Meet a Grandmaster who built his own chess app
Chess today is easier to access than ever. But it is not always easy to navigate. Players often switch between multiple apps to follow games, prepare, and analyze. GM Vasif Durarbayli, a former World Youth Champion, felt this gap himself. That led him to build ChessEver, an app designed around a player’s real needs. In this article, we look at the idea behind it and hear directly from him. Read on to understand what ChessEver is all about. Photo: Vasif Durarbayli
Everything in one app
In modern chess, the way players train and follow the game has evolved rapidly. While platforms have made access easier, the experience itself often remains scattered across multiple tools. This is why GM Vasif Durarbayli started exploring a different approach. He wanted to bring different parts of a player’s workflow into one place. He wanted a single platform where he could follow tournaments, track players, and prepare for games without constantly switching between different tools.
Vasif has spent years competing at a high level. He won the World Youth Chess Championship (Under-14) in 2006 and later the European Youth Championship (Under-18) in 2010. He earned the International Master title in 2007 and became a Grandmaster in 2010. He has represented Azerbaijan in major events, including the Chess Olympiad and he is the youngest player to do so in his country. He has also won the Azerbaijani Chess Championship twice, in 2021 and 2023.
Not only this, but he has been working as a coach for more than a decade. Both these roles have shaped his understanding of how players interact with the game through the tools. That's why he thought of creating his app, the ChessEver app, to solve chess players' practical concerns.
To understand the thinking behind the app in more detail, I spoke to Vasif about its purpose, design and long-term vision.
Interview with Vasif Durarbayli
Q: What problem in the chess world were you trying to solve when you created ChessEver?
A: I was solving the problem for myself. I wanted to be able to follow events and players, prepare for games, or just analyze deeply on my phone. I thought if I am bothered, surely other chess players want the same. Talking to chess friends, it was clear that we need ChessEver. I was convincing enough that 7 of them invested in this project, 4 Grandmasters and 3 International Masters. ChessEver is an app where you can follow chess and prepare. I am confident we do those things better than any app.
Q: How did your experience as a Grandmaster influence the way ChessEver is designed?
A: I am not only a Grandmaster. I am a chess fan and a coach as well. I think this allows me to look at app development from different layers. For instance, if someone opens our app and just wants to follow a game or player as a chess fan, they will not see much difference between us and other apps. This is intentional. We did not want to overwhelm the casual user. However, we have deep tools that only very serious players would use: showing a threat on the board, adding a null move, having a database to save preps, and more. Basically, whenever we design, we make sure it serves everyone well.
Q: Can you tell us about the special features in the app?
A: The For You tab. You open the app, and the games you care about are already there. No searching, no clicking through events. Opening Explorer with player-specific filtering. Most explorers give you aggregate statistics. Ours lets you drill into what a specific player actually plays. For a serious player preparing for an opponent, this is the difference between useful and not.
Speed! We allow users to get to the game faster than any other app. I have made a comparison video against Chess.com and Lichess. It is not close. We also eliminated going back and forth between games with swipe navigation, and we notify users the moment their favorites start playing so they don't miss any moves. More is coming.
Q: I came across a line on your website: "ChessEver is an app designed with obsessive detail." What does that actually mean in practice?
A: The number of clicks is where the design shows. We make sure our users get whatever they want in the least number of clicks. Anyone can compare how many clicks they need in other apps to reach a game they want, then compare that to ours.
Favorites and Countrymen is another example. You tell the app who you care about and where you are from, and we pull their games together for you. No more jumping between tournament pages to track a player across events or opening three different websites to follow your compatriots. Everything is in one place.
Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced while building ChessEver? How did you overcome them?
A: I knew that people don't like changing their habits. But I did not know how challenging it could be. I have made comparison navigation and speed videos between our app and the Chess.com and Lichess apps. Neither is purely focused on broadcasting, so it is not a fair comparison, but most users follow events on those apps. In the comparisons, I show the speed and navigation difference between them and us. ChessEver's speed is unmatched. We are growing every week, and our retention is generally above 35%, significantly higher than software retention standards, but I am not happy with this. I am convinced our app is the best by a big margin, and we should be climbing faster. We are working on changing it by convincing influencers to try our app and share their objective thoughts with their followers. This is the biggest challenge, and we are still tackling it.
Q: What is your long-term vision for ChessEver?
A: Completely change the chess ecosystem. I have written about this in my blog post "People Will Pay to Watch Chess Games." My idea is that chess has huge, unleashed potential. Everyone thinks chess games are free, and there is no way to monetize them. Well, music is free too, but people pay Spotify to listen to it. We will create a chess broadcasting platform, and people will pay us to watch games in better quality, and we will deliver that. It will also unleash potential for organizers to earn money, because they can sell to other companies. This will improve playing standards for players, something that has bothered me for years and that I wrote about in my piece "Am I a Chess Tourist?"
I believe when we are successful, others will join too. For now, it is only us, and we need to prove this hypothesis. I am confident. It is just a matter of time.
Q: Anything else you would like to add?
A: Download the app. If you like it, tell a friend. If you don't, tell me why. I am @durarbayli on X and I read everything.
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Note: ChessBase India has no association with ChessEver. This article is purely informational and aims to present the app and its background.
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