Chess.com maintained its massive user growth after the COVID/Queen's Gambit surge because the new player base was sustained by ongoing cultural trends and product improvements.

0:00COVID happened, Queen's Gambit happened, some news cycles happened, and we're like, "Oh, this might just be a flash in the pan," like treadmills and sourdough bread. But then in 2023, we had another crazy wave where all these kids [music] started playing in schools because of short form content and the mittens bot and the cheating scandal and we just spiked again and then when we came down again, we were so much higher and we

0:23maintained this baseline. >> How do you think about like how to [music] design a rating system for poker? We're bringing the chess playbook, which is like how good are you really? Not just [music] can you buy the most chips or can you use a bot or can you steal the most money, whatever it is, we've all played those games where you're playing for M&M's and someone's just like all in all the time and they

0:43just reby more M&M's. As people get used to like, wait, I actually care about my poker rating, people are going to care about it as much as money because it's a reflection of like the value and their skill as a player. I think this is going to be quite an interesting u innovation for for poker. Hi listeners, welcome back to No Priors. [music] Today I'm here with Eric Alabest