![\"Pawns,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/chess_board-540x360.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
ChatGPT<\/p>\n
Barry and I play chess a few times a month, and he\u2019s always completely floored when I win. Why? He plays everyday on Chess⁠\u2060.com, and I only play with him.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a business success I bet you didn\u2019t see coming, I know I didn\u2019t. Chess. Yes, the game that\u2019s been around for about 1,500 years is the center of a billion-dollar empire.<\/p>\n
Chess⁠.com launched back in 2007, when two buddies scooped up the domain name for $56,000 (a bargain, if you ask me) and built a site for people to play, learn and connect. Growth was slow and steady, and then 2020 hit.<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udc51 Between a rook and a hard place<\/p>\n
With everyone stuck at home, chess made a surprise comeback.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then The Queen\u2019s Gambit dropped on Netflix and made it downright cool. (If you haven\u2019t seen the miniseries yet, watch it tonight. It\u2019s fantastic!) Sign-ups on Chess⁠.com exploded, up 500% year-over-year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Twitch tournaments like \u201cPogChamps\u201d pulled in hundreds of thousands of viewers. A game that used to be old and niche? Suddenly, it was pop culture.<\/p>\n
Chess⁠.com runs on a freemium model. You can play for free, or upgrade for lessons, deep analysis and ad-free fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u265f\ufe0f Control the center always<\/p>\n
In 2022 alone, subscriptions brought in more than $150 million. Then came their checkmate move. They bought Play Magnus Group, the startup founded by world champion Magnus Carlsen, for $83 million. That gave them a treasure trove of content, training tools and more control of the chess world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t just build a platform, they built the entire ecosystem. Today, they\u2019ve got over 200 million users in over 60 countries. Wow.<\/p>\n
So next time someone says, \u201cThat idea\u2019s already been done, forget it,\u201d so was chess. And now it\u2019s worth a billion dollars. Bravo! Remember, if you ever forget the rules of chess, you\u2019re allowed to check. (lol)<\/p>\n
\n Tags: fun<\/a>, home<\/a>, Netflix<\/a>, play<\/a>, users<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ChatGPT Barry and I play chess a few times a month, and he\u2019s always completely floored when I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[11985,3450,2451,9,24,63,5471,122,124,123,11986],"class_list":["post-17095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-fun","tag-home","tag-netflix","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-play","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-users"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}