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!
