Play Magnus Group is a Norwegian

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

company co-founded by chess grandmaster

Magnus Carlsen Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the reigning five-time World Chess Champion. He is also a three-time World Rapid Chess Champion and five-time World Blitz Chess Champion. Carlsen has h ...

in 2013. The company released the mobile app '' Play Magnus'' in 2014, before merging with

chess24 chess24.com is an Internet chess server in English and nine other languages, established in 2014 by German grandmaster Jan Gustafsson and Enrique Guzman. Among people collaborating with chess24 are World Champions, Grandmasters and International ...

in 2019 and being acquired by

Chess.com Chess.com is an internet chess server, news website and social networking website. The site has a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others are available for accounts with subscriptions. Live online chess can be pla ...

in 2022.

History

In October 2013, Magnus Carlsen co-founded the

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

-based Play Magnus AS, together with his manager

Espen Agdestein Espen Agdestein (born 7 February 1965) is the former manager of current Chess World Champion Magnus Carlsen (until 2021). He is the brother of chess grandmaster and former coach of Magnus Carlsen, Simen Agdestein, and is himself a FIDE master, ...

and entrepreneur Anders Brandt. At its founding, Carlsen owned 60% of the company and Agdestein owned 15%. Investing Carlsen's own money and that of US and Norwegian investors, Play Magnus AS then began developing '' Play Magnus'', a mobile computer chess app. The app released in 2014, and allowed users to play against a

chess engine In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess engine is usually a back end with a command-line interface wit ...

modeled after a database of thousands of positions from recorded games Carlsen played from the age of five and up. In November 2016, Play Magnus Group launched ''Magnus Trainer'', a chess learning app, and in 2018 launched its third mobile app, ''Magnus' Kingdom of Chess'', a video game targeted towards young children.

Merge with chess24

In 2019, Play Magnus AS merged with the chess website

, consolidating into the Play Magnus Group. Following the merge, the holding company of the two former chess24 owners ( Jan Gustafsson and Enrique Guzman) became the largest shareholders in Play Magnus Group. In October 2020, Play Magnus Group was listed on the

Oslo Stock Exchange Oslo Stock Exchange ( no, Oslo Børs) (OSE: OSLO) is a stock exchange within the Nordic countries and offers Norway’s only regulated markets for securities trading today. The stock exchange offers a full product range including equities, deriv ...

. The listing raised 300 million kr (US$30.2 million) for the company, giving it a valuation of 796 million kr (US$85.8 million). After the listing, Magnus Chess, an entity controlled by Carlsen and his family, owned only 9.5% of Play Magnus Group.

Further acquisitions and projects

* In February 2019, Play Magnus Group acquired Chessable, an interactive marketplace and platform for learning chess. * In November 2020, the group acquired U.S. website ichess.net. * In 2020, the group conducted the first of its yearly

Champions Chess Tour A champion (from the late Latin ''campio'') is the Victory, victor in a challenge, Competition, contest or competition. There can be a territorial pyramid of championships, e.g. local, regional / provincial, state, national, continental and w ...

, beginning with the

Champions Chess Tour 2021 The Champions Chess Tour 2021, known for sponsorship reasons as the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour, was a 10-month long series of 10 online chess tournaments featuring the world's top players, playing for a prize money pool of US$1.5 million. T ...

which ran from November 2020 – October 2021. * In February 2021, the group acquired the Dutch magazine '' New in Chess'', and the publisher ''

Everyman Chess Everyman Chess, formerly known as Cadogan Chess, is a major publisher of books and CDs about chess. "Everyman" is a registered trademark of Random House and the company headquarters is in London. Former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is the ...

'' in May. * In March 2021, chess grandmaster Simon Williams joined Play Magnus Group, acquiring his website (GingerGM.com) containing chess video courses and e-books. * In May 2021, the group acquired Aimchess, a chess analytics website.

Acquisition by Chess.com

In August 2022, Play Magnus Group accepted an offer to be acquired by

at a value of 800 million kr (US$80 million). The acquisition was officially closed on December 16, 2022. According to ''

Dot Esports The GAMURS Group, simply known as Gamurs, is an esports media and entertainment publisher. Established in December 2014, the group operates multiple brands focusing on the esports and entertainment news markets, including the websites: ''Dot Espo ...

'', the Play Magnus Group was unable to make a "sustainable profit" on anything but Chessable, and the merge left "no other realistic chess competitor" except the free, open-source

Lichess Lichess (; ) is a free and open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an account to play rated games. Lichess is ad-free and al ...

References

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External links

Official website
Companies established in 2013 Companies listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange Companies based in Oslo