Post by Valentin Dragnev

Over the past couple of months, I have decided to shift more of my focus away from competitive chess and towards building something of my own. Together with Johannes Steindl and Paul Höller, I co-founded Chessivity - a social platform for chess players and enthusiasts around the world. Today, I am very happy to share that its first public version is now live. The idea for Chessivity started with a simple observation: chess has become more accessible than ever, but in some ways also less social. Not long ago, people actually sat down to play games of chess, analyze together and exchange knowledge. Nowadays they spend countless hours in front of screens without any social exchange whatsoever. While we cannot stop the progress of digitalization, we figured that we could bring some of the social element back into the game. So we built a place where chess players can share their chess experiences, follow what their friends are doing and interact with each other. For ambitious players, Chessivity also offers the possibility to keep track of their own activities and improvement along the way. Over the past few months, we have worked on the product, set up the company and tried to turn the idea into something real. The platform is still at an early stage, and there is a lot we want to improve. Our long-term vision is to make Chessivity the place where the global chess community comes together. Working on Chessivity has challenged me in completely new ways. At the same time, I have realized how useful many of the skills I developed through chess can be outside the game, especially strategic and analytical thinking and the ability to work through difficult problems. It has been one of the most exciting projects I have worked on so far. Chessivity is completely free to use, so feel free to give it a try: www.chessivity.com Feedback is very welcome. And if you know somebody who might enjoy using it, sharing it would help us a lot. If you would like to know more about the story behind Chessivity, you can read my Lichess blog post here: https://lnkd.in/dmTzHRkv