Year in Review – 2020

What a year 2020 has been for chess! While the pandemic changed the way chess tournaments are held today, the world also saw an explosive growth in chess interest.

A record-breaking 62 million household viewers watched The Queen's Gambit series on Netflix during the first 28 days since its release in October, resulting in 600% growth in Magnus Trainer, our training and learning app. The result is a doubling of our app members!

For us, 2020 was a busy year. Here are some highlights.

• In January, we released Tactics Frenzy on iOS, our third app in our app suite. With Tactics Frenzy, we wanted to give you an arena to practice and compete using the best and most entertaining chess puzzles ever made. Tactics Frenzy was also released to Google Play and web in February.
• In early September, we introduced you to the Play Magnus PLUS membership, giving you ONE membership with access to everything we have to offer (three apps, cross-platform, one price).
• In November we released the Play Magnus app on the App Gallery (Huawei).
• In December we made major changes to the Play Magnus app, introducing the first additional opponent for you to play, Wesley So – one of many to come.

For all our users, thank you for your support. You have inspired us to continue our hard work and release more for you in 2021. You'll see us improving the Play Magnus app by bringing in new features and opponents (check back in to see who!) to challenge.
In Magnus Trainer, we will improve the way you consume our beloved theory lessons.
Finally, in Tactics Frenzy, we will make improvements to ensure you have the smoothest experience and introduce new features. As you can see, we are all super excited!

Happy new year!

-The Play Magnus team.