TL; DR
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A new Web3 chess game is supported by Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen (chess has ~605 million active players worldwide, all of whom are now potential new Web3 users).
Full story
There’s a guy on our writing team, let’s call him “Bevvy Shmassar”…
If you asked Bevvy what his favorite book was, he’d say, “Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.”
But here’s the thing…
This man has never read Walden – That’s just what he thinks claim he did will make him look smart.
In reality, his favorite book is ‘The Name of the Wind’ by Patrick Rothfuss – a 672-page nerd bible for fantasy freaks.
Why are we telling you this?
Because we all have a “Bevvy” in our lives — and we suspect they’re all about to secretly start playing a new Web3-powered game called ‘Anichess.’
Here’s the basic idea of it:
It’s chess…
But with the addition of magical spells, a fantasy storyline and free-to-collect NFTs known as ‘Orbs of Power.’
(Seriously, this is real).
And we are really looking forward to it! Not so much because of the game itself, but because of the statistics behind it…
Check this out:
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Chess is played regularly by 605 million adults worldwide
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Anichess is supported by Chess.com and Chess’ number 1 player/poster child/bad boy Magnus Carlsen.
Now think about this…
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Fortnite and PUBG, the two largest video games by active player base, have 525 million monthly active players COMBINED!
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Chess.com alone gets 191 million visitors per month (if that were ranked as a video game, it would be number 3 in the world in terms of monthly active users).
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Plus, getting Magnus Carlsen’s approval for a chess game is like getting Tom Brady’s endorsement for an NFL video game.
Will Anichess be a hit? No idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But! If it do manage to catch on, it will happen a lot of room to grow.
And with every new Anichess player comes a new Web3 user.
We’d love to see it!