Unironically chess is an e-sport and this recent explosion is because Hikaru, Botez, Hess et al. have woken up to that idea and embraced it.
The best computers can easily beat the top humans just as an aimbot could beat Navi easily at CS:GO.
So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.
That makes it much more like a strategy game.
Embracing memes makes it more accessible to viewers who are used to watching hearthstone, csgo, league, dota or other esports and it's been really fun to watch.
I started watching chess on twitch a while ago during the Tata steel tournament and I thought back then it would quickly grow if they focused their commentary on casual level viewers and it's been fantastic to have been proved correct.
>So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.
There is a certain skill level, which I want to say is somewhere around 1400 to 1500 but it has been over a decade so don't quote me on that, where most the players at that level seem to focus on memorizing openings.
It ended up being what separates them from the players a one to two hundred points lower. This leaves them vulnerable to a bit of a hack, as using a non-standard opening can completely remove any usefulness of their memorized openings. It almost disorients them and makes it much more likely for them to make a mistake that can then overcome the disadvantage of such a non-standard opening. I loved playing in this area as I hated memorizing openings so I just used non-standard openings to not to avoid having to. Eventually I hit the ranking where players were good enough to take advantage of my non-standard opening more than any advantage from disorienting them and I quit playing because the only option to advance would've been to go back and memorize openings.
I also hated memorizing openings. I did it, years ago when I was a middling level chess player and played in tourneys, like everyone else, because of the time pressure from the chess clock. Nobody could afford being stumped 4-6 moves in, pondering what to do, when you had a better chance arriving to the mid-game with a non-terrible position. Burning too much time here meant you'd lose on time.
I was not good enough to play an unknown variant and come out better, as you were!
So over time I drifted to variants like bughouse or speed chess variants, to play for fun and not feel like it was studying or being constrained by the standard moves.
And then boardgames took over; for me personally I need to have a mix of luck and skill in a game to enjoy it.
I've also moved on to board games that have some element of randomness as otherwise I try optimizing to the point where it ceases to be fun and becomes work. Overall I've found myself way too competitive, especially around younger family members, and these days I instead play the role of GM while letting them play. Most board games don't have a role for GM, but with a little creativity it is easy to modify the game so that players focus more on the fun of playing their own roles while I 'run' the game. It also allows for the interjecting of a story into the mechanics that I have found younger players to greatly enjoy.
Not a chess player either, but I'd imagine it would be easier to know the begginings of a standard opening, then just play a wrong move. At that point it ia unlikely to transpose back into a standard opening.
I do this trick a fair amount in Go, and actually have accumulated some "standard" non-standard openings that I play when the oppurtunity arrises. Because I play them fairly often, I actually have more experience with them then my opponent, so end up with the "memorization" advantage.
Also, in my experience, players will notice the mistake and then try a bit too hard to take advantage, instead of being satisfied with getting the "normal" result.
I asked a few people much better than me and they couldn't think of any standard openings similar to what I was using. A few were able to point out some openings it was similar to, but those were rarely used openings.
I'm such a bad chess player I barely count as an amateur, but it's definitely possible to know simple jerkass bidding systems in bridge and just enough about some of the "standard" systems to screw with people and often win, without being capable of playing any of the standard systems.
Nb however that most tournaments and such ban loads of bidding strategies with all kinds of special rules, so you can't do this just anywhere.
I broke through a plateau by studying openings more than memorizing them. Slowly working through the early possibilities to separate what works from what doesn't helped to reinforce basic principles.
So like hammering away at 30+ identical problems in high school math class, with some tedium it really did help me internalize the principles. I did not continue to memorize openings and common lines to any great depth. I remain a meager, but much more contented, chess student.
An alternative approach is to work through endgame problems. Learning the key different endgames helps you direct the middlegame towards positions you know you can win. There's also something about learning to handle small numbers of pieces well which translates really well to the rest of the game.
To me it seems like the current explosion is the genius idea of pitching the most famous Twitch personalities against each other in a tournament. This is similar to how Dr. K blew up by giving live therapy session to Twitch personalities with huge followings. If you add up the followers of all the participants [0], you already have a huge pool of probably over a million viewers to start with, all rooting for their favorite streamer.
It also makes chess way more approachable to see novice players play and see GMs discuss why a move is good or bad. I picked up chess about two weeks ago from watching the tourney, and the streams where GMs give lessons to tournament participants (or even random popular streamers) have been pretty helpful for someone who never really understood the strategy of the early game as a kid.
I got into Chess a couple years ago and Twitch and YouTube were a huge part of it. I had gotten started watching Ben Finegold's kids classes. Getting to see grandmasters play and hear their thoughts and ask them questions is an unbelievable resource. I was surprised how good Chess was as a spectator sport.
Worth noting that Twitch usually doesn't make a statement about bans / ban reasons. This is Finegold's claim, and he is far from a neutral party.
Also the specific issue was reading the email address, not the message. This, naturally, invites chat to send messages to that address. Regardless of intent, this is a very reasonable expectation to have. If the email is not a troll, that amounts to inviting a horde of people to send nasty messages to a suicidal person.
Chess has definitely become an esport. Interestingly, blitz and bullet game formats are forcing themselves into upper classes of the chess world, defying long standing denigration as not being "real chess," because the watching public enjoys that format..and it can be legitimately exciting. The recent IM not a GM championship hosted by chess.com, GM Hess, and GM Narodotsky was fantastic entertainment...especially as I am a dedicated viewer of IM John Bartholomew, who blew his competition away.
Seconded. Jerry makes thorough yet cosy and approachable content.
Edit: he also covers engines which I find pretty interesting, a lot of Leela but my favourite so far is this game with AlphaZero and Stockfish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m5oXlZ_e_A
As someone that used to travel the world and play chess competitively as a kid (fun fact: against Botez), it's been great to see chess embraced as an esport and the definition of a "sport" be rethought entirely.
I remember growing up in the chess community being asked whether chess was a "sport". Most people within the community would say yes, while most people outside the community would unequivocally say no, since it wasn't physical.
There is a parallel explosion of Chess Streaming in India on YouTube. During the lockdown, a stand-up comedian Samay Raina [1] started streaming Chess with some other famous comedians. None of them are strong players. But the content was so funny that quite a few people started watching.
Later Samay became friends with India No. 2 Chess Super GM Vidit Gujrathi [2] and together they have created quite a bit of following on YouTube.
In one of his videos, Agadmator [3] said that Indians sign-ups on Chess.com have gone through the roof.
However, most of the content is in Hindi. Here are some videos which are in (mostly) English, Vidit's trash talk with anther Indian GM Baskaran Adhiban[4], Vidit Playing Serious Chess Blitz tournament on Chess.com [5]
The current presence on Twitch of young, funny chess masters like the Chess Brahs and the Botez sisters with top level talents like Nakamura crossing over with famous xQc-types is maybe the best thing to happen to chess in recent years to showcase it as something fun loving young people can enjoy, not just the dusty old men and social incompetents of caricature.
It would be great if it encourages new people to come in from esports and elsewhere, and bust through the gatekeepers and play this brilliant game.
Yeah, everyone repeats this "the best thing to happen to chess" passage, but, seriously, I don't see how it makes any sense.
I mean, good for who? "Chess"? Chess is a game, it doesn't give a fuck who plays or watches it. It may be argued that chess is rather a field for studies, which, like any science, benefits from more resources spent on studying it, but let's be honest: future GMs are not bored 20 y.o. kids, introduced to chess by watching xQc. So, no, it is not good, nor especially bad for chess.
Is it good for Hikaru? Definitely. It is good for Hikaru, Botez, maybe Naroditsky or whoever else will manage to catch a ride on the hype train. Because they get more money. Alexandra's channel is now worth like 50 times more than 2 months ago, and market for coaching will be probably bigger now. Likewise, it is good for chess.com, which has all these guys on a payroll under contracts that forbid them streaming while playing on any other platform than chess.com
Community... Well, it's hard to define who exactly constitutes a community, but if we are talking about people who were playing chess and watching GMHikaru or BotezLive 2 months ago, it doesn't seem to me they got anything out of it. It was a community of somewhat similarly-minded people, there was at least some space for meaningful conversations in twitch-chat. Absolute majority was actually somewhat into chess (probably like 1100-1800 ELO) and there was a nice homely environment. Now all the trash previously contained within xQc's channel is spilled all over the place, it's just mindless spamming emotes and such. 50% of Hikaru's content is now "reacting to xQc doing stupid shit". 700-ELO player who at least attempts to think before making a move is now "naturally talented player and definitely not a newbie". I mean, honestly, it just isn't enjoyable anymore. It isn't the place these people used to come for.
And people who got introduced to chess because they were Forsen's of xQc's viewers didn't actually get much either, because they don't really care about the subject. If xQc was suddenly an avid crossword-puzzle sover, they would obsess over crossword-puzzles all the same. It doesn't matter.
I'm working on the basis that greater initial engagement leads to greater long term engagement. And what we are seeing now is a much higher influx than I can remember.
So what if a large proportion aren't in it for the chess and will move on to the next craze? Some of them will be converted and grow the game.
As for the "trash previously contained within xQc's channel", I'm not sure how that's different (except in quantity) to the level of chat there has been for a long time in chess on twitch/discord etc.
It's quite sobering to think of chess as an intellectual game and find out that your average young "community" member is not really demonstrating intelligence above the norm in other subjects. The influx of non-chess newbies has not lowered the bar in that regard that I've noticed, tho there has been an inevitable swamping effect.
I think while it's good to caution against rose-tinted views of this recent phenomenon, we also need to be careful not to fall into the gatekeeping I mention in my initial post - it's really important to remember we all have to start somewhere.
It is good for chess economy as a whole. By that I mean people who make income by playing tournaments, authoring chess books, making lessons etc. More eyeballs means more money.
Well, I said, that it is good for a subset of those who make money on it. I didn't bother to mention the obvious, that "whoever else manages to catch a ride on the hype train" isn't restricted to those I named. But don't mistake it with "chess economy as a whole". Major chess tournaments, for instance, are quite specific thing, it won't really notice these new 40k Hikaru's viewers, as money source is different. And professional full-format chess won't ever be popular thing to watch anyway, it isn't football or even CS:GO, it isn't really watchable even for somewhat good players.
Hikaru does an amazing job of sharing his knowledge and skill without spilling over the top with information about why certain moves are theoretically better than others 30 moves down the line than only a small percentage of people would understand. The skill gap is insane, but he makes it feel approachable.
Its been fun watching the pogchamps series for the most part because himself and Botez (and a few others) can share their knowledge without being affronting or elitist, but instead exploring and explaining why certain good moves are sometimes hard to find or don't feel natural. Simplifying the language and using arrows on the board to show moves, rather than just blasting chess notation at the screen. You can see them holding back when a player makes a certain move, and then openly assess the goods and bads.
They've shown behind the scene training sessions on pogchamps too, showing a little into the world (again at a much lower level) how you would begin to prep and build your chess opening repertoire that is approachable for someone who is learning.
And then at the end of the day, its also just fun to watch someone who has an insane amount of talent be a complete boss in their field. Honestly feels like the top players are scanning a QR code and know what to do without a second thought [1]
...
To pin onto this for those who enjoy chess but perhaps don't like the stress of online play, I've found the puzzles on lichess [2] to be a great way to learn and be challenged by the game.
I agree. This tournament is the first time I can understand both the commentary and the moves the players are making.
As a player who only understands the rules it’s easy to understand why a player would blunder their queen after forgetting that their knight was protecting it and the commentary helps you understand what they should have done. It’s sorta like why the show “High Stakes Poker” was so entertaining vs tournament Game Theory Optimal poker play.
Also re stress, play correspondence - 1 or 2 days per move, you can of course play faster, but playing a lot slower I've found to be fun. I try to keep 3-4 games going at a time, but I've had up to 10 at a time. And I've played guys who have almost 50 games at a time going.
But we need a lichess for Backgammon! Backgammon has tons of strategy but also has the element of chance because of the dice roll - anyone can win anygame (in theory, at least).
Playing chess was only a brief phase for me, I never really got into it, but I love lichess - it's open source, completely free, doesn't run ads, and the UX is amazing, it just works perfectly and there are no unnecessary gimmicks. One of those few exemplary projects to take a big chunk of inspiration from, if you ask me!
Guy behind it is lovely to talk to as well and the iPhone and android clients are pretty much best in class in addition to the web interface been best in class as well.
lichess.org's creator, Thibault Duplessis has an hn account [0] and has made some posts around here (although his last post appears to have been in 2015).
The entire thing is also free, open-source and with a very diverse tech stack behind it that includes Scala, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Typescript, websockets, nginx and more [1]
I got hooked on chess because of Lichess. The interface is well done and it's so easy to play. Something about it feels much better than chess.com. Unfortunately, I got heavily addicted and had to stop.
Although, I had so much fun. I was playing mostly openings with 2nd move being the one with queen. Got to about 1700 rating on that site in bullet (3-5 min game). This was the result of about 1 year of heavy addiction (2-10 hours of chess per day).
there are lots of existing code that one could build on (e.g. https://github.com/quasoft/backgammonjs) but it probably makes sense to start from scratch, and use the gnubg smart game format ".sgf"
Is this supposed to be a good thing in a game? It's kind of like the opposite of being skill-based. E.g., poker has this "problem", and it's a huge part of the game and its skill, but it's not literally a good thing that "anyone can win once". At worst, it just encourages gambling, at best it makes results more random than necessary to establish skill differences.
Bridge also has this property that every beginner can win, and the main consequence I've seen when teaching people is that it trips people up when their understanding of probability theory isn't up to snuff already before they start learning, they end up having way too much trouble distinguishing success and failure.
There's a theory that one of the reasons chess is so highly-developed with so many children playing at such a high level is precisely that not anyone can win, so people just get so much more feedback on their decision making.
Absolutely. Maybe not for a sport, but unless you're talking about the pure competitive aspect of it, most games benefit from having that level of accessibility. Bad players need to feel like they can win games. Even if they don't know how, they'll feel like they can win again.
One of the big draws to any game is the idea that you aren't just measuring your skill/experience at the game against everyone else playing, it's like when everyone comes over to play Super Smash Bros but you can tell the host has been playing on his own to practice, it takes a lot of the fun out of it. You can also use the example in SSB of playing with items on. Sure, really competitive players will hate the randomness that comes from items but the whole point of that randomness is to give everyone else a fighting chance.
I guess it depends on what you want out of a "game". If you're only looking at it through the lens of Chess where luck is virtually nonexistent and skill is the ultimate deciding factor, you're going to take a lot of issue with anything that upsets that balance. But, in practice, most people play games for enjoyment, not for sport.
Elements of chance can both make a game more accessible to beginners and raise the skill ceiling fro pros at the same time. It's more accessible, because a beginner player might still get lucky and win through pure chance. But it also raises the skill ceiling, because you need to work with probability on top of strategy. You might sometimes make the right move and still lose. And you might sometimes make the wrong move and still win. But that also makes it more challenging to improve above a certain level, since you need a deeper analysis than 'did I win?' to understand what you did right and wrong. It does mean that unlike chess, where the superior player will likely win 100/100 matches, a superior backgammon player might only win 60-70 games out of 100. Learning to combine strategy and probability is valuable, and arguably maybe even more applicable to the real world than the pure strategy of chess.
Not quite. Take bridge for example. The fact that it is not a perfect information game is what makes it one of the most interesting and deep games in the world. Suddenly there's a whole layer of deduction, imperfect information gathering, information exchange, etc.
You seem to view "it promotes gambling" as a negative. I happen to think backgammon is a great game precisely for this reason.
The fundamental skill in backgammon is managing variance. Since there are many possible outcomes of the dice that you can't control, your job as a player is to put your checkers into position such that you're maximizing good outcomes and minimizing bad outcomes.
Yes, in any giving game, a poor player might roll very well and win that game, but over a large sample, the better player will absolutely dominate.
Backgammon also has the advantage over poker in the sense that it's still fun to play in the absence of gambling. Poker is dreadfully boring if no money is on the line.
But it also give a player a fighting chance even if they are behind in material. In top flight chess there is no spectacular against the odds, coming from behind victories as is seen in many other games and sports.
as a competitive scrabble player yes, that's one of the great things about the game. it makes it possible to have exciting games against both stronger and weaker players, because there is still that element of luck that makes it possible for either side to win regardless of rating difference. i've won individual games against world champions, which is something that could never happen in chess.
Not really. There are a lot of strategic decisions to make, and those decisions aren't about money. In poker, almost all of the important decisions are directly about wagering. When wagering has no real value, neither do the decisions.
Also, in backgammon, you still need to actually win. Contrast this with poker, where oftentimes when playing for money, you don't actually want to reach the end of the hand (i.e. showdown). Which, again, is pointless if there's no money involved since always calling is your optimal strategy.
This is a real example of how things can go from 1 to 1.000.000 by a combination of luck and execution.
GM Hikaru have been streaming chess since ~2 years ago [0] but there was little traction. Then one day he got into stream with xQc, one of the biggest streamer on Twitch. Because of Hikaru's skill and meme, many xQc followers started to follow Hikaru.
Soon, Hikaru joined Lindores Abbey Challenge, an online chess tournament where 12 world's best chess players compete, including Magnus Carlsen. I think that tournament was what made this whole trends possible. The recent surge of Hikaru's followers are chanting on the Twitch chat to give support to Hikaru. And Hikaru was playing against Magnus Carlsen, the final boss in the chess world. It felt like you're watching the latest episode of an anime/tv series.
The momentum didn't stop there. Hikaru knew the fads usually won't last long, so they made the pogchamps tournaments, featuring big streamers, to capitalize on the momentum and to make sure it was just not a fad.
Also, don't forget the whole COVID-19 isolation thing, which encouraged people to find ways to pass the time online. I've seen graphs showing the number of users on lichess significantly increased right when the lockdowns started.
First of all, chess has been unapproachable for a long time. You see grandmasters making this move instead of that and for a beginner there's absolutely zero chance you're going to understand why. Or you see something that looks good, a fork that you think wins material but the GM doesn't play it; you don't understand why it was bad.
Sure, you could go into analysis in Lichess but are you going to do that for every single game? Is that fun?
Nakamura, Hess and Botez have been doing a great job making it more approachable - at a level anyone can follow.
The coaching videos are great to watch, even if you're a slight bit stronger (I'm ~2000 blitz on Lichess). And some of the players - Voyboy in particular - have been getting significantly better over the course of the tournament. You can follow along, get better yourself, and discover the deeper and deeper levels of the game at a tractable pace, and that I think is the key to getting into a new hobby.
There's also always been a sense of elitism in chess. The opinion against Pogchamps here[1] shows that:
> "If Chess.com wanted to do a show with gamers and streamers, instead of presenting them as fools they should have been respected as the learners they are at chess."
Bull. A beginner is NOT a fool, and the only prerequisite to playing chess is knowing the rules.
Don’t forget John Bartholomew. Not a GM yet, but he will be someday IMO. Oh, and Ben Finegold (who is a GM). I found them more informative than Hikaru and Botez by far.
John Bartholomew is the best. Tons of great stuff on his youtube. Also he founded chessable.com which is pretty great for drilling chess openings, endings, etc.
I also like Agadmator's channel, especially the "why did he resign?" bits that show how to seal the deal, which is missing from most top play analyses.
He misses a lot of subtleties, but he does a really good job of being consistent in the format of his videos, which I like.
I remember a match where Magnus seemed to be behind, and then suddenly with 20 seconds on the clock he was like "oh, I'm running out of time" and checkmated the other guy in the next 10 moves.
Watching GMs play bullet can be fun, and Carlsen is crazy good, but in that clip Carlen's opponent simply blundered his queen in one. Based on how quickly the rook move was, it might have been a premove. Either way, the other guy just wasn't thinking.
Exploiting premoves in online chess is a common "dirty" way to win, such as when FM Lefong Hua plays Bh6 after his opponent plays g6.[1][2] Even Carlsen has been tricked by this, such as when GM Andrew Tang got him with it in a Lichess tournament.[3]
Magnus Carlsen is obviously insanely good, that goes without saying. But he tends not to explain what he’s doing in the same way other streamers do. I find it more fun to watch when there is commentary on the reasons behind the moves being made.
I think it depends on when he's streaming and which platform he's on. I've found that many of his BanterBlitz sessions on YouTube are super interesting and accessible.
I think it also depends a lot on your level of chess and what you're looking for. I think the chess24 team (Gustafson, Svidler, sometimes Magnus) is maybe less accessible but more interesting for higher rated players.
Yes. I often find the Gustavson/Svidler combo too high-level to follow (especially when Grischuk shows up), but Magnus solo is often better, especially when it's already recorded so I can pause.
Well, at 13 years old, Carlsen (#700) was already giving Kasparov (#1) a run for his money while looking kind of bored and casually checking out the other matches around them [0] so I'm fairly sure a GM rank on a website isn't really something he worries about that much now that he's spent 120 months as world's #1 and holds the record for highest rated player in chess history.
Kasparov still holds the title for most time spent at #1 at some impressive 255 months though. [1]
It's a grandmaster vs world champion match. It's silly and fun. "Feats of chess" like simultaneous or blindfolded matches have always been popular. All that packed into a 2 minute bullet game.
I think what made Hikaru a controversial and not always the most liked classical player makes a perfect combination for a popular streamer. Quick mind, sometimes moody, easily tilted, very competitive and sometimes opinionated. I wasn't his biggest fan when he was top 5 classical player but today I am a happy subscriber to his stream and always cheer for him in rapid/blitz tournaments.
I think he's growing into it - seems like his streams have become much looser and fun over time - I wouldn't have thought a super-gm could do chess content and not be super serious about it all the time.
I can't deal with chess but a similar thing has been happening with Sudoku and I have become a bit addicted to it :-) It's always interesting to see things that had a bit of an arcane or geeky reputation now having large audiences given we're all in the same online 'place' as it were.
They are just games, nothing geeky about them. It's actually pretty popular here to play checkers/droughts in pubs (specially old, cheap pubs for the working class), occasionally you see someone playing chess, but the older crowed didn't actually learn chess, and the younger crowd is more focused on digital, it seems.
Usually here you see Sueca [1] mostly, followed by Dominoes, and then checkers, again, you don't see much chess not because it's for "intellectuals" but because it's simply not popular enough so very few people know how to play, and playing is a very social local thing.
And ofc, there is always people standing around watching someone play. It's a usual sight to enter a pub and a 4 guys in a table playing Sueca in silence, surrounded by some folks watching. It's even more interesting because Sueca "etiquette" makes it a silent game during play, but after, during count, deal, etc, everybody is commenting, add alcohol and people watching, and it's a marvelous thing.
It's probably cultural in my case. I was brought up in a working class environment where playing these sort of games and puzzles was not commonplace and my interest in them was seen as a bit geeky :-) Now you mention it, I've seen plenty of videos from other countries where people are playing chess and the likes on the street, so my perspective of the game is probably peculiar to my upbringing.
It's seems way different, but i guess in spirit they are.
Also, the stereotypes associated with both:
-> Drunkard man in a pub drinking their cheap wine/beer - Sueca
-> Drunkard woman at friend's house drinking their cheap wine - Bridge
I wish something similar would happen with cryptic crosswords, some of the old-world news papers have rea··y fiendish cryptics solving which almost looks like a black art, compared with sudoku, since it seems to require knowledge of many arcane things and conventions.
The channel has moved on to almost exclusively Sudoku but you can find quite a few cryptic crossword videos on Cracking the Cryptic, such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jfVumsDGh0 .. the thought process behind getting the answers really is mind boggling to me :-)
Oh, and the New York Times stream solves of some of their crosswords at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCST13QgqzC5r81Fd6OO7nCQ .. I can get along with NYT levels of cryptic myself, but not British style cryptic which is another level.
I am more interested in recordings as I like to follow along, pause, and "beat" their logic (in the rare case I can!) so I prefer YouTube and this channel is about as good as it gets: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC-UOdK8-mIjxBQm_ot1T-Q .. there's just so much great stuff on that one.
Sudoku on Twitch is not well established at all (yet), but if you see someone doing an advanced one (by following the "Sudoku" category – https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Sudoku) it can be worth tuning in especially as the live nature lets you "help" in the chat if you so wish. Maybe I should start streaming my own Sudoku solves! :-)
I know it's a rhetorical question but whenever I've tried streaming (such as coding on stream), I find talking while concentrating is not easy for me. But I imagine these things take practice!
Some sentiments I've seen being passed around in some chess communities is that things like this makes chess less attractive to people who regard chess as something you need to spend bunch of years to learn before you get interesting enough games to be broadcast. They see the current movement of "Twitch profiles playing chess against others" as something like a celebrity-disease overtaking the sport that used to be low-profile.
Edit: just to be clear, I don't agree with this stance. Just echoing what I've seen elsewhere to try to answer the "wonder why no one tried to get together a bunch of celebs to play chess earlier?" question
This sentiment is rightly being called out as elitism.
Reminds me of skateboarding in the 90s when some skateboarders would hate on newbies who got into skateboarding as a result of Tony Hawk, X-Games, THPS, or any other reason that wasn’t deemed pure or authentic. Now they marvel at the fact that skateboarding is an Olympic sport... Yeah, no thanks to you!
I agree! For sure elitism. Judging by the downvotes, I wasn't clear that I didn't agree with the standpoint.
I think every ecosystem at points go through this "elitism" fad when it reaches a certain threshold of members. Seemingly to keep X being a niche they can identify with, instead of something mainstream some people only do for fun.
Point is, not exclusive to chess, just as gk1 pointed out.
Seems mostly casual players, although there is at least one GM (Ben Finegold) who was very vocal with this stance, until recently.
I suspect the people most troubled by this new wave are those who use chess as a crutch for their own identity. If chess is viewed as a game for sophisticated, intelligent, cultured, etc, people, then they as chess players are also sophisticated, intelligent, cultured, etc. When that image of chess is threatened then they personally feel threatened.
Personally I'm glad to see the sudden rise in popularity, and don't care who's playing as long as they're having fun and not ruining it for others. (I'm at a master level.)
Probably the best way to understand it is similar to the complaints that Stack Overflow is filled with basic beginner questions on the front page to the extent they drown out any questions with real technical meat.
It was Ben Finegold. I'm sure a lot of people think this but don't want to say anything to dissuade people from learning chess. Games by 700 rated low skilled players are really really boring to me but good for twitch viewers for enjoying them. Don't really care.
The hard part is making chess accessible. One of the things that is making chess work on Twitch is that a lot of the streamers are already playing games, chess is just another one. Having compatible commentators is also hugely important.
While watching famous celebs do mundane things is a real form of entertainment, I think it's a bigger leap for those fans to follow the celebs into a game of chess.
Diplomacy was played by mail since shortly after the game was invented in the 1950s. It formed an important part of what today we call geek culture. It overlapped with wargaming and miniatures gaming and directly led to the creation of Dungeons and Dragons, and from thence computer gaming.
I've been watching the POG chess tournament. It's honestly so fascinating how quickly it spread through the twitch gaming community. I guess gaming is gaming and there a clear reason why chess has always been popular.
I got into chess a couple of months ago and it has been fun but I don't understand how people watch Hikaru play 3min chess. It's very hard for a beginner to wrap their head around what his moves mean. I'd have to pause and think every move through for a couple of minutes if I really wanted to understand. I think people watch more for what he says while playing than the actual game
Also some of ChessNetwork's content on youtube - the slower games in particular - 10m +
I'll say also if you want to improve at chess, you need to play slower time controls to build that pattern recognition and "muscle memory" up. Blitz is fun, but it's hard to really think deep and learn a lot.
There are some good twitch go streamers, but it hasn't blown up in popularity like chess did recently. Check out https://www.twitch.tv/battsgo for a go streamer that's pretty approachable, including doing a "basics" stream weekly. The Go world could learn a bit from how this chess boom is streamlining the presentation and terminology. The english go world tends to use mangled versions of the japanese strategic terms, and tbh, they aren't particularly helpful for learning.
In middle school I started playing chess at a local club that met at a Barnes and Noble. I was 1/3 of the age of the next youngest person and I doubt I ever won a single game, but I learned so much.
My favorite person at the club, and I tried to play with him as often as I could, was this boisterous old man who would drop movie one-liners constantly. He'd take a pawn with his knight and bellow "I HAVE YOU NOW." I'd occasionally grab one of his rooks, "Great kid, but don't get cocky!"
Man I should just start coding on a twitch account for my side projects. I can't go to meetups anymore for obvious reasons and I have been putting it off.
Aside: I saw new beauty in chess recently in a game with a queen vs a rook, knight, and pawn in the end game. The game lasted for over 40 moves in this state before ending in a draw. Chess engine analysis had the game as dead even.
Chess may be a bit more complicated and arbitrary than Go, but seeing how the pieces very exactly fit their 1, 3, 5, and 9 point values allowed me to see the mathematical beauty of the game for the first time.
They don't "exactly fit their 1, 3, 5, and 9 point values" at all. Piece value is depending on the stage of the game and even the exact position, and even averaged value estimation fluctuates wildly. For example, for Stockfish it's 4.16, 4.41, 6.625, 12.92 (N, B, R, Q).
And for endgames too, a queen vs 2 rooks may be winning for either side or a draw depending on a position.
Yes, stockfish is programmed to consider a queen as being worth "almost 13 points", and no, "naïve" piece values have absolutely crucial, primarily role to do the search and complete the mission.
Chess.com has excellent live coverage of many top chess tournaments. Their paid commentators are almost always engaging and make watching chess informative and exciting. They also provide links to top Twitch streamers who are playing on their platform like Hikaru Nakamura. I'm not affiliated with the site, just impressed with their content.
My hypothesis is that learning chess is such a long path that people tend to forget how they were when they started and think their current level games are not interesting to share or stream. Pogchamps success demonstrates that a lot of people like chess as entertainment in addition to a mind challenge.
I recently got back into chess after discovering there's a huge wealth of chess videos on YouTube. (Probably news to no one I know) It's great to be able to learn about a new opening or trap or whatnot then jump into an online game and hopefully try it out.
Hey Guys. It's John. Gonna play some 3 0 on Lichess. I'm drinking herbal tea, and I've got a pot of MJB brewing, cuz its good when it should. Okay, let's play a scandi, #TeamScandi. (•‿•)
As a casual player, I've been enjoying it. High-level games are sometimes hard to follow but it has motivated me to get out of my comfort zone and get better at chess.
The best computers can easily beat the top humans just as an aimbot could beat Navi easily at CS:GO.
So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.
That makes it much more like a strategy game.
Embracing memes makes it more accessible to viewers who are used to watching hearthstone, csgo, league, dota or other esports and it's been really fun to watch.
I started watching chess on twitch a while ago during the Tata steel tournament and I thought back then it would quickly grow if they focused their commentary on casual level viewers and it's been fantastic to have been proved correct.