What’s going on with Chessable?
Chessable is a very well-known website that offers a huge variety of courses on every part of chess, written by anyone from community members, to online personalities like Ellen Nilssen and James Canty, to the top 10 players in the world like Anish Giri and Fabiano Caruana. It was founded by IM John Bartholomew and David Kramaley nine years ago, primarily built on opening courses learned through ‘spaced repetition’. Chessable expanded enough to be acquired by the Play Magnus Group in February 2019, who were themselves acquired by Chess.com in 2022.
This week, Chessable has had its own drama to follow the World Rapid & Blitz, as they announced major changes on January 2nd. Most notably, they stated that their much-loved “Short & Sweet” courses – free, miniature versions of large repertoires such as their famed “Lifetime Repertoires”, which allowed users to get a feel for what the full course would be like before committing to buying it – would only be available to users who paid for the website’s “PRO” subscription. While Chessable has a strong 30-day refund policy, users appreciate not needing to go through the hassle of buying and returning.
There are also some courses on Chessable written by community authors (non-titled players) who willingly provide their content for free, and it was realized that these also were being put behind the PRO paywall. Together, this immediately received massive backlash from the community, which has kept up in the following days.
A torrent of posts have been made in the Chessable forums, as users pushed back against many aspects of the sudden changes. A common assertion was that this was not the way to make PRO more appealing. Some hours after the initial announcement, staff member AndrewK provided some clarification, including that any currently-possessed free materials would not be lost to anyone who had previously purchased any course or membership. Part of the initial announcement was that these users would be given three months of PRO for free to help the transition, and access would remain following the three months. He also acknowledged that they had made a mistake putting free community courses behind PRO membership, reiterated in a later update where he said they had heard all the feedback and would be sharing an updated plan next week. It’s unclear how much they will be walking back.
Both founders have commented on Twitter, with Kramaley saying “My heart goes out to the Chessable community 💙 RIP short and sweets 😔 Hang in there guys, maybe they will roll this back? 🙏”, adding in response to a question of what happened, “Just a corporate decision that went against a long standing Chessable tradition to give back to the community (also something that actually drove sales, last I looked at the data 3 years ago 😂). Community was in uproar, rightly so, so I wanted to stand by them. 🤗”.
Bartholomew remarked, “Hope @chessable rebuilds trust with authors & users. Guaranteeing that free courses remain 100% free would be a good first step. Haven’t been with Chessable for years, but I want it to succeed. Chessable/Chesscom have many excellent people – I believe they’ll make things right.”, and on the topic of Short & Sweets, “No royalties, as far as I’m aware. There are indeed many incredible free courses on the site. I think the authors should have at the very least been consulted about this proposed change. I’m sure they wouldn’t have been happy (I’m not!).”
Kramaley added more information later on his departure from Chessable, to which chess journalist Leon Watson responded with his own personal experience: “This is sad to read. I joined Chessable in 2017, in its infancy. Back then, free Short&Sweet courses were the heart and soul of the platform. I know that sounds over-dramatic, but it’s how we felt. I’m also very, very sad to see them disappear. Values are important in business.”
Further concerns included coaches being unable to recommend students, especially kids, try out a free course, since everything was being moved behind a pay wall. There was also suspicion on what promised bigger discounts for PRO members would mean relative to existing prices and prices for non-PRO members. It’s up to Chessable to respond to users’ claims that this follows a wider online trend of platform decay.
Image via Chessable
