Chess.com launched a poker site and is planning even more classic games
Chess.com has expanded beyond its core product for the first time in nearly 20 years, launching Gambit, a free companion poker site where players can learn the game without real-money stakes. The move matters because it signals Chess.com's broader ambition to become a hub for classic strategy games rather than a single-title platform, with executives citing AI-assisted development as a key enabler of this faster diversification.
Gambit, quietly launched in beta in May, mirrors Chess.com's design and features, including bot matches, tournaments, review modes and its own Elo-style rating system, which chief growth officer Albert Cheng says motivates improvement and underpins a future paid subscription tier. Cheng confirmed there will never be real-money gambling on the site, and revealed Chess.com is now developing similar companion platforms for go, backgammon and mahjong, with a small team using AI tools to speed up coding and adapt its existing codebase, though he noted AI still struggles with brand and feature design work.
- Chess.com launched Gambit, a free real-money-free poker learning site.
- It plans companion sites for go, backgammon and mahjong next.
- AI helped a two-person team build Gambit within a year.
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Chess.com has been the dominant online destination for chess for nearly two decades, best known for letting people play games, take lessons and compete in tournaments against other players and computer opponents. Until now it has stuck to that one game, but it has just launched Gambit, a free site for playing poker without real money changing hands, marking its first move into a different game.
The person setting out the company's thinking is Albert Cheng, Chess.com's chief growth officer, who says the firm wants to become a home for classic strategy and tabletop games more broadly, not just chess. He has also indicated that similar spin-off sites are being built for go, backgammon and mahjong, with the company crediting artificial intelligence tools for helping a small team develop these new products more quickly.
The wider significance is that a well-established online platform is trying to diversify beyond the single game that built its audience, at a time when AI-assisted software development is making it cheaper and faster for companies to branch into new products.