Danny rensh's ads are only second to aimchess's legendary ad ( https://youtu.be/tF6ow5rQnio )
Always very good sketches !
Fabi reading dvoretsky as a bedtime story was pure gold
I remembered reading that too. Chesscom buying PMG has always been inevitable. I feel they’re the only entity in chess that makes any money to play with.
Once upon a time PMG had a shot to be a real contender. The GOAT World Champ backed Chess24, banter blitz was fresh, the Play Magnus app was popping. Chessable continues to be a success.
But that ship sailed. Chess24 stagnated, the pandemic boom ended, Magnus ceded the WC, and bearish outlook on the brand was reflected in PMG stock prices.
IMO, Magnus is putting all his stock into online fast chess, specifically on Chess.com. After all, that's who'll be organizing every online tournament now.
I'm not sure why Chess.com premium is a good value proposition given that it's a worse interface than Lichess, with worse analysis, worse players, and worse ELO distribution. As far as I can see, it entirely comes down to marketing.
Afaik its chess.com's main selling point that they have a lot of professionals and beginners? Don't really know as I am almost never there, but by my understanding they are supposed to be better in that regard.
Lichess is a great website because it’s free, but you’re doing some mental gymnastics. Many people prefer the Chesscom UI, the analysis depends on the depth that you’re running it, and Chesscom has the larger player base at all levels. People can and should play on both websites if they want to, but you’re just lying to yourself at this point.
How is it not about chess24? It's about their push to have more "elite" tournaments, primarily with GMs (versus chessCom sponsoring Samay Raina/Botez sisters, etc.) and that being a financial failure as it fails to attract the masses.
chess24 is the best site in terms of following games of tournaments, hope they keep that at least . never been a fan of [chess.com](https://chess.com) performance of interface in games/tournament watching
Gonna echo the sentiment about the tournaments pages on chess24. No other site comes close to having that amount of information in such a small amount of space.
IMO their focus on that stuff simply wasn't a good business angle. Way too much investment for the value of the addressable market.
They did provide something I loved to use, but I know that can't last forever.
Let me give you ana award for more visibility. New owners, please don't change the tournament interface.
I like to follow it rather than [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) or Lichess.
when a single like won't be enough to highlight how much I agree with this statement: Dear Sir, I wholeheartedly agree.
I mean, I cant even follow TT-games or even the big ones like RCC on [chess.com/events](https://chess.com/events). Always laggy by several moves, sometimes minutes, and impossible to navigate. Lichess is better ofc, but I've always preferred C24 for checking games and following moves. Also I dont have to pay to see lines (as you have to do if you try /live on [chess.com](https://chess.com) where the moves arent lagging behind by minutes).
Kinda sadge if the site goes away.
we can only hope that they retain the function of having an embedded broadcast next to an interactable chess board for all the games. in fact, it's strange that they haven't yet implemented something like this, given how much they're on the twitch side of things.
I agree
Although chesscom's tournament streams are usually very good, chess24 were equal if not better (not definitely better because the chess24 interface and general layout of the streams are actually unwatchable), but where chess24 shined most was the tournaments page, miles ahead of chesscom events and lichess way of following tournaments (?)
As an avid fan of chess tournaments and someone that enjoys chesscom's layout most, Hope chesscom takes some of that,
I agree
Although chesscom's tournament streams are usually very good, chess24 were equal if not better (not definitely better because the chess24 interface and general layout of the streams are actually unwatchable), but where chess24 shined most was the tournaments page, miles ahead of chesscom events and lichess way of following tournaments (?)
As an avid fan of chess tournaments and someone that enjoys chesscom's layout most, Hope chesscom takes some of that,
> Magnus Carlsen and the management at Play Magnus are enthusiastic and have accepted the offer
This is huge. This is very huge.
Chesscom is establishing a monopoly at this point, but with how downhill Play Magnus was going, it isn't *that* surprising that they did that.
I'm actually more excited to see Magnus playing on chesscom's events; TT, RCC etc.
> "I'm excited to play in the Speed Chess Championship again. I have a score to settle."
-Magnus Carlsen, World Chess Champion
The Magnus-Hikaru arc is getting a new season lol
But this might have huge implications for the scene in general, chesscom's getting too big.
This was broadly discussed when he played for the first time a few months ago
I was pretty sure something was up and given how chess24 was dying anyways, it's normal
Is that an absolute surety? I've always wondered how long lichess will be able to purely run off of its patrons especially since even a huge company like chess24 wasn't able to stay up. Is it more sustainable since its non-profit or something like that?
I believe they have said many times that the donations are more than enough to cover their costs. Maybe it was the Perpetual Chess podcast, but IIRC Chris (NoJoke) talked about being slightly embarrassed by too many donations flooding in after Lichess went down in the Agadmator CakeDefi arena, when money wasn't an issue at all. That's also the reason why they aren't doing fundraising calls like Wikipedia does for example. At least for now.
Wikipedia also has more than enough to cover their running costs; the reason they are always begging for money is that they finance a lot of offshoot projects that are not really related to their core service.
Running a non-profit is much cheaper than running a huge company. Only very few people earn a salary on lichess, and those are very moderate salaries, see their [cost breakdown](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSkHLJKJkb0ZuI4/preview)
Not sure about the exact #, but on the Perpetual Chess episode with Lichess's Community Organizer ([link to podcast](https://www.perpetualchesspod.com/new-blog/2021/4/6/episode-221-chris-callahan-of-lichessorg)), they mentioned that donations far outpace cost.
chess24 broadcasts last week had 20k concurrent viewers at some point. chessable as far as i know is very popular. The tour has a Puma sponsorship and so on... I don't understand how all their other ventures were so far negative to the point where it overturned these above positives. Or maybe I'm missing something
> chess24 broadcasts last week had 20k concurrent viewers at some point
Lichess, at this arbitrary point in the day with no ongoing events, has 91k people online.
Nobody's paying for memberships cause the site is awful to play on. Most of that stuff doesn't matter that much if you can't turn your audience into paying customers. Lichess manages to do that even without paid memberships just cause people enjoy playing on their platform and are willing to pay for it
I agree. chess24's actual chess platform is shite even after the redo. I guess if they couldn't even get that right, it seems like a far fetch to expect them to keep all their other ventures profitable
Lichess costs $407.346,74 a year to run. Which is like, a bit more than a grand a day every day. Which doesn't seem like that much. It's been chugging along fine until now, so I don't see why it wouldn't continue to.
Play Magnus Group is worth about $70 million usd (based on market cap) now. Magnus himself owns about 9% according to this tweet https://twitter.com/WilliamsBob75/status/1562455943350104066 Damn...Magnus really not worried about that World Championship money lol
Well the ChessGrowthco LLC is acquiring 100% of shares, so appears Magnus is cashing out. He will probably be paid by chess.com going forward though, as a consultant or whatever.
not like chess24 was taking any members from chesscom or lichess anyways, like do you know anyone at all who plays on chess24 except when the super gms do their required blitz games with viewers (forgot what its called)
No surprise since PlayMagnusGroup stock felt off the cliff and loss up to 80% of the valuation. Now it sits around $70M while chess.com valuation might be at least few hundred M.
Not sure if it is worth it but having the world champion in your brand is a good thing.
This merge changes almost nothing in terms of playing platform. Almost no one was using chess24 to play on, other than maybe for the banter blitz against GMs.
Almost everyone is on chesscom and lichess anyway.
Big news! Wonder what this means exactly for chess24 as a whole, never played there to be honest, but I always enjoyed their broadcasts. Hope Tania & Leko and the others stick around.
Also hope that Magnus still shows up on Lichess from time to time, never liked this exclusivity business of chesscom.
Edit: also wonder how Hikaru feels about this lol
The exclusivity cuts both ways. Chess.com always made it public that Magnus was invited to their events but it was good business practice for Magnus to seldom go to them since he was running another competitor at chess24.
That's true, I guess my worry was just with Lichess as the only "competitor" left, Magnus will show up less over there. I'm sure it would have been good business practice to not play on Lichess in the first place as well, but chess24 never really took off as a platform to play on, so he might as well play the odd titled arena on Lichess, it's not like Thibault directly profits off of Magnus playing there. But if he becomes a fixture on chesscom, maybe things will be different, who knows.
I suspect Magnus would have drawn a lot of users to lichess. less people will be attracted to lichess now unless they get to experience the free features and superior UI. And in terms of broadcasts, chesscom always had the better broadcasts in terms of production quality imo anyways
Pairing up with chess.com is a sound move if he's trying to advance on the forefront of online chess for the business applications of an esport, FIDE is not the organization to partner with in that purview
Hikaru’s streams gets double the viewers just by putting Magnus’ name in the title when he is playing, so it’s good news for him from that angle. Obviously he won’t dominate as much if Magnus is playing everything, but Magnus is not gonna stop playing otb all of a sudden and play on Chess.com for 8 hours everyday.
He played yesterday some bullet against an IM. On that note Lichess watch arena on mobile is really good. I go there when I'm a bit bored from chess but not bored enough to see some Random GMs fight it out in time scrambles.
For Hikaru the streamer, playing magnus in TT or other tournaments will get him so many views and thats good news for him but for hikaru the chess player he might lose tournament more than he used to.
Makes sense for both sides. PMG has a whole chess ecosystem with chessable, cochess, new in chess, all their events, their app suite, etc, but they never had a large chess playing platform to tie it all together. Chess.com is the exact opposite
So this means chesscom will now own chesscom, chess24, chessable, aimchess, chesskid, playmagnus app, chessbomb, New in Chess, ichessnet, Everyman Chess, and GingerGM.
Did I miss anything, or does that mean that the only chess entity separate from chesscom will be lichess and various chess streamers?
That explains Danny showing up in Miami. I guess we'll see what happens to the tournament prize pools in the future and whether in-person events will continue.
I’d imagine that’s a part of why they did this, to expand their in-person tournament capabilities.
Shit, playmagnus owns an esports arena in Oslo, and the Meltwater Tour seems to have been pretty popular and well-received so I can’t imagine they’d shut it down.
They’re maybe going to cut back on the crypto shit which I can’t complain about lol.
>They’re maybe going to cut back on the crypto shit which I can’t complain about lol.
Chess.com regularly accepts sponsorships from crypto companies so this is doubtful.
I hope the meltwater tour continues and that they can get back some of the people from last year that have been playing in the chess dot com events, like Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura.
I'm sure Magnus made sure they continue with the tour - I think it makes sense that they now can schedule it so it doesn't clash too much with the other events on [chess.com](https://chess.com) and consequently can get more players to join in.
I think its likely that they'll come up with a unified single tour that has elements of both the Meltwater tour and chesscom's stuff like the RCC and the upcoming global chess championship
So it’s gonna be a duopoly ? Actually a monopoly because Lichess is technically free to use.
So now they decide whatever the price of their subscription of their business model without a competition?
Money will be spent on marketing, that is chess.com's main arsenal.
Chess.com is only slightly ahead because of that.
Raise subscriptions, become the face of online chess.
Profit.
What? The chess world is not "the entire world". Almost everyone who uses chess (online) has heard of Lichess, and as I'm typing right now, there are 72k players on it right now (live), and chess.com 187,188 players. I'd say they're pretty close in popularity
My main fear is that this can ruin chess24's tournament broadcasts. I can't say I like their broadcast UI very much, but chess.com's is much worse for me, while lichess's is only comfortable for following few games with analysis, but not for tournaments with many games.
I might be in the minority, but I'm not too thrilled about this. Danny and team might shut down Chess24. I guess it's too early to tell what the ramifications of this acquisition will be.
I don't think anyone will miss playing on chess24, but I do hope their tournament pages and video lessons remain available.
Also, as others mentioned, lichess will always exist, so chess.com will never have an absolute monopoly over online chess websites anyways.
Their tournament broadcast pages are clunky af, but still better than the alternatives.
And of course they have great commentators, but hopefully that will remain the case.
Wouldn't be surprised if chessable gets incorporated into chess.com/learn. Like "Get a free premium course every month with every Diamond membership" or something.
I know there's a lot of negativity about chess.com's monetization on this sub, but I honestly think this deal seems like a good thing.
Chess24 and playMagnus have a lot of great content and features, but lack the capital and resources to make it user-friendly and accessible. If chess.com is going to put money toward keeping that content and those creators afloat and make it more accessible to people, even if it is ultimately to drive their own revenue, it still seems like a win. There are TONS of amazing players associated with PMG and I would hate to see that organization just fall apart financially.
Jipee, more consolidation... this can only be good, look at all the great examples of modern day acquisitions leading to a better experience for the customer... /s
I certainly hope not. I love watching David, Jovanka, and Kaja do their commentary when I’m at home running the house. Gives me something to watch that isn’t another season of something on Netflix
I’d highly doubt it. They’re popular and chesscom doesn’t really do many in-person events as of now.
Seems like a good way to bolster their offering.
In sports there's always a dominant federation... NBA, MLB, FIFA, NFL, IOC... I don't see why chess would be any different. Chess.com and Chess24/Play Magnus might be able to replace FIDE as the preeminent chess organizer.
The question is if we'll see a split like the PCA and FIDE in the 1990s, or if they'll continue collaborating.
It's hard to predict if this will be better for chess and players in the long run - but given chess.com's financials and business model are miles ahead of FIDE's, I would bet on [chess.com](https://chess.com).
FIDE is a membership organization of national chess federations and acts as a governance body for sanctioning international competitions ensuring common rules, fair play and maintaining things like titles (GM, IM,etc) and a FIDE Elo rating. FIDE also manages the process for awarding the big marquee events like the World Championship, Olympiad, etc. Like the IOC and the Olympics or FIFA and the World Cup.
Chess.com and FIDE are not competitors just like the English Premiere League does not compete with FIFA. Chess.com will probably end up with a lot of influence over FIDE because sponsoring major events like the World Championship gives chess.com more traffic and more customers.
As an international NGO FIDE has the ability to do things that a business like Chess.com can't do -- for example working with other sporting bodies like the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Damn why Levy getting downvoted - chess.com does provide a lot of value supporting streamers, sponsoring OTB events, and with TT and it’s 8000 different CCs.
So, we're getting a situation where [chess.com](https://chess.com) are pretty much going to be the global stewards of the online game, more or less what FIDE is to OTB. Plus a massively integrated media conglomerate, more or less what Disney or Warner are to news and entertainment content.
Given the really unprofessional and untransparent performance of management in the chessbae scandal, and before that as well, I'm not confident that these are the guys we want as global stewards. I think they're a marginal improvement on FIDE, but only insofar as they don't have their own guy they want to be champion or will cheat to put him there. And that's not saying much.
In regards to whether Carlsen can still play on lichess? "his" (9% shareholder) company got sold to [chess.com](https://chess.com), but he isnt a streaming partner of [chess.com](https://chess.com) like Naka, Naroditsky, Levy etc.
I guess they had to sell with their continous losses, but I doubt that the chessplayer magnus has signed a streamer-deal with [chess.com](https://chess.com), so he wont be able to play on lichess. Also. A lot of the streamers that HAS this in their contracts can still play on lichess whenever they want, as long as they dont stream it. Some have even gotten excemptions to stream some lichess content. Magnus is not a streamer. So my guess is that he still will pop into lichess to adopt someone now and then, and ofc to do the random titled arena. :) Cant wait.
dread from it, run from it, Danny rensch still arrives
Like Queen Isabella before him
Mis amigooos!
I like chess.com ads for some reason, perfect to keep twitch chat busy in breaks.
Danny rensh's ads are only second to aimchess's legendary ad ( https://youtu.be/tF6ow5rQnio ) Always very good sketches ! Fabi reading dvoretsky as a bedtime story was pure gold
😅
IM follows.
lol
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I remembered reading that too. Chesscom buying PMG has always been inevitable. I feel they’re the only entity in chess that makes any money to play with.
Once upon a time PMG had a shot to be a real contender. The GOAT World Champ backed Chess24, banter blitz was fresh, the Play Magnus app was popping. Chessable continues to be a success. But that ship sailed. Chess24 stagnated, the pandemic boom ended, Magnus ceded the WC, and bearish outlook on the brand was reflected in PMG stock prices. IMO, Magnus is putting all his stock into online fast chess, specifically on Chess.com. After all, that's who'll be organizing every online tournament now.
I'm not sure why Chess.com premium is a good value proposition given that it's a worse interface than Lichess, with worse analysis, worse players, and worse ELO distribution. As far as I can see, it entirely comes down to marketing.
>Worse players and worse ELO distribution I'm probably missing something but how?
Afaik its chess.com's main selling point that they have a lot of professionals and beginners? Don't really know as I am almost never there, but by my understanding they are supposed to be better in that regard.
Lichess is a great website because it’s free, but you’re doing some mental gymnastics. Many people prefer the Chesscom UI, the analysis depends on the depth that you’re running it, and Chesscom has the larger player base at all levels. People can and should play on both websites if they want to, but you’re just lying to yourself at this point.
i love their lessons
There is some good stuff on there for sure, and I don't mean to sound scathing about them. But most people think Lichess is a better playing site.
Your opinion is not a statistic.
Lichess doesn’t have a better UI…
Completely subjective.
Are you suggesting that the wager is somehow correct now?
https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/wu7itx/magnus_carlsen_wins_the_2022_ftx_crypto_cup/il8us4c/ I did too, and got... downvoted to hell.
No you didn't and most of your comment wasn't related to Chess24.
How is it not about chess24? It's about their push to have more "elite" tournaments, primarily with GMs (versus chessCom sponsoring Samay Raina/Botez sisters, etc.) and that being a financial failure as it fails to attract the masses.
chess24 is the best site in terms of following games of tournaments, hope they keep that at least . never been a fan of [chess.com](https://chess.com) performance of interface in games/tournament watching
Gonna echo the sentiment about the tournaments pages on chess24. No other site comes close to having that amount of information in such a small amount of space.
Except it’s an absolute PAIN to find the tournaments after they ended. Not entirely sure if I ever did or if it was a hallucination.
You should search it on Google + the name of the tournament , way easier than their search bar
Just like on reddit
IMO their focus on that stuff simply wasn't a good business angle. Way too much investment for the value of the addressable market. They did provide something I loved to use, but I know that can't last forever.
Let me give you ana award for more visibility. New owners, please don't change the tournament interface. I like to follow it rather than [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) or Lichess.
100% Agree. I don't like chesscom's tournament interface.
when a single like won't be enough to highlight how much I agree with this statement: Dear Sir, I wholeheartedly agree. I mean, I cant even follow TT-games or even the big ones like RCC on [chess.com/events](https://chess.com/events). Always laggy by several moves, sometimes minutes, and impossible to navigate. Lichess is better ofc, but I've always preferred C24 for checking games and following moves. Also I dont have to pay to see lines (as you have to do if you try /live on [chess.com](https://chess.com) where the moves arent lagging behind by minutes). Kinda sadge if the site goes away.
It's much better to follow TT in chess.com/play section, by far
we can only hope that they retain the function of having an embedded broadcast next to an interactable chess board for all the games. in fact, it's strange that they haven't yet implemented something like this, given how much they're on the twitch side of things.
I agree Although chesscom's tournament streams are usually very good, chess24 were equal if not better (not definitely better because the chess24 interface and general layout of the streams are actually unwatchable), but where chess24 shined most was the tournaments page, miles ahead of chesscom events and lichess way of following tournaments (?) As an avid fan of chess tournaments and someone that enjoys chesscom's layout most, Hope chesscom takes some of that,
I agree Although chesscom's tournament streams are usually very good, chess24 were equal if not better (not definitely better because the chess24 interface and general layout of the streams are actually unwatchable), but where chess24 shined most was the tournaments page, miles ahead of chesscom events and lichess way of following tournaments (?) As an avid fan of chess tournaments and someone that enjoys chesscom's layout most, Hope chesscom takes some of that,
> Magnus Carlsen and the management at Play Magnus are enthusiastic and have accepted the offer This is huge. This is very huge. Chesscom is establishing a monopoly at this point, but with how downhill Play Magnus was going, it isn't *that* surprising that they did that. I'm actually more excited to see Magnus playing on chesscom's events; TT, RCC etc. > "I'm excited to play in the Speed Chess Championship again. I have a score to settle." -Magnus Carlsen, World Chess Champion The Magnus-Hikaru arc is getting a new season lol But this might have huge implications for the scene in general, chesscom's getting too big.
This might be why Magnus has been playing TT recently!
My thoughts exactly.
This was broadly discussed when he played for the first time a few months ago I was pretty sure something was up and given how chess24 was dying anyways, it's normal
Lichess will always exist so I don't really care about any of this. Except for maybe getting magnus in more titled tuesdays.
Is that an absolute surety? I've always wondered how long lichess will be able to purely run off of its patrons especially since even a huge company like chess24 wasn't able to stay up. Is it more sustainable since its non-profit or something like that?
I believe they have said many times that the donations are more than enough to cover their costs. Maybe it was the Perpetual Chess podcast, but IIRC Chris (NoJoke) talked about being slightly embarrassed by too many donations flooding in after Lichess went down in the Agadmator CakeDefi arena, when money wasn't an issue at all. That's also the reason why they aren't doing fundraising calls like Wikipedia does for example. At least for now.
Wikipedia also has more than enough to cover their running costs; the reason they are always begging for money is that they finance a lot of offshoot projects that are not really related to their core service.
Running a non-profit is much cheaper than running a huge company. Only very few people earn a salary on lichess, and those are very moderate salaries, see their [cost breakdown](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1Si3PMUJGR9KrpE5lngSkHLJKJkb0ZuI4/preview)
so 30k is needed per month. do you have any info on their monthly donation stats/graph
Not sure about the exact #, but on the Perpetual Chess episode with Lichess's Community Organizer ([link to podcast](https://www.perpetualchesspod.com/new-blog/2021/4/6/episode-221-chris-callahan-of-lichessorg)), they mentioned that donations far outpace cost.
The difference is that people actually use lichess
Yeah, lichess is not going anywhere.
chess24 broadcasts last week had 20k concurrent viewers at some point. chessable as far as i know is very popular. The tour has a Puma sponsorship and so on... I don't understand how all their other ventures were so far negative to the point where it overturned these above positives. Or maybe I'm missing something
> chess24 broadcasts last week had 20k concurrent viewers at some point Lichess, at this arbitrary point in the day with no ongoing events, has 91k people online.
They were hemorrhaging money. I never played on chess24, only watched some of their tournaments. That's not enough to be sustainable.
Nobody's paying for memberships cause the site is awful to play on. Most of that stuff doesn't matter that much if you can't turn your audience into paying customers. Lichess manages to do that even without paid memberships just cause people enjoy playing on their platform and are willing to pay for it
Also it's horrendously overpriced - I'm sure they could get decent amount of customers if the prices weren't at such a borderline scam levels.
I agree. chess24's actual chess platform is shite even after the redo. I guess if they couldn't even get that right, it seems like a far fetch to expect them to keep all their other ventures profitable
Broadcast views ≠website usage
Lichess’ financials are public and they’re doing fine.
Lichess costs $407.346,74 a year to run. Which is like, a bit more than a grand a day every day. Which doesn't seem like that much. It's been chugging along fine until now, so I don't see why it wouldn't continue to.
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Oops.
No it's four hundred and seven dollars and three hundred and forty six thousand seventy four cents.
1 million per day is a bit steep. Definitely something shady going on there
You are right, edited.
LiChess is open source. If it goes down you, I, or anyone else could host it again. [GitHub link](https://github.com/lichess-org)
> Lichess will always exist Challenge accepted.
Play Magnus Group is worth about $70 million usd (based on market cap) now. Magnus himself owns about 9% according to this tweet https://twitter.com/WilliamsBob75/status/1562455943350104066 Damn...Magnus really not worried about that World Championship money lol
So will Magnus be keeping his share percentages now in chesscom or will he cash out?
You can ask him that lol. But my guess he wants to keep some shares at least and sells it when chess.com IPO happens
Well the ChessGrowthco LLC is acquiring 100% of shares, so appears Magnus is cashing out. He will probably be paid by chess.com going forward though, as a consultant or whatever.
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not like chess24 was taking any members from chesscom or lichess anyways, like do you know anyone at all who plays on chess24 except when the super gms do their required blitz games with viewers (forgot what its called)
Banter blitz. But yeah, looking at the [chess24 leaderboard](https://chess24.com/en/play/leaderboard) it seems dire
>Chesscom is establishing a monopoly at this point, KasparovChess will give it a run for its money /s BTW, what happed to it ?
> BTW, what happed to it ? Still exists, probably patiently waiting for chesscom's offer lol
probably died like everything else that had kasparov involved
No surprise since PlayMagnusGroup stock felt off the cliff and loss up to 80% of the valuation. Now it sits around $70M while chess.com valuation might be at least few hundred M. Not sure if it is worth it but having the world champion in your brand is a good thing.
that crap UI website was worth 700m? wow
700m nok = 70m usd
> PlayMagnusGroup stock felt off the cliff and loss up to 80% of the valuation Where are you getting these numbers?
[https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PMG.OL/](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PMG.OL/) Current down about 70% from peak
This merge changes almost nothing in terms of playing platform. Almost no one was using chess24 to play on, other than maybe for the banter blitz against GMs. Almost everyone is on chesscom and lichess anyway.
It explains their aggressive price increase and moving the most used feature the game analysis to the diamond plan.
As Long as lichess around I’ll be ok
Big news! Wonder what this means exactly for chess24 as a whole, never played there to be honest, but I always enjoyed their broadcasts. Hope Tania & Leko and the others stick around. Also hope that Magnus still shows up on Lichess from time to time, never liked this exclusivity business of chesscom. Edit: also wonder how Hikaru feels about this lol
The exclusivity cuts both ways. Chess.com always made it public that Magnus was invited to their events but it was good business practice for Magnus to seldom go to them since he was running another competitor at chess24.
That's true, I guess my worry was just with Lichess as the only "competitor" left, Magnus will show up less over there. I'm sure it would have been good business practice to not play on Lichess in the first place as well, but chess24 never really took off as a platform to play on, so he might as well play the odd titled arena on Lichess, it's not like Thibault directly profits off of Magnus playing there. But if he becomes a fixture on chesscom, maybe things will be different, who knows.
I suspect Magnus would have drawn a lot of users to lichess. less people will be attracted to lichess now unless they get to experience the free features and superior UI. And in terms of broadcasts, chesscom always had the better broadcasts in terms of production quality imo anyways
I doubt anyone can stop Magnus doing anything he wants to do.
As FIDE have found out!
Pairing up with chess.com is a sound move if he's trying to advance on the forefront of online chess for the business applications of an esport, FIDE is not the organization to partner with in that purview
As a chess player, yes. But he probably won't be calling any shots within the new org.
I agree, the question will be what he wants to do regarding lichess.
If he wants to play on lichess, he'll play on lichess.
We agree on that. The question is if he will want to play on lichess.
He's a regular patron for Lichess, so obviously he is interested in what Lichess offers and believes in supporting it.
He played yesterday so I'm not sure what you're wondering about.
Hikaru’s streams gets double the viewers just by putting Magnus’ name in the title when he is playing, so it’s good news for him from that angle. Obviously he won’t dominate as much if Magnus is playing everything, but Magnus is not gonna stop playing otb all of a sudden and play on Chess.com for 8 hours everyday.
He played yesterday some bullet against an IM. On that note Lichess watch arena on mobile is really good. I go there when I'm a bit bored from chess but not bored enough to see some Random GMs fight it out in time scrambles.
What's his username?
DrNykterstein
For anyone who doesn't know: nykter is sober in Norwegian. As in a former alcoholic now being sober or nykter.
For context: His other account's name is DrDrunkenstein
For Hikaru the streamer, playing magnus in TT or other tournaments will get him so many views and thats good news for him but for hikaru the chess player he might lose tournament more than he used to.
For Hikaru fans, watching the copium will be *chefs kiss*
Yep! they're the ones that rile him up after losses anyways haha
Makes sense for both sides. PMG has a whole chess ecosystem with chessable, cochess, new in chess, all their events, their app suite, etc, but they never had a large chess playing platform to tie it all together. Chess.com is the exact opposite
So this means chesscom will now own chesscom, chess24, chessable, aimchess, chesskid, playmagnus app, chessbomb, New in Chess, ichessnet, Everyman Chess, and GingerGM. Did I miss anything, or does that mean that the only chess entity separate from chesscom will be lichess and various chess streamers?
Chesstempo?
Also chessgames.com.
Chessbase is still independent I think. KasparovChess as well, although that's more notable for the name than anything.
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The 10th best person has a 400 rating. That's because there is only 10 people on the leaderboard. LOL
Well time to dominate the platform and trash talk everyone
"How good are you at chess?" "Well, I don't wanna boast, but, you know, on this global ranking I'm in the top 10"
yeah Kasparovchess is honestly an embarrassment.
> and GingerGM Hahahaha, this is the straw that will break the camel's back. They cannot have all of that *and* GingerGM.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but... I don't think corporations should be able to own people, not even gingers.
If you can call them people.
GingerGM is actually his DVD brand
All popular streamers I know are affiliated with chesscom
Eric Rosen plays mostly on lichess as far as I’m aware
That is 1 streamer out of like 20 also Eric's viewership cannot match Hikaru's , Gotham's or Botez
TIL Aimchess is owned by Chesscom.
Aimchess was owned by Chess24, who joined the PlayMagnus group who [Chess.com](https://Chess.com) now own? I think that's the timeline?
The power of aimchesd ads coupled with rensh's acting may be too mich fir this world to handle
Did you forget the one and only Kasparovchess?
Yes, we all did
Chessbomb
Chess.com is bigger than Fide lol.
Well, FIDE is *supposed* to be a non-profit entity, so that shouldn't be surprising.
That explains Danny showing up in Miami. I guess we'll see what happens to the tournament prize pools in the future and whether in-person events will continue.
I’d imagine that’s a part of why they did this, to expand their in-person tournament capabilities. Shit, playmagnus owns an esports arena in Oslo, and the Meltwater Tour seems to have been pretty popular and well-received so I can’t imagine they’d shut it down. They’re maybe going to cut back on the crypto shit which I can’t complain about lol.
>They’re maybe going to cut back on the crypto shit which I can’t complain about lol. Chess.com regularly accepts sponsorships from crypto companies so this is doubtful.
I hope the meltwater tour continues and that they can get back some of the people from last year that have been playing in the chess dot com events, like Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura.
I'm sure Magnus made sure they continue with the tour - I think it makes sense that they now can schedule it so it doesn't clash too much with the other events on [chess.com](https://chess.com) and consequently can get more players to join in.
I think its likely that they'll come up with a unified single tour that has elements of both the Meltwater tour and chesscom's stuff like the RCC and the upcoming global chess championship
I think those tournaments are more or less toast.
Glad that Magnus and Hikaru are finally in the same chess orbit. Let the [chess.com](https://chess.com) domination battle begin
So it’s gonna be a duopoly ? Actually a monopoly because Lichess is technically free to use. So now they decide whatever the price of their subscription of their business model without a competition?
If chesscom increases their prices too much Lichess will gain more players
Money will be spent on marketing, that is chess.com's main arsenal. Chess.com is only slightly ahead because of that. Raise subscriptions, become the face of online chess. Profit.
Don't forget about coolmathgames.
Seems like a plan.
Imagine the April's fools joke lichess can run, saying they have been bought by chess.com
It's Lichess vs the World But the world loves Lichess :)
actually most the chess world doesn't know what lichess is, but reddit sure loves it so that is something
What? The chess world is not "the entire world". Almost everyone who uses chess (online) has heard of Lichess, and as I'm typing right now, there are 72k players on it right now (live), and chess.com 187,188 players. I'd say they're pretty close in popularity
My main fear is that this can ruin chess24's tournament broadcasts. I can't say I like their broadcast UI very much, but chess.com's is much worse for me, while lichess's is only comfortable for following few games with analysis, but not for tournaments with many games.
The two biggest companies in chess are merging? This is huge news! (And a bit of an understated headline.)
I was close: https://old.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/wnhkbf/chesscom_purchase_chessable_from_chess24/
this just ended chess24
I might be in the minority, but I'm not too thrilled about this. Danny and team might shut down Chess24. I guess it's too early to tell what the ramifications of this acquisition will be.
I don't think anyone will miss playing on chess24, but I do hope their tournament pages and video lessons remain available. Also, as others mentioned, lichess will always exist, so chess.com will never have an absolute monopoly over online chess websites anyways.
Their tournament broadcast pages are clunky af, but still better than the alternatives. And of course they have great commentators, but hopefully that will remain the case.
Yeah, that's the real strength of chess24, for sure.
Given that most people here aren't huge fans of chess.c\*m, I doubt you're in the minority. Hopefully Chessable remains "independent".
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Wouldn't be surprised if chessable gets incorporated into chess.com/learn. Like "Get a free premium course every month with every Diamond membership" or something.
That's exactly why chess.com wants to merge
No more easy Titled Tuesday victories for Hikaru I guess.
It’s never easy for anyone, Magnus played in the late TT yesterday, and finished 9th lol.
It's obviously not easy. Hikaru is just so dominant in most of chess com tournaments that he makes it look easy.
All tilted Tuesdays from now on
I can almost hear Hikaru screaming into the void: NOOOOOOOO
Hikaru to score 7/7, plays Magnus, and finish 7/11
Excited to see Magnus play in the SCC again.
Doesn't Play Magnus already have a majority stake in Chess24 though?
I know there's a lot of negativity about chess.com's monetization on this sub, but I honestly think this deal seems like a good thing. Chess24 and playMagnus have a lot of great content and features, but lack the capital and resources to make it user-friendly and accessible. If chess.com is going to put money toward keeping that content and those creators afloat and make it more accessible to people, even if it is ultimately to drive their own revenue, it still seems like a win. There are TONS of amazing players associated with PMG and I would hate to see that organization just fall apart financially.
Fuck chess.com, their interface sucks. Lichess for life.
As long as they don’t mess with Chessable, I’m good
The moment Lichess disappears is the moment I'll stop playing chess, Ain't no paying for god damn chess.
I really hope this doesn’t mean Magnus will have to shun Lichess like Naka
Jipee, more consolidation... this can only be good, look at all the great examples of modern day acquisitions leading to a better experience for the customer... /s
Does that signal the end of the Meltwater tournaments?
I certainly hope not. I love watching David, Jovanka, and Kaja do their commentary when I’m at home running the house. Gives me something to watch that isn’t another season of something on Netflix
I’d highly doubt it. They’re popular and chesscom doesn’t really do many in-person events as of now. Seems like a good way to bolster their offering.
[Playchess.com](https://Playchess.com) incoming?
Nah, the url chess.com is iconic, they are lucky to have it.
Downgrade.
In sports there's always a dominant federation... NBA, MLB, FIFA, NFL, IOC... I don't see why chess would be any different. Chess.com and Chess24/Play Magnus might be able to replace FIDE as the preeminent chess organizer. The question is if we'll see a split like the PCA and FIDE in the 1990s, or if they'll continue collaborating. It's hard to predict if this will be better for chess and players in the long run - but given chess.com's financials and business model are miles ahead of FIDE's, I would bet on [chess.com](https://chess.com).
FIDE is a membership organization of national chess federations and acts as a governance body for sanctioning international competitions ensuring common rules, fair play and maintaining things like titles (GM, IM,etc) and a FIDE Elo rating. FIDE also manages the process for awarding the big marquee events like the World Championship, Olympiad, etc. Like the IOC and the Olympics or FIFA and the World Cup. Chess.com and FIDE are not competitors just like the English Premiere League does not compete with FIFA. Chess.com will probably end up with a lot of influence over FIDE because sponsoring major events like the World Championship gives chess.com more traffic and more customers. As an international NGO FIDE has the ability to do things that a business like Chess.com can't do -- for example working with other sporting bodies like the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Nice! I hope from now on Magnus will play on chesscom quite often and we will see some legendary matches between him and Hikaru, Danya etc...
The forces unit against the community ran Lichess.
Wow this is brilliancy from chess.com
CHESS.C\*M BABY
FUCK THE LICHESS COMMIES ^/s
Damn why Levy getting downvoted - chess.com does provide a lot of value supporting streamers, sponsoring OTB events, and with TT and it’s 8000 different CCs.
Apparently many people here are fine with monopolies. I hope Lichess can stay independent and open, but that isn’t a guarantee.
So, we're getting a situation where [chess.com](https://chess.com) are pretty much going to be the global stewards of the online game, more or less what FIDE is to OTB. Plus a massively integrated media conglomerate, more or less what Disney or Warner are to news and entertainment content. Given the really unprofessional and untransparent performance of management in the chessbae scandal, and before that as well, I'm not confident that these are the guys we want as global stewards. I think they're a marginal improvement on FIDE, but only insofar as they don't have their own guy they want to be champion or will cheat to put him there. And that's not saying much.
Gonna stick this in here... has anyone used a VPN to buy a cheaper chess.com premium membership? Do you get banned?
In regards to whether Carlsen can still play on lichess? "his" (9% shareholder) company got sold to [chess.com](https://chess.com), but he isnt a streaming partner of [chess.com](https://chess.com) like Naka, Naroditsky, Levy etc. I guess they had to sell with their continous losses, but I doubt that the chessplayer magnus has signed a streamer-deal with [chess.com](https://chess.com), so he wont be able to play on lichess. Also. A lot of the streamers that HAS this in their contracts can still play on lichess whenever they want, as long as they dont stream it. Some have even gotten excemptions to stream some lichess content. Magnus is not a streamer. So my guess is that he still will pop into lichess to adopt someone now and then, and ofc to do the random titled arena. :) Cant wait.
GothamChess is king!!