To all the grandmasters—competition might get a bit more fierce in the coming months, with Chess.com experiencing a tidal wave of kings and queens hopping online to castle left and right.
Chess.com provides players the chance to hop online and battle it out against the best. They’re clearly doing something right as numbers are higher than ever. The online chess service shared they had “160 percent of the traffic and more than double the number of new players we saw at the height of quarantine.”
“The game we love is alive and well,” they added. Chess.com provides puzzles for players to hone their skills and come to the conclusion every move they make is a blunder anyway.
The website has been a massive part of the chess community for over a decade. A billion matches had already been played by 2015, and if the traffic is well and truly up, we can only imagine how many games their getting in 2023.
As for why the numbers are so high, Chess.com hasn’t provided an exact reason. The website has been a part of bizarre cheating controversies, in particular, in September last year featuring Magnus Carlsen and Hans Niemann, and YouTubers like GothamChess have seen a dramatic increase in daily subscribers at almost the exact same time.
According to Social Blade, there’s roughly been an increase of 140,000 subscribers each day for the Chess loving YouTuber.
Clearly, 2023 is the year of chess and the grandmasters are loving it. Controversies can’t keep the game down, and YouTubers seem to keep the players coming in.
