Written by Roy Lahood
Chess, a game that has been around for almost 1500 years, is seeing a rapid resurgence in popularity this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the release of a new Netflix series called The Queen’s Gambit, and the increasing availability of instructional resources for players of all levels. The so-called “New Chess Boom” describes the increase in viewership and playing of chess across the world starting in 2018 and picking up speed in March 2020 as people were forced to turn toward the internet for more of their entertainment. As time went on, more and more people were watching and playing chess.
For those unacquainted with the world of chess, the governing body for the sport of chess is The International Chess Federation, abbreviated as either ICF or more commonly FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) as the organization was founded in France in 1924 and moved its headquarters to Switzerland (FIDE, n.d.). FIDE has a system of rating players on a scale of 1 to 3000 based on tournament performance and a system for giving titles to the best chess players in the world. A player’s rating is based on whether they win, lose, or draw games against rated players in tournaments. About 170,000 players were active in 2019 across the world (FIDE, 2019). There exist women’s and men’s titles based on rating including but not limited to FIDE Master, International Master, Grandmaster, and World Champion. The US Chess Federation also offers five levels of certifications for the instruction of chess (US Chess).
Chess.com, a popular online chess server, has been adding 1 million new accounts every month since March with a 2.8 million member increase in November following the release of The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix (Dottle, 2020). The Queen’s Gambit, a series about a fictional chess prodigy named Beth Harmon, was the most watched scripted limited series in the first month of its release. Sixty two million households watched the series over the first 28 days after it debuted on Netflix on October 23, 2020 (Dottle, 2020). Following the release of The Queen’s Gambit, coupled with the increase in public interest during the coronavirus pandemic, sales of chess sets were up 1100% in November and December for the toy retailer Goliath Games (Dottle, 2020). Also, the number of games being played per day on Chess.com doubled from October to December (Dottle, 2020).
Not only are people playing more chess, they are watching it more too. The average viewership of the chess category on Twitch during December, January, and February increased tenfold from last year to this year (TwitchTracker, n.d.). Though, titled players and chess clubs are not the only channels getting views on their chess content anymore. Events like PogChamps, an invitational amateur tournament series hosted by Chess.com featuring some of the most popular non-chess Twitch streamers, have spurred streamers of all backgrounds to try out chess. With prize pools of up to 100 thousand dollars on the line and streamers with diverse audiences competing, PogChamps events have further expanded the audience of chess. PogChamps’ viewership has peaked above 100 thousand live viewers which is more than most tournaments featuring Grandmasters (Green, 2021). While experts do not expect the same amount of growth in the chess scene to last for much longer, as Covid restrictions are lifted and the popularity of The Queen’s Gambit fades away, they do expect this surge in popularity of chess to have a “generational effect” on the prevalence of chess as an esport (Dottle, 2020). Given the amount of new players, the cultural prestige of the game, and its mainstream popularity, chess is not expected to fade out of popularity as chess becomes an esport (Kotaku, 2020).
The Covid pandemic, The Queen’s Gambit, and PogChamps have all contributed to the boom in attraction of new chess players and viewers, but what is going to keep people playing and watching the game is the newly available instructional resources made available by chess websites and chess content creators. Channels like those of American International Master Levy “GothamChess” Rozman, American International Master Eric Rosen, and Antonio “agadmator” Radić, to name a few, have grown in popularity over the course of the chess boom. These channels are more focused on the learning aspect of chess as opposed to the spectacle of a celebrity chess tournament.
Before the internet and chess streaming, chess players used to have to buy books and periodicals to access information on top level chess games. Now, unprecedented amounts of instructional material is available online for free. On YouTube, Twitch, and chess servers like Chess.com and lichess, players can access databases with thousands of games played by masters, access a library’s worth of chess puzzles, use state of the art chess engines, and watch analysis and live play of thousands of top level games. Chess is more accessible than ever. Given the increase in popularity of chess over the past year and the remarkable increase in the availability of resources for new players over the past decade, chess tournaments will continue to see gains in viewership and attendance as new players watch and strive to improve their chess.
References
Dottle, R. (2020, December 16). ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Chess Boom Moves Online. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-chess-boom/.
FIDE. (n.d.). About FIDE. https://www.fide.com/fide/about-fide.
FIDE. (2019, December 23). Rating analytics: The number of rated chess players goes up. https://www.fide.com/news/288.
Grayson, N. (2020, September 14). Chess Is An Esport, According To Twitch Star And Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Kotaku. https://kotaku.com/chess-is-an-esport-according-to-twitch-star-and-grandm-1845027560.
Green, N. (2021, February 22). PogChamps 3: 100,000 Watch xQc Sweep Group Stage. Chess.com. https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-pogchamps-3-pokimane-xqc-rainn-wilson-win#:~:text=On%20a%20four%2Dmatch%20day,viewers%20in%20the%20final%20game.
TwitchTracker. (n.d.). Chess. https://twitchtracker.com/games/743.