The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 9 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
A positive post-loss review flow increased Chess.com subscriptions by 20%
“That change alone was pretty dramatic for us. It grew game reviews by 25%, subscriptions by 20%, user retention by a lot as well.”
Cheng: Growth experimentation must pair with capitalizing on viral cultural waves
“And it's like the growth experimentation is more the slow and steady or fast and steady, I should say approach where you're just continually iterating. You're making the product experience better, but then every so often, right, there's a big wave that comes i…”
80% of Chess.com users who review games do so after winning
“80% of people that review their games actually do so after a win.”
Losing a first game on Chess.com reduces new user retention by 10%
“Less than a third of those users actually win their first game. And when you lose a game, user retention is 10% worse than when you win a game.”
Chess.com scaled from zero to 250 annual experiments in under two years
“So prior to 20, 23, the company practically didn't experiment at all.
Last year they did about 50.
This year they're
On pace for about 250.
And then next year we have that ambitious target of a thousand.”
Cheng: Over 75% of new Chess.com users are beginners
“Over 75% of our new users, they classify themselves as like, I'm completely new to chess or I'm a beginner.”
Cheng: Chess.com active users are ~80% existing, with new and resurrected users equal
“I think probably eighties percent of our Daily or weekly active users. I mean, I'll check the numbers, but something like that would be like a current user or an existing user, and then a new and a like reactivated or resurrected user. Those are actually about…”
Cheng details Chess.com's internal AI tooling stack across functions
“The PMs are mostly using vZero. The designers love Figma, so they're using Figma Make. The engineers are using a combination of tools right now. So Cursor, Cloud Code, GitHub Copilot. Marketing teams use all sorts of tools for translation, subtitles, you know,…”
Cheng: Chess.com combines chess engines and LLMs for Game Review feature
“So behind the scenes, we're running chess engines to basically spit out evaluations for every move that you make. And then we translate that and make that approachable to the user using, you know, their native language and plain approachable style. And even wi…”