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No Priors · Thursday, August 13, 2026

Chess.com's Mission: To Get a Billion People to Play Chess

Erik Allebest stated that Chess.com's current mission is ambitious: to get a billion people to play chess. He believes chess offers significant benefits, such as bringing people together, building confidence, and teaching valuable life lessons about learning from losses.

companyChess.com

The tape

2 quotes
But what's interesting is now, I'm like, if 250 million people have said they want to play chess, on chess.com, like, why don't we have 50 million daily active users, you know? A billion people should be playing chess.
So now our ambitions are pretty big and we see the good that chess does in the world and, you know, brings people together and, um, gives them confidence and, you know, teaches them that you never really lose if you learn. And it's a great game for for learning and spending time.
Heard on No Priors — “Building a $200M Bootstrapped Chess Empire with Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest, published Thursday, August 13, 2026. Heardvine summarizes and quotes with attribution and timestamps, and links to the original everywhere.
Transcribed via Gemini audio transcription · $0.05
Chess.com's Mission: To Get a Billion People to Play Chess — Heardvine