The Rise Of Chess Streaming: Online Newbies Infuse The Sport With New Energy

There was a sizzle in the air at the first-ever Global Chess League held in sweltering Dubai this June. Thirty-six grandmasters, divided into six teams, were ready to battle it out on the boards to clinch the coveted prize of $1 million offered by the league, a joint initiative of Tech Mahindra and FIDE, the international governing body for chess.

Many of the World¡¯s Top 20 chess players, like Magnus Carlsen, Vishwanathan Anand, and Levon Aronian, were just a few feet away from everyone, and the excitement was palpable. Proud parents accompanied eager children clutching their chessboards against their tiny selves. It was a delight to watch these kids, who could barely tie their own shoes, move the chess pieces across the board with the dexterity of seasoned surgeons.

India has always been the Mecca of chess; the ancient Indian strategy game of Chaturanga is considered one of the predecessors of the game. Viswanathan Anand, India¡¯s first grandmaster, was a household name. But for most people, that¡¯s where familiarity with chess began and ended. For almost four decades after the qualification of India¡¯s first GM in 1988, very few players were able to capture the public imagination.

That is not a charge you can level at chess today. Say the names Gukesh D, R Praggnanandhaa, and Nihal Sarin in a friendly game of Taboo, and chances are your teammates will know exactly what you are talking about. (In fact, Praggnanandhaa has recently become the first Indian after Anand to enter the World Cup semis.) And the credit for this goes to online chess streaming.

Photo: Maria Emelianova

Chess streaming involves playing a live online match on chess.com or lichess.org, and broadcasting it on a streaming platform like Twitch or YouTube. This allows fellow enthusiasts to view and interact via messages, making it an engaging experience. And in stark contrast to the excruciatingly lengthy games that one associates with chess, streaming matches span only a few minutes: A pieces-flying, boards-banging, players-groaning kind of spectacle.

A Second Innings For Chess

Chess streaming is yet another trend that owes its popularity to the pandemic. Stand-up comedian Samay Raina started his journey with PUBG, but soon made the shift to streaming chess, because the former ¡°engaged all my senses, leaving no mindspace for cracking jokes¡±. Raina has a fair bit of background in the game and has played tournaments throughout his school and college life.

In popular culture too, chess was experiencing a revival with the Netflix movie The Queen¡¯s Gambit. Renowned YouTubers like Antonio Radi?, or ¡°agadmator¡± (which roughly translates to ¡°Anthony is a wise old bastard¡± in Croatian), had started attracting devoted fans for their expert game analysis and user-friendly approach. Radi? is the first chess content creator to cross the one-million subscriber mark on YouTube.

Photo: Maria Emelianova

Back home, streamers like Raina have been instrumental in attracting a new type of audience: People who had always wanted to play chess and those who had played it on a smaller scale. ¡°My parents gifted me a chess board when I was 11. But nobody around me had an interest in it, so I lost touch,¡± said Priyadarshini Pathak, a 28-year-old professional who works at Nokia. Pathak told me that during the lockdown, she started watching Raina¡¯s chess streams and it rekindled her own interest.

Earlier this year, chess.com, the largest online platform for the game, put out a post to explain that their servers crashed due to an exponential growth in their user base. On the date of the post, chess.com accounted for over ten million active members, with over one million games played in an hour. Utkarsh Sharma, a 22-year-old engineering student from Madhya Pradesh is a part of this statistic. ¡°I saw Samay playing on chess.com and I found that the community was very large,¡± he said.

Soon after starting off with a basic setup on his Instagram channel, Raina started collaborating with fellow comedians with a fair knowledge of the game. With support from comedians like Tanmay Bhat, Vaibhav Sethia, and Biswa Kalyan Rath, the community of comedians playing chess grew. It eventually led to Comedians on Board, a tournament between India¡¯s famous stand-up fraternity.

How Chess Became Cool Again

This was also when Raina met Sagar Shah, co-founder of ChessBase India and an International Master, the second-highest title awarded by FIDE. Shah and his wife Amruta Mokal, who is also a chess player with four Women International Master norms, conducted a chess-themed wedding that caught the attention of ChessBase, nudging them to create the India chapter in 2014.

¡°We had a hall booked for the wedding, we had tables, and we had fellow chess players attending the wedding. What else do you need for a tournament?¡± quipped Shah.

Anand Mahindra at Global Chess League | Photo: Maria Emelianova

Raina and Shah collaborated to play online or simply analyse a championship game: While Shah discussed the players¡¯ strategies, Raina brought the light-hearted banter. They went on to host multiple charity streams, raising money for Covid waste-pickers and children who needed funding to pursue chess. Raina recounts an instance where they raised over Rs 5,00,000 in just an hour to support 12-year-old player Ilamparthi, who couldn¡¯t practice his game because he didn¡¯t have access to a good laptop. Soon, notable chess players like Anand, Nihal Sarin and Anish Giri also appeared on multiple streams.

But one of the most tangible milestones for Raina and Shah was official commentary during the international Chess Olympiad, which sowed the seed for yet another venture. The final round between India and Russia in 2020 was watched live by almost 60,000 viewers. Little did the streamers know that Anand Mahindra, Chairman of Mahindra Group, was one of them. Mr Mahindra tweeted, ¡°Never thought watching a chess tournament online would grab my attention so strongly.¡±

Long story short, the Global Chess League became a reality within three years. The world¡¯s first franchise-led team format championship, akin to IPL, was conducted in June 2023 in Dubai and premiered on JioCinema in India and multiple media outlets worldwide. This was the first-ever chess tournament broadcast on an OTT platform in India and abroad. The two-week event was a great hit, with appearances by celebrities like Sania Mirza, Steve Waugh, and Mahesh Bhupathi.

Tennis star Sania Mirza and cricketer Steve Waugh at Global Chess League | Photo: Maria Emelianova

So did online streaming make chess cool again? Shah puts it down to nascent Indian interest in the game. ¡°Streaming did help bring popularity and glamour to the game, but it couldn¡¯t have been possible without an existing appreciation for it in the country,¡± he said. Looks like the king of games still has a few moves left!

Big Image Credit: Thgim