Chess Is Now a Streaming Obsession (nytimes.com) 40
Viewers are flocking to games during the pandemic, entranced by a charismatic grandmaster and his lightning-fast play. From a report: On a recent afternoon, thousands of noncombatants watched from the sidelines as their general ordered his troops across the battlefield and became locked in a fierce duel with the enemy. At one point, he berated himself for a tactical misstep that could have cost his side the high-stakes conflict. Then he smiled and began outmaneuvering his foe. "I can't lose," Hikaru Nakamura, 32, said to the exultant onlookers. Victory seemed close as members of the opposing army were vanquished one by one. "I win again -- there you go, guys. Wow." Mr. Nakamura gave himself just a moment's respite, then plunged into another fray. Pawns, knights, bishops and even kings fell before him as the chess grandmaster demolished a slate of online challengers, all while narrating the tide of the battle to tens of thousands of fans watching him stream live on Twitch, the Amazon-owned site where people usually broadcast themselves playing video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.
The coronavirus pandemic and stay-at-home orders have crowned a host of unlikely winners catering to bored audiences. But watching livestreams of chess games? Could one of the world's oldest and most cerebral games really rebrand itself as a lively enough pastime to capture the interest of the masses on Twitch? Turns out, it already has. Since the pandemic began, viewership of live chess games has soared. From March through August, people watched 41.2 million hours of chess on Twitch, four times as many hours as in the previous six months, according to the analytics website SullyGnome. In June, an amateur chess tournament called PogChamps was briefly the top-viewed stream on Twitch, with 63,000 people watching at once, SullyGnome said. And popular Twitch gamers like Felix Lengyel (better known to his 3.3 million followers as "xQcOW") have also recently started streaming chess.
The coronavirus pandemic and stay-at-home orders have crowned a host of unlikely winners catering to bored audiences. But watching livestreams of chess games? Could one of the world's oldest and most cerebral games really rebrand itself as a lively enough pastime to capture the interest of the masses on Twitch? Turns out, it already has. Since the pandemic began, viewership of live chess games has soared. From March through August, people watched 41.2 million hours of chess on Twitch, four times as many hours as in the previous six months, according to the analytics website SullyGnome. In June, an amateur chess tournament called PogChamps was briefly the top-viewed stream on Twitch, with 63,000 people watching at once, SullyGnome said. And popular Twitch gamers like Felix Lengyel (better known to his 3.3 million followers as "xQcOW") have also recently started streaming chess.
Speedy! (Score:2)
I do enjoy watching speed chess when I have a minute or two. Suddenly it turns into 10.
Eric Rosen (Score:4, Interesting)
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I like Eric Rosen. He, Hikaru Nakamura, Levy Rozman, Alexandra & Andrea Botez all play one another--check out the four-way chess battles they've all done on Youtube.
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And of course Magnus (World champ) and a number of others. I really enjoy how they are all "characters" - these aren't boring personalities in the least. And it's generally non political - I can enjoy almost all of the play without some BS getting my blood pressure up. What a relief from being bombarded by the actions of morons, and the even worse morons who think they know what's driving the first set and report on it as "confirmed by (nonexistent) anonymous sources familiar with the matter"!
As is usual
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Other youtube chess channels (Score:2)
If you are an amateur, you can check out kingscrusher [youtube.com] for an entertaining view of the chess engines or Hanging Pawns [youtube.com] for picking up the game.
Nope, just another fad. (Score:2)
But it's always nice to see lots of interest in the game of chess regardless.
I don't understand it (Score:3)
As a chess player, I can't comprehend it. We've always watched chess, but we watched the board. This streaming stuff is weird.
But fun; I defeated a NM on lichess while he was broadcasting audio to his fans or students. Made victory sweeter.
I've been playing about the same amount, but I already played every day. https://lichess.org/@/Aigheara... [lichess.org]
All you idiots should take up chess. It won't make you any smarter, but you might realize how mediocre you are.
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It's how everything is now, personality / narrative-driven.
The kings of streaming chess won't be the best players, but the ones who put interesting twists on the game and make the most lively commentary.
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The kings of streaming chess won't be the best players, but the ones who put interesting twists on the game and make the most lively commentary.
Hikaru Nakamura is a Grandmaster.
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Re:I don't understand it (Score:4, Insightful)
All you idiots should take up chess. It won't make you any smarter, but you might realize how mediocre you are.
Playing Hikaru Nakamura must be the worst for that. I heard somebody say the other day - after they had been completely destroyed by him - that they thought they'd been really making him think because he took 20 seconds on a move in a blitz game or something like that. Turns out that Nakamura had just been chatting and eating the whole time, barely paying attention to the game.
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Right but Naka is around 2800, he can easily beat somebody who can easily beat somebody who can easily beat somebody who can easily beat the best player at most chess clubs. And that person easily beats somebody who is about the level most "intelligent" adults could reach if they dedicated years of study to the game.
I remember some guy came to the chess club, thought he was the smartest guy in the world and the probably the best chess player in town, because none of his friends could even come close to beat
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Interesting! Chess has been valorized as an activity of such pure genius that it can be hard to think of it as just another game with patterns that can be mastered.
I've been skimming through "Chess Structures - A Grandmaster Guide" by Rios, and it seems to emphasize your point. With one pawn structure, modern grandmasters know how important it is to for white to get a well-supported knight onto e5 (or stop it from getting there); with another pawn structure, they know how powerful a black pawn push to b
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All you idiots should take up chess. It won't make you any smarter, but you might realize how mediocre you are.
How is that not making one smarter?
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Actually, there was a study done that suggested that there is minimal correlation between chess ability and intelligence.
It's likely the specificity principle applies here as well: if you want to get better at something, do it. If you want to get better at chess, play chess. If you want to get smarter, read (a lot).
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Actually, there was a study done that suggested that there is minimal correlation between chess ability and intelligence.
There was a study done that showed that most people claiming that a study was done without providing a citation, are full of crap.
Magnus Carlsen has a tested IQ of 190.
Claiming that skill at chess (which requires deep thinking) is unrelated to intelligence (the ability to think) is ridiculous.
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Actually, there was a study done that suggested that there is minimal correlation between chess ability and intelligence.
There was a study done that showed that most people claiming that a study was done without providing a citation, are full of crap.
Magnus Carlsen has a tested IQ of 190.
Claiming that skill at chess (which requires deep thinking) is unrelated to intelligence (the ability to think) is ridiculous.
Yes, but Nakamura can also keep people entertained while being one of the best of chess players in the world. That suggests a different mix of intelligence that won't show up on such a test. Not more or less, just different.
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IQ tests measure verbal ability.
Individuals skilled at wit and repartee usually have high IQs.
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IQ tests measure verbal ability.
Individuals skilled at wit and repartee usually have high IQs.
Wow, you were pretty confused when you took the test, huh? LOL
It isn't that smart people appear witty, that's a fucking stupid thing to say. It is that idiots who don't know they're idiots, like many slashdot members, blather on as if they're smart, and then look stupid when somebody with a clue explains something. It doesn't mean the smart people were witty, it just meant you were being an idiot.
You know who does have high IQs? Mathematicians. Now try to convince people they're skilled at wit and repartee.
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Actually, there was a study done that suggested that there is minimal correlation between chess ability and intelligence.
There was a study done that showed that most people claiming that a study was done without providing a citation, are full of crap.
Magnus Carlsen has a tested IQ of 190.
Claiming that skill at chess (which requires deep thinking) is unrelated to intelligence (the ability to think) is ridiculous.
Yes, but Nakamura can also keep people entertained while being one of the best of chess players in the world. That suggests a different mix of intelligence that won't show up on such a test. Not more or less, just different.
So an IQ of 190 is 6 six sigma above the mean. In the US alone, there would be about 400 people born a year with that level of IQ. That's one a day, every day. Just in the US. So that would be about, 8000 a year worldwide. Its correlated yes but both are special over and above their IQ in chess (likely due to their obsessions with the game).
However, there are plenty of folks who perhaps could be better than both but decide to do something else with their lives assuming that IQ is absolutely correlate
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You might also add that no reliable source cites Carlsen's IQ test of 190.
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You might also add that no reliable source cites Carlsen's IQ test of 190.
So his IQ may be only 160. That is still extremely high.
No one of average intelligence is going to become a world champion at chess.
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None of these reported tests appear to be official ones, and seem to just be conjectures. But there's a video of Nakamura taking a mensa test and getting a 102. Even though at that time he may not been taking it as seriously, he states at the end that he's not good at these things and it's not unexpected.
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So his IQ may be only 160. That is still extremely high.
Find a source or you're breaking your own rule.
Pogchamps 2 just ended (Score:4, Insightful)
The Pogchamps tournament in June was a big success for chess.com, so they did it again with Pogchamps 2, which ended on Sunday. I enjoyed it because I could understand the blunders they were making, and the commentators were good at explaining tactical misses and opportunities clearly.
Chess coaches were provided for the participants, and most of them streamed their coaching sessions, so that was another great resource for casual players like me who want to get better.
It was fun to watch the progress of the players. The winner went from having last played chess casually in Grade 3 to a 1300 rating on chess.com in about a month by obsessively doing 1000+ puzzles, playing 2000+ games, and getting hours and hours of coaching sessions from everyone she could get in touch with. Turns out twelve hours a day of chess for a month can result in pretty decent progress if you've got the puzzle-solving talent for it. And if you don't have the talent or obsession for it... well... you might end up with a Botez Gambit Declined with a thousand dollars on the line.
Sunday's final matches [youtube.com] included a consolation bracket match with a hungover poker player and an insomniac - chess was not great (see the aforementioned Botez Gambit Declined at 51:18) but the commentary was entertaining - and a championship final with decent quality intermediate-level chess.
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If anyone is interested in the coaching sessions, here are some of the winner's:
And in the weirdest coincidence of all, the winner went to pick her username on chess.com and found out that it had already been taken by Peter Svidler and Garry Kasparov [youtube.com]. So Svidler gave her a coaching session [twitch.tv].
Standard chess... Not my thing (Score:2)
Go also streams on twitch (Score:1)
if u like chess you will probably like Go. its not big in the US but for example in Japan the NHK company sponsors broadcast tournaments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Fantastic for armchair QBs (Score:2)
At least you can run Fritz or whatever program on the side and yell "D4 you moron!" with a bit more certitude.
Surprise? Chess is popular? (Score:2)
Why is this a surprise?
Jackbox (Score:2)
Chess programs have game library replays (Score:1)
A lot of chess programs (going back to my old Commodore 64) have famous game replays. They come with a library (of varying size and quality) of more-or-less famous and interesting historical chess games and you can watch them being played through the program.
I've always enjoyed watching those on occasion, even though I'm a fairly abysmal chess player myself.
a survey of youtube chess streamers (Score:2)
Here's my playlist of the major youtube chess streamers. These are masters, etc, not pogchamps beginners. You can check them out and see what you like.
https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]