Chessify Teams Up with Oracle Cloud to Elevate Chess Training

For the last few years, Chessify has been providing one of the most powerful training platforms for professional and amateur chess players. Part of Oracle for Startups, the startup will now be powered by Oracle Cloud to further increase the efficiency of its service.

"Chess players aren't seizing the potential of new technologies," says Gor Vardanyan, the CEO and founder of Chessify. His team aims to bring the best technological solutions to the chess world. They created a training platform that allows the strongest chess analytical programs to run on powerful cloud servers thus increasing their speed and efficiency by up to 200 times. It is already used by hundreds of professional players including top-tier Grandmasters like Anish Giri and Levon Aronian.

The Oracle relationship will allow the chess startup to further advance its services attracting even more players. With the help of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and AI features, Chessify has already doubled the speed of its cloud analysis for professionals and is now working to complete the development of its AI chess trainer to help upcoming players and amateurs as well.

Chessify is part of Oracle for Startups, Oracle's program to support innovators and startups across the globe. As such, Chessify gains access to world-class technology at startup price tags, thanks to significant program discounts. The program also provides access to mentoring, customers, technical support, and go-to-market resources.

It's fascinating and fun to see how cloud computing is powering and advancing so many areas of our life like Chessify is doing for chess," said Jason Williamson, global head and VP, Oracle for Startups. With the horsepower of Oracle Cloud, Chessify is allowing any player access to world-class computing to advance their skills. The possibilities are incredible.

The Chessify training platform running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure includes:

- The fastest chess analyses in the world - The company now provides cloud analysis at the speed of up to 1 Billion NPS (nodes per second), which is a chess engine's speed measurement that shows the number of positions it analyzes in one second. Never before, there have been such powerful cloud servers publicly available for chess analysis. For a chess master, this means time-efficient training, as they will not have to leave their computers working all night just to get somewhat accurate results with their local engines. Chessify allows them to choose their favorite chess engines and run them on powerful and highly secure cloud servers to reach much better results in a matter of an hour or two.

- Up to 100 Million NPS speed cloud servers for free analysis - Given that not all chess positions require super-powerful analysis, players do not need to spend money every time they want to analyze their games. Alongside the paid servers, Chessify offers up to 100MN/s speed cloud server for free, which is still around 10 times faster than the average local computer analysis. So whether a player needs deep analysis on complicated positions or a quick check on possible tactics they can do it all with Chessify in a time- and budget-friendly way. 

- AI chess trainer (still in the development stage) - Imagine having someone who could break down your weak and strong sides in a few minutes, advise you on what you should work on, and also provide a personalized training plan you could start doing right away. This is what Chessify's new feature is planned to do. After receiving a database of games or test results, the AI trainer will analyze them with its powerful cloud engines to identify your good and bad decisions in different situations and then create a training plan specifically for you.

Cloud servers are a luxury for chess players right now, however, the Chessify team believes that they should become the new standard. Some of the strongest chess grandmasters in the world have already integrated Chessify into their daily training. Dutch No 1 GM Anish Giri has been using Chessify for over a year now.

I had discovered Chessify when looking for the strongest hardware I could rent in preparation for the Candidates 2020 [the strongest chess event which determines the number 1 contender for the World crown]. I quickly realized that renting from the cloud providers directly requires a serious level of IT support and came to the conclusion that Chessify offers exactly what my team and I needed," Anish says. During one year, he's improved his rating by 12 points and moved up 5 spots in the world rankings, which is a highly remarkable achievement given that he's competing against the uppermost echelons of the sport.

Levon Aronian, who's the 4th highest-rated player in history, is also a long-time Chessify user. After an unsuccessful Candidates tournament in 2018, Aronian started contemplating his training methods and came to the conclusion that his main problem was the technical knowledge that he lacked in comparison to other top grandmasters. He integrated Chessify into his training in 2019 and started to use chess engines more effectively.

"I can confidently say that Chessify is one of the tools that revived my career after a rough patch. I use their servers every day and enjoy playing around with different setups for Artificial intelligence engines," Levon says. Alongside Anish Giri, he's recently become Chessify's official Ambassador. 

Yet most players still train with the help of local computers and laptops, since they do not have enough sponsorship to afford super-powerful home servers. The good news is that they can make a significantly less investment and get even better analysis with Chessify than with any supercomputer. Chessify cloud packages give access to up to 1 Billion NPS cloud servers starting from $5.

"Our service brings equality to the chess field," Gor believes. "Whether you're an amateur, an improving chess player, or a grandmaster, you can have the same or even better computer analysis than the highest-rated grandmasters of the world."

About Chessify

Chessify introduces a new era of mobile, cloud, and AI to the rapidly growing chess community. The company strives to satisfy all the practical needs of chess players: from powerful cloud analysis to everyday training conveniences, such as a chessboard scanner, video search, and live streaming. A team of chess enthusiasts and tech professionals stands behind Chessify, and they engage top grandmasters to assist them in achieving superior results.

About Oracle

Oracle offers suites of integrated applications plus secure, autonomous infrastructure in the Oracle Cloud. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), visit oracle.com.