Season 1

Season page + banner Web · live Jul 24

The hub. Countdown to Jul 28, a live "who's live now" Twitch embed, the schedule, and a Play button. The homepage banner points here and flips to "Season LIVE" on the 28th.

Walkthrough of how the site works (Season 1 page).

SPEC → Pete: Homepage hero background — 3840 × 1620 px (2×, ~2.37∶1) · season-page variant 3840 × 1128 px (~3.40∶1). Full-bleed — edges crop. Keep top ~80px (site header) clear; put the two champions in the left half; the right half is covered by the live stream panel, so leave it as open fog; the bottom must fade to solid #1e1938. On mobile it crops to top-center. Palette #1e1938 / gold #e1b87b / periwinkle #a2aee4. PNG or PSD master + progressive JPEG.

The emails 8k CRM · Jul 24 / 28 / 31

Three sends. Jul 24 announces Season 1, Jul 28 says it's live with the free pass, Jul 31 says the weekend's on. This is for waking up the people we already have — not for finding new ones.

Direction mockups for Pete (AI-generated) — they show the messaging and treatment we want per send, not final art. Copy + prompts in working/season1-emails.md; source art seeds in .lavish/.

SPEC → Pete: each banner 1920 × 1080 px (16∶9), PNG + layered source. Headline + badge live in the left ~55% — keep that side clean; character on the right. Same three sizes across all sends.

Twitter beats Jul 24 →

Three or four posts across the run, not one per stream — a stream-a-day feed just tanks into the void. The beats: announce the season, Streamer Week (everyone's faces on one calendar), a CAPP-program flex, the partner/ambassador reveal, the Drop, the weekend. Streamers post their own live banners; we put a bounty on the best reposts.

Reddit posts r/chessbeginners · Jul 24 / 28 / 31

Two or three posts into r/chessbeginners — the only sub that's ever actually converted for us. Kartik posts, the CAPP crew upvotes in the first ten minutes to catch the algorithm. Skip r/boardgames: great clicks, zero installs.

CAPP bounties #bounties channel

Three or four, no more: repost the announce, hit the Reddit post, repost the Drop, cover a weekend co-stream. Run out of the #bounties channel, paid on proof.

The repost-bounty card that goes in #bounties.

Weekend blitz + recap Jul 31 → Aug 3

The peak: "everyone's on right now," creator clips, screenshots of us trending. The Aug 3 recap is the same material aimed at investors — this many creators live at once for a Season 1 launch.

The Drop Jul 28

Season goes live. First-ever battle pass — free, this season only — plus a new mode and a champion refresh. Patched three days ahead of the weekend on purpose, as a bug buffer.

Creator event Jul 31

~40 creators live at once (8–10 of them big names), Chess.com TV, homepage placement, Alex hosting. This is the concurrency bet — the day we actually try to trend.

Brazil tournament Jul 31–Aug 2

Community-run, three days. Qualifiers Jul 31 and Aug 1, the 40-player final on Aug 2.

The Node Jul 31–Aug 2

Agency, $5–10k, a couple dozen micro-creators streaming all weekend. Invisible to players — pure concurrency fuel.

Jestr Jul 24–Aug 2

Short-form video campaign running top-of-funnel the whole way through.

Individual streams Jul 23–Aug 2

The ~12–15 paid one-off creator streams — the near-daily drumbeat under everything. Higgs kicked it off Jul 22.