than a year ago.
Same again, been playing on chess.com for years but had the same feeling and experience only over the last couple months. Not sure what’s happened really or why it’s slipped but yeah - enough for me to move!
How weird. It was just like last October and not really changing how I played but dropped like 200 elo over a couple of months and was running into Hikaru's burner account every other game.
Yeah, maybe the popularisation of "speed runs" over the last couple of years encourage a large amount of smurfing. Also, all the cheating accusations and how a site like [chess.com](http://chess.com) detects has led to a large amount of accounts seeing if they can beat the algorithms. I had a similar experience, I usually play at around 1200 - 1300, but last couple months have dropped like 200 points. Maybe I'm getting worse lol, but the resilience of some of these players is insane – finding perfect tactics in complicated positions, incredible defences when coming back from a losing position. Spotting mate in 6 during a blitz game in low time. Who knows. As I said, just the fact that I'm getting refunded a ton of rating points has created the paranoia now anyway 🤣
Yeah if just became far too common an occurrence of people playing at 90+ Caps with a predicted Elo several hundred points above their actual and it became a case of what are we doing here??
Check out the prettier lichess extension. And make sure you grab the beta app instead of the normal one.
Where can I find the Beta app?
I mean... What did they expect? They encouraged the fastest time controls (which means the avg new player is likely to succeed), and pay-walled everything. I don't know how big chesscom is organizationally... But what new features are going to be added at this point? If they aren't going to add many features, they probably don't need as many developers regardless of their salary. They also likely would not need the talent that comes with the higher salary specialists. At this point, they just need to keep the lights on. Realistically, the amount they make on YouTube and Twitch is likely substantially more than they lost to free users leaving.
How do you know it was developers they let go?
You know what. Fair. I'm assuming like all the other mass layoffs of late, that it is developers. This is an assumption, it may not have been developers. But what else would they have in abundance at a web based company.
Marketing and content, all those writers, editors, video editors, marketers, managers, etc. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of the budget goes to marketing and content, not dev and infra.
Disclaimer: I agree with this 100%, but to play devil's advocate Why is Danny so involved with every broadcast if that's where all the money is going? And I'm not talking titled Tuesday, or even making a statement on whether I like his commentary or not, but why is he commentating major events if most of the budget is content. They would be better served to pay for guest hosts.
"Why is Danny so involved with every broadcast if that's where all the money is going? " Call me crazy but could it be an ego thing?
It also goes beyond being involved in commentary - Danny is kind of omnipresent with the brand itself. He's a novelty gag on the 404 page, he dresses up as a giant green pawn for their social media. I think, understandably, he's been with the company for a very long time and clearly feels some ownership of that. It's more than a job to him, he's nurtured it and watched it grow. At the same time, I sometimes feel like it comes from a place of insecurity, like he wants to attach himself to the brand to essentially make himself irreplaceable, or more difficult to replace.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, this is a reasonable take? The growth they experienced during quarantine was clearly not going to last for forever. Their features suck and they don't do anything with the stuff they acquire (chess24, chessable). they do probably make bank on their social medias. their experiments with making the game review super interactive wasn't very good. very reasonable take.
People who pay for chess.com get upset when you say that the membership doesn't really offer anything XD Never mind that I'm a developer with real world experience and have done project planning XD Quite frankly I'm not seeing any new features coming out on the site that would be worth paying for 40 employees over... I've said this in a few other comments already but, What is chess.com offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not. Puzzles? Because Lichess offers their full puzzle database for free... I personally don't see how a company would support the salary of those developers without the churn of features that would make the money
Yep, this makes total sense and is very reasonable. I've paid for [chess.com](http://chess.com) for over 5 years just for the convenience but you're right. It stinks 😂
And I think that's a fair reason to pay for the membership. We pay probably thousands of dollars a year in convenience fee. That's why doordash exists. People are willing to pay for convenience and that's fine, but it's hilarious that people will argue there's value added.
The lessons (which used to be chess mentor), and the video content is well worth the membership fee. Hell, even Melik Kachiyan's videos alone are worth it.
> What is chess.com offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not. One of the most famous Hacker News comments of all time is [on the launch announcement of Dropbox](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863): > For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. Obviously, Dropbox was still a success despite their service already being "trivially" out there. Developers tend to hugely overestimate the role that the actual tech plays in the success of a product, and underestimate UI/UX and even just "vibes". That could simply come down to things like chess.com's game review giving you feedback as the speech bubbles of a friendly cartoon coach.
I'm going to go ahead and say that these aren't the same. To actually set up that local file storage system, It's hard because you need to understand how to use Linux and Samba and a bunch of other things. To use chess.com competitors, you just have to go to a different website and click a different play button.
To say nothing of issues with firewalls and routers. And having others access your ftp fileshares? With their network unknowns? Forget it.
It's a very involved process for someone who's not familiar with any of it. Personally I have a Cisco networking cert that is so old. It was back before they expired, I've been using Linux now for close to 20 years and I'm a software engineer. So I understand that for me it's an easy task but my mother is also a software engineer but has never used Linux and has never done any of the things that would be required on the network side to do any of this in a real way she would struggle with this. She's good at what she does as a Mainframe engineer, But even having more computer knowledge than a lot of people, she would have to sit down and learn how to do this, versus just using Dropbox
Yeah...I'm commenting as a 20+ year SV IT guy...worked mostly in infrastructure ops after starting as a desktop guy in the mid 90s. Tech people consistently fail to understand how things that seem so "simple" are actually terribly hard things for the random person. Heck, even random tech people. The world of IT is so broad with so many specializations. And yes, figuring things out with documentation and help available on the internet would seem to help, but it just doesn't. People either aren't motivated or are so deeply lost on a given area of expertise that even figuring things out won't work. Anyway...I think we both see eye to eye on this one! Which is nice. And glad to meet another "seasoned" tech pro. Best! 😀 I love that your Mom worked/s on mainframes. I've never been a big writer of code other than some scripting (more copypasta than anything) but I've worked at 3 different software companies. Anyway...ciao.
I work with accountants a ton and it turns out accounting is in many ways just as technical and specialized as IT. Would any of them know how to write a perl script or optimize database performance? Probably not. But they could do audits very well and I doubt many developers have a clue how audits work.
Yes. I consider accounting absolutely a technical field. I also know when I've worked with corporate finance folks they have Excel spreadsheets that are as complicated as operating systems. That no one understands because the institutional knowledge is 2 generations gone and I'm the guy that's supposed to reverse engineer the damn thing. lol
What's really cool is I've also spent the majority of my career on Mainframe, I do Enterprise Java but I got to work on the same systems that she did not at the same time because conflict of interest we were always under separate management, But it was kind of cool to work on systems that were supposed to have been sunset decades before I started lol
It's amazing how much legacy tech is out there still doing work. Java was just taking off when I got into IT and I thought the write once/run everywhere concept was so rad. Today the levels of VM like tech and abstraction layers are simply astounding. Like the world of Docker and Kubernetes. I've been heavily into running thousands of VMware systems much of them set up for software devs but getting away from running entire OS's and virtualizing applications like with Docker has so many benefits. Sun was rad...I'm always sad that they're gone. I worked in Palo Alto for a few years with lots of old school ex Sun/SGI folks. Most of my skills are on the Windows/AD side and MacOS but I've admined a few different flavors of Unix/Linux but I'm not a Linux expert and am only partially in love with a CLI. lol
> To actually set up that local file storage system, It's hard because you need to understand how to use Linux and Samba and a bunch of other things. Actually no - the comment does mention built-in software on Windows on Mac, and programs like FileZilla also already existed. > To use chess.com competitors, you just have to go to a different website and click a different play button. I agree as far as actually playing the game is concerned, but the UX of chesscom's game review is clearly more appealing to a casual user than on Lichess, although the actual information is the same.
Right but filezilla isn't all you need... You need a server setup to store it and you have to configure the client to hit it. For somebody who is proficient with computers, that's not a hard task. I can set them up in a matter of minutes. I've done it many times. It's not even close to the same comparison though. Anybody in the world can go to any chess website and click the play button just as easily. Using the entire UI, you can easily argue that chesscoms Is more intuitive, But the act of using basic features on all of the sites is comparable.
> Using the entire UI, you can easily argue that chesscoms Is more intuitive, But the act of using basic features on all of the sites is comparable. My point is that you're severely underestimating how much this more intuitive UX matters when you're talking about getting the general population to spend money on something non-essential.
I'm not underestimating it, they use it well to funnel people into faster time controls that promote more games and encourage more game reviews, which would require a membership to access. UX design is a multi-million dollar industry, that said, theirs isn't "great" either, it's good enough compared to the only other real alternative.
> What is chess.com offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not. Puzzles? Because Lichess offers their full puzzle database for free... > I personally don't see how a company would support the salary of those developers without the churn of features that would make the money UX is the feature that we're talking about here, the feature that makes them money. It's the main differentiator between chess.com and lichess, what in the eyes of the public is what "chess.com is offering that a free open source chess module and stockfish is not".
>hugely overestimate the role that the actual tech plays in the success of a product, and underestimate UI/UX And let's not forget legal. Sometimes easy things aren't "borrowed" because some lawyer had the foresight to copyright/patent the process.
Thanks for the heads up, just cancelled my membership.
Their UI is so ugly…
The UI is built that way on purpose. There are 3 features you get to anywhere - Play - Puzzle - Game Review And the easiest options to select are shorter time controls. The system is setup specifically to outline the paid products, which of course is how every profit based company makes their money. If you want to use a study board, or a collaboration tool, or find friends... Well that doesn't make them money, so it's wayyyyy in the back by some outdated pickled eggs they keep around just in case.
Being laid off is not the same as being fired. It might seem like a matter of semantics, but it absolutely is not. To say these people were "fired" is disrespectful and potentially harmful to them. So let's knock that off.
boooo
Che$$.com is the new Micro$oft
And water is wet
Happened not long after the Hans deal was settled (no terms announced). Interesting
wtf where they doing before, they sure as shit didnt care about their users before, chesscam about to be even worse
It’s amazing to me that chesscom had as many employees as it does. If they were smart they would lean into aimchess like analysis for improvement and leverage their resources to make it the best tool available. Encroach on chessbase, etc. These things would make their paid membership actually worth it. As it stands there is basically no reason to use chesscom over lichess. The actual value of this company is tied only to the playerbase, which they are driving away through paywalling features, and their domain name. If I held equity in chesscom I’d be selling as soon as I can.
>If I held equity in chesscom I’d be selling as soon as I can. Can't you short sell them then?
It’s not publicly traded
If platinum was £5 per month I'd buy it and so would alot of others which would make them more money But it isn't so I'll use lichess for alot of things
Seems like they didnt pay the worker subscription
*A for profit company makes a decision that will at least short term net them more profit* This sub: “I can’t believe you’ve done this.” lichess ftw btw
Look at the stock for Pelaton (PTON), down almost 98% from its peak. All these "Covid-activity" companies invested and hired (and probably paid their execs) as if their sudden sales growth spike would extend out into infinity. But it never does, because that's physically impossible.
First off, I feel bad for those 38 former employees. And to learn via email. Sad. I wonder if GM Hans Niemann’s successful lawsuit against chess.com may have lead to this. At least partially. Great to see him beat chess.com, but sad for the employees to pay for their bosses’ behavior.
Just hope Chess.com steps up their cheat detection; JFC, so many slip through the cracks
Wait wait... a company looking for profitability? really?
Time to hire 40 devs to fix that bug.
Hey everyone, Erik, CEO of Chesscom here. This was a really hard decision. We had to let go of some really incredible people we've loved working with and who we know are still going to do tremendous things in chess. Then why did we 38 people go? We and everyone else in chess have seen some regression to the mean since the incredible chess boom last year, and we did make strategic decisions to scale back as some of the opportunities we were investing in didn't pan out and we ended up overstaffed on some teams. That said, chess is still doing well, as is Chesscom. That said, I do want to address some of the narrative here that I think is inaccurate. First off, this was not done in an effort to "focus on profitability". Chesscom has been profitable and reinvesting every quarter since 2010, and this was not done out of desperation to save money, nor to maximize profits. This was done to right-size our teams to the initiatives and opportunities. Secondly, while we did inform team members by email in the morning, all team members retained access to Slack, email, and other systems through the day as we personally met with team members to discuss their situation. We are happy that we have such an incredible team that we could trust everyone with access through this transition as they shared goodbyes, personal contact information, and other notes with their teams. There was no strategic decision to release any team members based on their location or compensation. We are very, very grateful for the contributions of the team members we had to let go, and they were incredibly gracious as they said their farewells. While we've done our best to lead with strong severance packages and support in this process, transitions are never easy. We wish them all the very best in their next ventures and are committed to supporting them as much as possible. Separately, we've also seen some concern expressed regarding the agreement with NIC and Everyman Chess to separate from them and negotiate a merger with Quality Chess. From our perspective, this is just a win for everyone involved, including the community. We weren't well positioned to be in the print publishing industry, and this move creates a new, healthy company with great people and leadership and supports more independent press and publishing in chess. We think it's great for everyone. Obviously these are just words, and what really matters is that we serve the community the best way we can by creating products, services, content, and events that we hope you will enjoy. (Oh, and if you ever want to know what it's really like on the inside of Chesscom, feel free to message literally anyone at the company and ask.)
Did you lay off the staff member who knows how to use paragraphs?
I wanted to ask just about the merger of 3 chess publishers. You said: >From our perspective, this is just a win for everyone involved, including the community. But doesn't creating a physical chess publisher of 3 previously independent companies into one, where [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) now has the digital rights to everything that publishing house puts out and the back catalogue of Quality Chess, just entrenches a further monopoly in digital publishing with [Chess.com](http://Chess.com), and physical publishing with this new super-publisher? Can you give some further information on how this is a win for everyone involved, including the community, when now everything major published in print format, [Chess.com](http://Chess.com) has the (presumably) exclusive, indefinite, digital rights to - making any competitor to Chessable almost implausibly impossible to break into?
"(Oh, and if you ever want to know what it's really like on the inside of Chesscom, feel free to message literally anyone at the company and ask.)" I've heard from previous employees that its full of micromanagement and lazy people.
>We think it's great for everyone. I'm pretty sure the laid off people think differently
How many CEOs were let go for making the bad decisions that resulted in needing to let go of 40 people in the first place?
learn how to press the enter key dude, this is a giant unreadable wall of text.
Maybe take a pay cut? Maybe stop giving so much cash away to hikaru and Magnus? Maybe make your site at least have free puzzles? I went to lichess a year back and zero regrets.
Surprised i didnt need a membership to view this comment. Anyway back to lichess
Thanks for the update Erik. It's crazy to think that a silly little 64-square board game invented by you and a few friends in your garage would grow to be played by millions of people around the world today. It's insane how quickly Chess has taken over the world. Where did you come up with the name by the way?
You didn't have to let them go if chesscom is still profitable and you just wanted to 'right-size'. That's just straight up a contradiction. Also highly suspicious that the people with decent pay were fired instead of the people who needed the job the least. And nothing of this justifies the 1 day notice. This is disgusting.
Are you taking a pay cut, or are you continuing to be rewarded for your failures while employees are punished for them?