State Of Chess Returns: Community Updates, Fair Play Changes, Media Projects, & More

The State of Chess returned on Thursday with several important updates. Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch led the discussion that focused on community updates, fair play changes, site updates, and big media developments.

You can watch the full video below or you can scroll down and read the highlights.

1: Community Updates
2: Kassa Outlines Fair Play Changes
3: Erik And Rafal Explain Latency & Next Steps
4: Chess Media With Alex (And Surprise Visit From Anna Cramling!)
5: Live Q&A: Danny Answers Any And All Questions

1: Community Updates

You can read through our last monthly report that lists all of our updates in detail here. Danny discussed the following on the show:

Product

• Launched Chess Events app on Android and iOS.
• Launched the Chess Events Dashboard.
• Gameplay Animations officially launched.
• New design for Game Review rolling out.
• Check out Stats in Puzzles.
• Hotkeys added to Analysis (Shift+D).
• Added ability to hide ratings in games (in settings).

Tech

• The Realtime Chess Network (RCN) continues to roll out, with 52% of live games played there. Much more about this in Segment 3.

Events

• 2024 Speed Chess Championship hosts its Finals in-person for the first time ever. It's in Paris and get your tickets here now.
• BlitzChamps III broadcast live from NFL Films Studio.
• Chess invades UFCX, Professional Bull Riding Championship, and TwitchCon EU.
• Chess.com Community Championships is in full swing, with the Spell Chess Championship this week.
• Banter Blitz returns with GM Jan Gustafsson, IM Kassa Korley, and GM Ben Finegold.

2: Kassa Outlines Fair Play Changes

Chess.com's Director of Professional Relations Korley joined the call to discuss the state of Fair Play and significant changes in this department.

• A new study by Chess.com's Fair Play Team has estimated the cheating rate in Titled Tuesday to be less than 2% for most events. We have published two Fair Play reports and the second was featured in the Wall Street Journal.
• You can see all the numbers for fair play reports, accounts closed, and rating points refunded since April below.

Closure Of Titled Players Now Publicly Displayed On Their Accounts

• Closures of Titled Players who violate Fair Play in Prize Events or on second chance accounts in casual play will now be public.
• Korley explained, "This kind of public reckoning can serve as a deterrent [from cheating] in some instances, and in other instances it's just the right thing to do."
• Chess.com addresses the higher stakes of online events with higher consequences for breaking rules. Korley explained, "Folks that are like, 'Oh, that's just online chess.' That's a perspective of the past."

Coming Soon: All Titled Players Must Use New Program, "Proctor," When Playing In Prize Events

• Proprietary browser to monitor players in prize events. Korley said, "All players in prize events ultimately will be using Proctor when they play in Titled Tuesday, CCT, and so on."
• This program gives full vision of players & their surroundings, shares video feed, screen share, & process monitoring.
• Direct communication with the participants.
• Beta testing starting soon. It is expected to roll out this year.

A rubric will be shared soon to enforce event rules and violations—for example, consequences for unsubstantiated cheating accusations.

In-Person Proctoring Of Players

• Some players in the Speed Chess Championship and Champions Chess Tour have already been proctored in person by tournament directors (TDs). That is, the TD physically watches a player in the same room.
• Korley shared: "For events like the CCT and SCC, everyone is on a Fair Play call with two cameras. That's one layer of security. Then we have analysis running reports... that's another layer of security. What we've determined is [in-person proctoring] is a really good way ultimately to ensure peace of mind on multiple levels," and it "removes any doubt of all the results."

3: Erik And Rafal Explain Latency & Next Steps

Chess.com's CEO Erik Allebest and Technical Project Manager Rafal Skocelas joined Danny for this segment.

Latency

One of the most common questions we get is about lag. Allebest explained that one of the misconceptions is that your device connects directly to the Chess.com server, but instead there are many steps that happen in between that. He explained the diagram below, which underscores one key point: "We're really only controlling less than one percent of the distance of what's going on."

That being said, there are still things Chess.com can do and is doing to improve the lag users are seeing.

Skocelas explained, "The next step is bringing servers closer to you... this is what RCN is addressing... We are distributing our server networks, going from one server that's in the U.S. East to servers that are almost on all the continents."

Over 50% of games are played now at RCN (Realtime Chess Network). Allebest explained that they started rolling this out at the lowest ratings and are working their way up. Allebest continued:

If you're someone rated under 1000 in India and you noticed that over the last year your connection at Chess.com got better, that's probably why. Now, these changes haven't yet hit titled players and events because that's at the highest level, the most complicated, and we've been building out features and testing and making sure that everything's going well.

Rensch asked Allebest to explain lag issues that affected recent high-profile events, including the Clash of Claims and the Bullet Chess Championship. It took a long time to replicate the issue and figure out the problem, but it's solved now.

Allebest and Skocelas gave a detailed account of how this old bug popped up in only very specific situations and was therefore difficult to catch. Skocelas told the full story:

The pattern was that the games had to be public, could be watched from our Play Watch functionality, and it had to be between top players who have lots of people observing them... this protocol that you mentioned, the third-party protocol responsible for sending moves... it would try to send the move from one player to the other player and also to all the clients that are observing the game. And if one of those clients was some old Android app of ours the exception would happen... the move would not be transferred further to the remaining observers and the player who was waiting for the move.

4: Chess Media With Alex (And Surprise Visit From Anna Cramling!)

The VP of Media & Content Alex Leibow called in from Malibu, California, and he was actually in the middle of shooting content at the Botez Chess Camp. WFM Anna Cramling also appeared in a surprise cameo!

Leibow previously worked for Snapchat and shared his vision for Chess.com content. He's been the brains behind the Lie Detector Test series (which they're currently recording at the Botez Chess Camp, Cramling revealed).

He said:

Our real goal is to just make really amazing chess content, whether it's on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, FAST, AVOD, etc., and get them in front of new audiences, get them interested in the game. One key priority over the last eight or nine months has been in a lot of player-focused storytelling.

One of those projects was a documentary filming GM Jose Martinez, who had been accused of cheating in online chess. He finished second in Titled Tuesday while being filmed. Another documentary featuring behind-the-scenes footage at the Clash of Claims is premiering on August 16.

Also in the works is a documentary on Askild Bryn and CM Odin Blikra Vea's world record for the longest chess marathon, which took place during Norway Chess this year.

You can also look forward to the 2022 Speed Chess Championship that premieres on ESPN 2 this Saturday, August 3 at 6:30 a.m. ET. It's not just a replay of the match; it's a documentary retelling the stakes and the storylines.

The last teaser didn't reveal too much but gives you an idea of something that's in store. Leibow previewed:

We're going all in on storytelling this year and I think we all saw what a show like The Queen's Gambit did for chess a few years ago and we think it's time for the next big wave. Whether it's Drive to Survive, Full Swing, Welcome to Wrexham or Cheer, we've watched as all of these incredible sports documentary series have taken off in the zeitgeist—and we think the chess world should get the same treatment!

5: Live Q&A: Danny Answers Any And All Questions

As tradition would have it, Danny welcomed the part of the show "where the community gets to grill me and I get to roast chat. That's the tradeoff, right?"

There were many questions and I've parsed out just some of the most important ones.

H123SGE: Will there be any further meaning for the wood/stone/legend etc. leagues? I don't feel like it is rewarding in any way to be good in them.

A: I think that Leagues was a very big lesson for our team... I think we could've been better. Is a revamp of Leagues in the works? It is, but I will also be honest in that it's not the number-one priority because of what we think it's gonna take to fix that and do it right.

THEMIDNIGHTEXPRESS12: Are you going to change the Game Review to the old one?

A: There's been a lot of criticism about the new Game Review design... I don't know that a full regression back to the old one is in store or if we're just going to adjust some of the things that people don't like... or somewhere in between. Know that we are listening, the feedback has been heard, we're going to work on it.

SSORINYK: When are you gonna ban Kramnik for good?

A: There are no intentions to ban Kramnik or anyone at this time, but we are laying out policies that if Kramnik or anyone else continue to push the boundary in a way that we feel is hurting the chess community or specific individuals we will be prepared to act and we are no longer engaging in productive conversation with him.

ANHONESTDOUBTER: Chesscom hold a public, quarterly fair play forum with GMs to really try to tackle cheating online?

A: We want to do this and we have plans to do this, but it's not really through the lens of tackling cheating online... We've been doing this with the level of effort we've been putting into our reports and giving it the transparency that we have... A fair play summit is something we have discussed many times.

NM KOWARENAI: Will there be more future events that can allow non-titled players and masters alike to compete and face strong elite players such as Nakamura and Carlsen?

A: Yeah, they're called the Community Championships. We had a slide about them earlier. Every one of the events that you see people winning... those events are open to the community and if you do well enough and are playing cleanly... the opportunity to play titled players and to play for cash is something we're investing in and it's a lot of fun.

TOTALDEEP7976: I'm a woman who uses chesscom, almost every day i get friend requests and messages from people who use chesscom to only message women. Is this type of account allowed, and if not is chesscom doing anything to close accounts that target women and treat the site like a dating app?

A: Super sorry for your experience... We do deal with these accounts aggressively. We are all over accounts that are multi-account, repeat abusers we call them... it is a hard thing to do at scale... We are doing everything we can and we can and always will be trying to do better.

Thanks to the Chess.com community for joining us for this State of Chess, submitting their questions and feedback, and we look forward to the next one!