Chess.com Launches New Poker Site, Plans More Classic Game Sites with Player Ratings - Thanks to AI Protyping
SUMMARYChess.com quietly launched Gambit, a free educational poker site that lets players practice and improve an Elo-like rating without real-money wagering. The company plans to expand into other classic games such as go, backgammon, and mahjong using similar rating systems. Chief growth officer Albert Cheng said AI helped speed development by supporting coding tasks, and Gambit has already attracted 75,000 members, nearly 20 million hands played, and 100,000 lessons completed.
In May Chess.com "quietly launched" a free educational poker site named Gambit, reports The Verge, where players can learn the game and improve an Elo-like rating without risking real money. And next Chess.com will expand into more classic games, including go, backgammon, and mahjong:
Like Gambit, Chess.com is developing Elo-style rating systems for these games, as well. [Chess.com's chief growth officer, Albert Cheng] didn't say when the new sites will launch but that "development is moving quite rapidly" on them, using the same playbook he used for Gambit... He and one other employee took Gambit from prototype to launch within a year, partly with help from AI, mainly for coding tasks. "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 said.... "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."
Cheng also said the version of Gambit that's live at the time of writing has "zero or close to zero" AI-created assets, which were used in early prototypes.
According to Cheng, without help from AI, getting another site up and running would have required a bigger team or "would have been a lot more disruptive to the status quo of building and growing Chess." Now that a "small, scrappy" team can get a new platform off the ground much faster, it's opened the door for Chess.com to dip into more games, starting with poker.
The poker site already has 75,000 members, according to a blog post Friday - and they've already played nearly 20 million hands and completed 100,000 lessons. The site is now holding a daily poker tournament, and on Monday will broadcast the event with live commentary on their Twitch and YouTube channels.