Chess.com has the somewhat unique property of being a chess server run by people who aren't good at chess and aren't good at technology. I think they used to hire devs off Fiverr.<p>However they are somewhat good at business as they've convinced thousands of people to pay $17.00 per month for something that can be found for free at Lichess.org.<p>They do pay a ton of money to streamers to use their site exclusively, which is good for chess since it allows more chess players to make a living.
Chess found its way into my YouTube feed and that got me back into it. I wonder if this is just some bizarre case of the outcome of some thing like that.<p>“Oops we accidentally put chess in front of everyone for a week and now they’re all playing it.”
The page gave me a server error (appropriate, I suppose).<p><a href="https://archive.is/Sbhnk" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/Sbhnk</a>
I was going to post that I suspected this was due to some sort of automated or bot activity... a couple months seems like way too short a time for that much organic growth.<p>However, Google Trends also indicates a doubling of interest in chess as a search term over the past three months. Interesting!
For some reason, my perception is that random player selection on lichess leads to much stronger opponents than on chess.com in the lower ranks. Probably this is due to the more informed player base on lichess and a large influex of causals on chess.com<p>The problem is that this only fuels the cycle. Casual players are scared away from lichess, possibly extending the rift between both sites...
I've re-visited the game multiple times but really have trouble engaging with the game. I've tried to read a couple of tutorials here and there on some simple strategies, but it doesn't seem like anything "sticks," and I always feel so clueless after the first few moves as to what I should do.<p>Any suggestions from the HN crowd on what may have provided you an "ah ha!" moment for chess strategy in general?
Dont forget tiktok, ive seen a tutorial that changed so much my beginner view of the game it gave me the urge to play some games. It says ultimately what you have to do during a game is, you want to have some positive difference on pawns and then you exchange your pieces then promote then win. How cool is that?
> What does that mean? 250,000+ new accounts are being created each day. People are playing games (16,000 chess moves per second on average)<p>I remember reading how Dropbox and other file sharing sites used hashing to create single instances of popular files and then just used pointers from accounts with that file to save disk space.<p>I would imagine a LOT of chess games probably start out the same and you can therefore store a pointer to where the game is on a subset of potential game starts and then write the difference as you branch out.<p>I may be underestimating the possible start conditions and/or the metadata storage cost (e.g. time in the game of each move doesn't go away).
I am one of the people now playing chess every day but I don't think it's down to all those reasons listed. In my case, I am using it as a replacement for social media. Previously I'd pick up my phone and go straight to Instagram or some other app. I realised that my time was just wasted scrolling through pictures and videos that has absolutely no value.<p>Chess is something I can open on my app and I can play on the bus or before bed. While it's not the most value adding thing in my life I am enjoying it for now.<p>By the way, I suck at chess. I struggle to beat 900 rated players. Any tips?
Some previous discussion around scaling their database: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25730778" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25730778</a>
> All of this generates data that needs to be written to our databases. Sometimes our systems max out, and just as when someone exercises too hard and has to stop and catch their breath, our servers also become exhausted and need to recover. When that happens, they quit working, and our site and apps become unresponsive<p>Is this a tortured analogy, or are their servers actually crashing under load?
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It is worth remembering that by playing you give chess.com possibly thousands of games, each of which can be used against you at any time in the future.<p>Just if their cheating algorithm says so and they feel like making it public.