The 2020 Chess Boom
A 1,500-year-old game is now conquering the internet
Inspired by the recent Netflix hit The Queen’s Gambit, millions of people are getting into chess. Chess websites, content creation, and esport events are booming. It may not have 100 champions, 50 weapons, or crazy explosions, but it has an unrivaled tactical depth, which makes it not only a great game to play but also a very interesting and engaging esports title.
Chess is the ultimate easy to learn, hard to master game. Everyone can learn how the pieces move in a few minutes and understand what is happening in a game between professional players, but very few of us will achieve Grandmaster titles ourselves.
2020 Chess Boom
The global pandemic has lead to a big online chess boom. With large parts of the population in lockdown, chess has become a popular pastime and coping mechanism. And a quick chess game during home office hours doesn’t hurt anyone either, right?
Further fueling the growth of chess were collaborations of big streamers with strong chess players, which made some of them very popular Twitch streamers themselves. Most notably the American Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, the #1 blitz player and #4 rapid player in the world. His streams reach 10k or more viewers regularly. He also signed with one of the biggest esports organizations in August: Team SoloMid.
And finally, the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit premiered in October. It reached the #1 spot on Netflix in 63 countries and has a 100% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s about an orphan girl named Beth Harmon, who becomes a chess prodigy while struggling with substance abuse and relationships. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It’s an amazing show, whether you like chess or not.
The biggest chess website Chess.com has added a few Beth Harmon bots with different strengths to benefit from the hype, so if you want to play against the main character from the show, there’s your chance.
In October 2020, Chess.com has reviewed 125 million games and 5.3 million accounts for fair play, which is a massive player base and up 66% compared to pre-pandemic times. And the Queen’s Gambit hype isn’t even included in the numbers yet.
Esports
It turns out chess is also a great esports title to watch. Because of the pandemic over the board chess tournaments have been canceled and replaced with online events. Fueled by the popularity of GM Hikaru Nakamura, the streams of these events regularly reach 50k+ viewers and boost chess to one of the highest viewed categories on Twitch.
Coinciding with the hype from The Queen’s Gambit, the Skilling Open chess tournament happened. It’s the first event of the Champions Chess Tour 2021, an online-only series of rapid chess tournaments. It features many of the highest-ranked professional chess players in the world including Hikaru Nakamura and the world champion Magnus Carlsen.
Especially the rapid chess version benefits the esports qualities of chess. Players have 15 minutes plus 10 seconds for every move they play. Unlike traditional chess, where players have hours to think and not a lot is happening, rapid chess provides enough action to be entertaining without becoming boring.
At the same time, it is slow enough for the commentators to explain the position on the board so the viewers can understand what is happening. You also have a bit of time to think about the position yourself and when you correctly predict the next move of a player once every 50 turns, you feel like the next world champion.
The faster pace of the games also leads to more games with a winner. One of the problems of traditional chess is that there are a lot of draws in games between two highly skilled players. During the last world championship all 12 games of slow chess ended in a draw, only the tiebreaking rapid chess games lead to Magnus Carlsen defending his title.
Compared to other esport titles like shooters (CS:GO, Fortnite) or MOBAs (League of Legends, Dota), chess is also really engaging, because you tend to think about the game yourself when you are trying to analyze a board position or predict the next move.
And if you want speed, there is always bullet chess, where players have only 1 minute each. Try to understand what is going on there.
Playing Chess
Alongside many others, The Queen’s Gambit also inspired me to get back into chess. I played a little bit over the years and I am familiar with the basics but by no means a good player. So far I have only played against bots. I haven’t dared to face real humans yet, because I keep making massive blunders that make me lose in horrific ways, and at least the bots don’t laugh at me.
Although now that I am writing this, I am realizing that I should start to play against humans sooner than later while there are still a lot of beginners from the Queen’s Gambit hype flooding the queue.
As bad as 2020 has been for almost everybody, it was a pretty good year for chess. Playing chess online has become a pastime for many during lockdowns and The Queen’s Gambit has inspired even more to get into the game. This has lead to a big boom for chess content creation on Twitch and YouTube and tournaments with the best players in the world are happening online.
Especially the faster time formats are very interesting and engaging to watch because they make you think about the positions and moves yourself without getting boring like classical 5-hour chess matches.
If you watched The Queen’s Gambit and are inspired to get into chess, now is a great time to get started. And if you haven’t seen the show yet, go do it!
