Chess.com’s Chief Chess Officer, IM Danny Rensch, hosted State of Chess on Tuesday to share all the latest updates for Chess.com. Joining him were several special guests including GM Magnus Carlsen, GM Hikaru Nakamura, and IM Levy Rozman.
The show presented details on the 2026 Esports World Cup qualification cycle, which includes events such as Titled Tuesday, the Speed Chess Championship, and the Chess.com Global Championship; several updates to features like lessons, courses, and Coach; upcoming partnerships, including Super PogChamps coming in December; and more. The presentation ended, as always, with the traditional Q&A with Danny.
We provide you with a summary of the updates below, or you can watch the full three-hour broadcast:
The State of Chess covered the following categories:
- Titled Tuesday Updates
- CCT 2025-26 Cycle
- In Case You Missed It
- Coach & Partnerships: AI Coach & Super PogChamps
- Live Q&A: Danny Answers Your Questions
Titled Tuesday Updates
As announced last week, Titled Tuesday has entered a new era. The tournament is now part of the qualification cycle for the 2026 Esports World Cup, features a new time control of 5+0, occurs once per week, and requires Proctor for all participants. Take Take Take, as the new broadcast partner, covered the event for the first time this week, and you can watch that stream below.
Carlsen and Take Take Take’s CEO Mats Andre joined for a quick interview. Andre said of his vision for the event:
For us what’s been missing is that weekly ritual… the fans have really been asking and missing something that they can tune into [regularly]… Hopefully this can help lift the entire ecosystem.
Carlsen, who wasn’t pleased with his performance this week (fifth place), commented on how the event serves both viewers and players.
Magnus on the new #TitledTuesday format:
“It means fans have something to watch every single week… this actually means a lot for the players, it means you can qualify for arguably one of the very biggest events they have in chess right now [the Esports World Cup].” pic.twitter.com/xqSAcfBvJq
— chess24 (@chess24com) September 2, 2025
Also, replacing the late Titled Tuesday, is the new After Party and the Untitled After Party, with $2,000 in weekly prizes. Read more.
Another weekly event that we run, Arena Kings, will have a makeover as well. You can read all about the changes in our announcement here.
Danny answered a few questions at the end of this segment.
Q&A:
Q from Manuelguedes666: I want to know why there’s only 1 TT instead of 2 each week.
A: “We launched a second Titled Tuesday thinking that it was going to reach the broader community of titled players… the data said otherwise. In fact, there were many weeks where it was the exact same number of people who played the early Titled Tuesday or 40% less or 20% less [depending on the week]… very few players were unique to the late Titled Tuesday.”
Danny explained that the Esports World Cup cycle also played a role: “We didn’t want to have an opportunity for some players to get double points [by playing both events]… while other players didn’t.”
Q from Ilovethiswebsite: Is Proctor smooth enough that we won’t see players lagging out or losing on time due to the lag?
A: “We have been working our a**es off for the last month and a half… we’re not saying that it’s perfect… [but] we are going to have to expect players to cooperate to some degree. At the very least, everybody is at least on equal footing… and we are going to invest to make Proctor awesome.”
Q from Mightymarcus: Will proctor be used more widely for non titled player events?
A: “I would like to be in a world where anyone winning cash prizes is on Proctor.”
CCT 2025-26 Cycle
Chess.com’s flagship events are now tied to the 2026 Esports World Cup, promising a coherent, year-long circuit culminating in one final event. The Speed Chess Championship, Titled Tuesday, and Chess.com Global Championship will all serve as qualifiers for the Esports World Cup, as you can see in the graphic below.
Head of Business Development Arkus Fredriksson, the mastermind behind the Champions Chess Tour since its beginning, was a special guest and said, “We haven’t had an annual storyline… for everybody to really know what to watch out for in chess.” There are now 62 days (or more) of play, with broadcast days.
He added that this cycle should be appealing for player sponsors too: “By creating this annual circuit now, the esports teams have many more players to sign to their rosters.”
By the way, the Speed Chess Championship will take place in London on February 7 and 8. The venue will be revealed later.
In Case You Missed it
We published our first public quarterly report, which you can check out here.
We have also released a new puzzle difficulty feature, and we will soon launch a new puzzle rating system that will provide more accurate estimates of your strength as a puzzle solver and give you better puzzles for your level.
Product Manager Michael Green said, “We ultimately want people to have the experience where they’re getting puzzles at their level.” Using what he called a “shadow rating system” in the background, the team has been working to assign more accurate ratings.
As for fair play, you can see the number of closures in the table below. Director of Fair Play FM Dan Rozovsky now writes a monthly fair play update and you can read our July update here.
Chess.com has also created a new Lessons interface; added more courses here from GMs Judit Polgar, Sam Shankland, Arjun Kalyun, and more; and finally variants are moving from Chess.com/play to Chess.com/variants, a server devoted to variants. In addition, nearly all gameplay takes place on the Realtime Chess Network (RCN).
Coach & Partnerships: AI Coach & Super PogChamps
Head of Special Projects David Joerg and Senior Product Manager of Coach Gabe Jacobs joined to talk about Coach, Chess.com’s tool for learning. Joerg developed Dr. Wolf many years ago; Jacobs used the app and actually found his job at Chess.com through it.
Joerg explained, “We want to make learning chess as easy as grilling a pineapple or maybe eating a delicious grilled pineapple.” To make learning chess even more fun Jacobs explained that users will soon be able to set Coach to speak with the voice and vocabulary of their favorite streamers, “creating these characters based on some of the best chess players and stars around, who really sound just like themselves and teach just like themselves.”
They invited Nakamura and Rozman onto the stream to see whether they could tell the difference between their own voice or the AI impersonating them, as well as other personalities. They didn’t do too well!
Can Hikaru and Levy tell the difference between AI Hikaru and real Hikaru? pic.twitter.com/gRRnjywFDC
— chess24 (@chess24com) September 2, 2025
By the way, GothamChess will be taking on the entire world in a chess game starting on September 30. He gave us a little teaser: if we play 1.e4, he will go with the Caro-Kann Defense.
Partnerships:
VP of Partnerships Annie Wilver joined the show some of the latest feats, with a focus on our work with athletes. We recently partnered with the following events:
- Chesstival, by Derrick Rose and Freestyle Chess in partnership wtih Chess.com, brought together the world’s top chess and NBA players.
- Hoop Gambit, organized by Victor Wembanyama, featured almost 100 players ranging from 5 to 91 years old.
- BlitzChamps IV: New Orleans Saints Safety, Justin Reid, defended his BlitzChamps III title, becoming the first player to repeat as BlitzChampion.
- Portals connected four cities on International Chess Day. There are plans to add a fifth city next time, in South America.
Wilver said, “It’s been an absolute honor. I’ve worked with some incredible creators, athletes, celebrities in my time in sports and entertainment, but the things that we’ve been able to bring together as a team here at Chess.com, you can’t compare to what we’ve been able to do previously in our respective careers.”
In the near future, chess will cross with Formula 1 and bring together our favorite chess-playing drivers and VIPs to enjoy chess (and create content) together. Super PogChamps is also scheduled for December 2-5, and you can watch our trailer below.
Super PogChamps is on the horizon! 😮
Former PogChampions will compete to be the best of the best! Who do you want to see return? 👀 #StateOfChess pic.twitter.com/lzDRbHIrKo
— Chess.com (@chesscom) September 2, 2025
A question asked to Wilver from the chat was whether Chess.com plans to host a BlitzChamps-style tournament for NBA players. She answered:
Hopefully it’s something that comes to fruition in 2026… there are over 150 basketball players that play chess, so there’s plenty of people for us to reach out to… we want to make it happen.
Live Q&A:
Before getting to all of the questions, Danny reminded us that his book will be released on September 16. You can check out the trailer posted below, and then look into ordering it here.
Here we go… Dark Squares releases in 2 weeks! pic.twitter.com/ubs1kMFxp4
— Daniel Rensch (@DanielRensch) September 2, 2025
Without further ado, let’s get to selected questions from the end of the broadcast:
Q from Fuettli: Have you been served Kramnik’s lawsuit yet or is it just a scam for him to get some gofundme money? Would also be interested to learn about the complaints he supposedly filed with the EU and American regulators.
“We far have not been served. As far as we know, there are no actual complaints filed, but ther was a Slack discussion that my legal team gave me just in case a Kramnik question came up… here’s what the legal team said I could read.”
Legal has authorized me to say: Mr. Kramnik, if you have not paid your Swiss fees, please do so. We’d look forward to demonstrate in court why you have no case and are wasting everyone’s time.
Q from Okchallenge983: I don’t have premium. but sometimes at the end of the game it shows that I have a brilliant and then I use my 1 free review and then it turns out there was no brilliant why does that happen??
A: “It’s not a bug. Just very fast game analysis sometimes has a different take than the final analysis when you do click game review. It’s because we’re trying to give people a peek, so sometimes it does not work out as the best preview way. We are looking to improve the experience.”
Q from Laserned12: How do you feel about schools blocking Chess.com?
A: “I’m actually excited that schools blocked Chess.com there for a while because it meant there was a real chess problem! I am not excited about students neglecting classwork for chess, that is officially on record!”
Q from Harry69007: Hi danny, my question is will you start using AI to help automatically ban people who go too far in game chats?
A: “We have not been happy with our game chat state for a long time… there are some massive breakthroughs that we would like to make with how we are monitoring people who are abusing chat with weird workarounds.”
Q from Laidbackmisanthrope: Why is there no customer support available on the Chess.com/support webpage? There is nothing there, first you transitioned support to an automated chat bot. Now there isn’t even the chat bot.
A: “We have integrated with some different AI support tools and they’ve been amazing to help us keep up wtih the amount of tickets. I know that the support team gets back as quickly as they can… The chatbox we have answers 80% of the questions successfully, without ever having to reach a human.”
Q from Etalka: Have you considered lowering the price of Chess.com premium?
A: “We’re evaluating this all the time, including ways to bundle the features… we actually have a family plan now, if you didn’t know that… it’s an amazing price for premium… we also do localized pricing in different geos [geographies]. We work hard on this and we do appreciate every premium member’s support because access to the chess tools we have pay the bills for a lot of human beings.”
Q from Sarthakbisht_88: Can u please add more payment options like upi or Google Play balance or online wallets (Amazon, Paytm, etc.)?
A: “The payment methods are continuing to expand… this is something that is not as easy as you think… but we definitely believe we can improve that.”
Q from Matt Petersman: Can we play Freestyle Chess (Chess960) with bots?
A: “We’re doing a lot of things for the bot experience… Chess960, Freestyle Chess against bots, is coming your way, to a theater near you, very, very soon.”
Q from Eatmywetfarts: Can we get conditional moves on mobile for daily chess?
A: “We already have it on Android.”
Q from Internetadventures: Same question as last year: when are we going to get integration of repertoire checks against Chessable?
A: “It is already being worked on, right now it’s in priority behind the Game Review recommendations… [where we can] recommend courses specifically tailored to you.”
Q from Hyperwinsthese: Will you guys ever make a tournament for Thursday like we have Titled Tuesday and Freestyle Friday?
A: “Yes and it’s gonna be awesome. I already know the format. I don’t want to say more…”
Q from Gapzealousideal6661: What if there was an option to add an option to completely hide ratings on the website? (My mental health is rotting)
A: “What we have currently is zen mode, which hides everything. [You can also just turn off ratings only.]”
Q from Fidefan: Your opinion and predict the winner of the FIDE Candidates 2026.
A: “The Candidates is a great event, I mean the viewership speaks for itself… the Candidates format is not perfect… I am more in the camp of, I love the World Cup, I love knockouts, I love playoff systems… I think we are either going to have Hikaru or Fabi [win the next Candidates].”
