Who Is Chesscom? The Corporate Investors

Some of them, anyways.
From a very quick online check to be done more deeply in future:
Chesscom is presently owned by PokerStars which appears to be a corporation based in the Isle of Man. PokerStars was acquired by Paddy Power Betfair, a Dublin, Ireland based sports betting and gaming operator.

Chesscom is funded by General Atlantic, NYC investment firm and Flashpoint, a London ,UK based investment firm.

Flashpoint's two General partners are Alex Konoplyasty and Michael Szalontay.
In January, 2022, Chesscom raised an undisclosed amount of financing through private equity firm General Atlantic based in New York, NY.
General Atlantic: Anton Levy is co-President and managing director; Tanzeen M. Syed is a managing director.
Data above sourced from www.crunchbase.com/organization/chess-com

Alexander Konoplyasty was educated at Moscow State Institute of International Relations. (Source: Bloomberg)
Michael Szalontay educated at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary (source: Linkedin)
See this general article of interest as to their investments. www.timesofisrael.com/london-based-flashpoint-seeks-to-invest-100-million-in-israeli-tech/

Anton Levy: born in South Africa, undergrad Univ. of Virginia. H as an MBA from Columbia University.
Tanzeen M. Syed: BA Macalester College, St. Paul, MN. (Linkedin)

Layer upon layer of equity investors. I can't help but wonder how they view the mess that Danny Rensch and Magnus Carlsen have created and can't seem to stop fomenting.

wow. This makes sense now because in 2018, Pokerstars co-funded a competition to find a chess and poker game. They had some chess.com staff Daniel Rensch and Greg Shahade judging the competition as well as poker legends Liv Boeree, Jennifer Shahade (Former US Chess Champion) and Daniel Negreanu.

Another interesting point is Puzzle Rush was an app submitted in the competition but it didn't win. Danny however published it famously in the fall of 2018 and it became a global hit.

@michuk said in #2:
> wow. This makes sense now because in 2018, Pokerstars co-funded a competition to find a chess and poker game. They had some chess.com staff Daniel Rensch and Greg Shahade judging the competition as well as poker legends Liv Boeree, Jennifer Shahade (Former US Chess Champion) and Daniel Negreanu.
>
> Another interesting point is Puzzle Rush was an app submitted in the competition but it didn't win. Danny however published it famously in the fall of 2018 and it became a global hit.
Yes, most of those people came up in my initial search relating to apps acquired by various entities.
Clearly, this isn't really about chess as sport/competition. It's all about making money; return on investment.

As Rensch, Carlsen and their minions continue trashing people like Hans Niemann, I have to think that the investors aren't going to want negative publicity. Perhaps its time to start asking the investors what they think about this "cheating" scandal that Carlsen, Rensch and Nakamura have birthed.

@VTWood said in #3:
>
Gambling is never without controversy. Having events in the headlines increases peoples affinity to back one side or the other, and that facilitates more people putting money at stake.

i agree with #4, chess.com is getting a lot of free marketing. I don't know if there are even two sides being reported, though? the article in WSJ was very biased towards chess.com from what I remember. I don't know if WSJ talked to anyone that wasn't chess.com/? I can't remember.

people already involved in chess probably already have a side, maybe a few have switched, but compared to all the new to chess.com people that have been exposed to biased articles...

if i search up chess.com, i need to have memory loss of that site

@Nomoreusernames said in #4:
> Gambling is never without controversy. Having events in the headlines increases peoples affinity to back one side or the other, and that facilitates more people putting money at stake.
I wonder if Lichess has seen an increase in new accounts since the Magnus/Chesscon publicity drive against Niemann began.

@VTWood said in #7:
> I wonder if Lichess has seen an increase in new accounts since the Magnus/Chesscon publicity drive against Niemann began.

i reckon that data is publicly available. I have no idea how to access it, but I would be surprised if it wasn't available in some way.

@VTWood said in #7:
> I wonder if Lichess has seen an increase in new accounts since the Magnus/Chesscon publicity drive against Niemann began.

I won't be playing on chess.con any longer, whereas it was my favourite site since it offered an email address with your account (back in 2012, it doesn't any longer). I promoted my kids having exposure to Magnus, Hikaru and Rensch, showing how clever they are and laughing at their acuity, and as being role models for fighting adversity and having a good nature and presence, including them as examples of good people, No sensible person would consider that accurate any longer.

I now am being forced to appreciate chess in the way the general public think about chess players, and see if there is anything negative about it. I have always loved chess, I will be on Lichess probably, but will get rid of the clock and 3 chess sets I have, I don't want the kids to know I play chess any longer.

I am currently looking for other "mind sports" or mental endeavours where the new generation are more wholesome. Hopefully it's not just guitar and painting, any ideas?

@michuk said in #2:
Another interesting point is Puzzle Rush was an app submitted in the competition but it didn't win. Danny however published it famously in the fall of 2018 and it became a global hit.

Yeah I think inventing Puzzle Rush was the best chess.com did so far, for the community and for themselves.