How Chess.com Used AI to Break Beyond Its Domain Name
When you've been the undisputed king of online chess for almost 20 years, what's the natural next move? If you're Chess.com, the answer involves AI-assisted development, poker, and potentially go, backgammon, and mahjong.
The company quietly launched Gambit, a free online poker platform, in beta earlier this year. Unlike typical poker sites, Gambit is explicitly designed as a learning environment with zero real-money gambling. Chess.com's chief growth officer Albert Cheng put it bluntly: "Real money is the problem we built Gambit to get away from, the whole industry makes money when beginners lose."
But what makes Gambit's story interesting isn't just the product—it's how it was built.
Small Teams, Big Ambitions
Cheng and one other employee took Gambit from prototype to launch in roughly a year. That's remarkably fast for launching an entirely new platform with distinct gameplay, rating systems, and social features.
The secret? AI handled much of the heavy lifting. "I think the biggest advantage that it's provided is essentially being able to read our existing codebase and our design system and apply consistent patterns to how we develop Chess.com over to a different platform and do so quickly," Cheng explained.
This is the part that should catch the attention of developers and startup founders: AI isn't replacing human judgment, but it's dramatically compressing the time from idea to launch. Cheng noted that without AI assistance, launching a new platform would have required a bigger team or been "a lot more disruptive to the status quo" of building and growing their core chess product.
The Elo-Everything Strategy
Chess.com's approach to expansion reveals another smart strategy: bring your rating system culture with you. They've developed an Elo-style rating system specifically for Gambit, understanding that competitive players need something to measure their progress against.
" You're not gambling your own hard-earned money necessarily, so the stakes are lower from that standpoint, but you need something to counterbalance it that you care about, and that keeps the ecosystem in play," Cheng explained.
This rating system does more than track skill—it drives the subscription model. Chess.com's primary revenue comes from subscriptions, but most users play for free. Premium features like unlimited game reviews and puzzles incentivize upgrades, but only because players can see measurable improvement in their ratings.
The lesson here is clear: if you're building any platform with a skill element, a reliable rating system isn't optional—it's foundational infrastructure that enables both engagement and monetization.
What's Next?
Chess.com is already eyeing go, backgammon, and mahjong as future expansions. The criteria? Games with "both that classic durability plus the community around it"—exactly what made chess their original success.
For developers watching this expansion, the takeaway is straightforward: AI isn't about replacing your team, it's about amplifying what a small, focused team can accomplish. Cheng summed it up well: "Just because code is easier to write doesn't mean that you just let it run on its own, but it certainly is a superpower in getting things off the ground."
That's the real story behind Gambit. It's not just a poker site—it's proof that the playbook for building successful platforms can now be executed by leaner teams, faster than ever before.