What Chess.com Teaches US About Superhuman Capabilities, with CEO Erik Allebest
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What Chess.com Teaches US About Superhuman Capabilities, with CEO Erik Allebest

B1IntermediateAugust 13, 202646 min
  • Interview

In a world of infinite gaming and entertainment possibilities, how does a centuries-old game stay so popular? Chess.com co-founder and CEO Erik Allebest joins Sarah Guo to explain how the evolution of technology has kept people coming back to chess, even when machines can beat us at the game. Erik talks about how the desire to build a MySpace-like community for chess led to the purchase of a domain name from a bankruptcy sale back in 2005, and scaled into a community with 10 million daily active users and 250 million total registered members. He also discusses the growth of the...

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and we're like, oh, this might just be a flash in the pan,

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COVID happened, Queen's Gambit happened, some news cycles happened, and we're like, oh, this might just be a flash in the pan, like treadmills and sourdough bread. But then in 2023, we had another crazy wave

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where all these kids started playing in schools because of short form content and the mitten's bod and the cheating scandal. And we just spiked again.

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And then when we came down again, we were so much higher and we maintained this baseline. How do you think about how to design a rating system for poker? We're bringing the chess playbook, which is like, how good are you really?

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