Skip to main content

Chess is blowing up on Twitch


Stars like Hikaru Nakamura are helping the classic game reach a new audience.
One of the fastest-growing games on Twitch is also one of the oldest. Over the past few months, the ancient board game chess has become a mainstay on the streaming platform, thanks to a combination of popular streamers and big-name chess champions playing online. According to data from analytics firm SullyGnome provided by StreamElements, the hours watched on Twitch for chess have nearly doubled every month this year; in May, the number topped more than 8 million hours watched.
The surge has been led by Hikaru Nakamura, a five-time US chess champion and the youngest American to ever achieve the grandmaster title. Nakamura has seen particular success coaching popular streamers like Felix “xQc” Lengyel, Faze Clan’s Nate Hill, and League of Legends streamer Albert “boxbox” Zheng as part of Chess.com’s Pogchamps tournament series, which runs through June 19th. “It’s getting big exposure in a way that I don’t think has happened in a very long time,” Nakamura told Wired about the game’s recent popularity. He even played alongside Game of Thrones star and professional strongman Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson.

Of course, chess is far from the only game to see increased viewership during the pandemic. Twitch numbers are up in general, while esports competitions and games like Valorant have seen notable jumps. Even still, chess stands out among the top 20 games on the platform, which is typically dominated by shooters and strategy games like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Call of Duty.
“Twitch has a long history of chess players dating back to its earliest days, but it wasn’t until 2017 when they partnered with Chess.com that they most prominently embraced the game of kings,” StreamElements CEO Doron Nir said in a statement. “Since then the game has enjoyed moderate growth, yet nothing compares with the rise it experienced in recent months when some of the top streamers, such as xQc, Reckful, and LIRIK, streamed it. While the chess community has achieved a lot of success on its own, this latest move illustrates the power of influencers to broaden the appeal of a brand.”
If you’re curious, you can still catch the later stages of the Chess.com tournament through the rest of the week. The complete schedule is here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Adam Can Be The DCEU’s Wolverine

The upcoming Black Adam movie could position its title character as DC's equivalent to Wolverine. Though Black Adam has taken quite a long time to get rolling, the first day of DC FanDome gave a peak at what audiences can expect, from name-dropping several Justice Society of America members who make appearances to Dwayne Johnson stressing the harsh origins of the title character. Johnson's description of Black Adam himself also may offer a sense of just what role he'll occupy in the world of the DCEU. Johnson would place particular emphasis on Black Adam having been a slave who achieves his freedom after being granted power from the gods and who now seeks to unleash his own brand of justice on the world. Aside from the moral ambiguity of Black Adam, Johnson has also repeatedly spoken of him as a game-changing figure in the DCEU with the power level that he operates at. Meanwhile, with the way Black Adam is being presented as a character, he could carry some notable parallel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Earth is making the moon rust

(CNN)The moon is getting rusty. Scientists had the same reaction you probably did when they reached this conclusion. It shouldn't be possible -- after all, there's no oxygen on the moon, one of the two essential elements to create rust, the other being water. But the evidence was there. India's lunar probe, Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon in 2008, gathering data that has led to numerous discoveries over the years -- including the revelation that there are water molecules on its surface. The probe also carried an instrument built by NASA that could analyze the moon's mineral composition. When researchers at NASA and the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology analyzed the data recently, they were stunned to find hints of hematite, a form of iron oxide known as rust. There are plenty of iron-rich rocks on the moon -- but rust is only produced when iron is exposed to oxygenand water. At first, I totally didn't believe it. It shouldn't exist based on the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Epic Games asks court to stop Apple's 'retaliation' after App Store ban

Epic Games said late on Friday that it has asked a court to stop what it saw as Apple Inc's retaliation against the "Fortnite" creator after the iPhone maker terminated Epic Games' account on its App Store. Epic Games filed for a preliminary injunction that would put its game back in the App Store and restore its developer account. The filing was made in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. It argued that Epic Games is "likely to suffer irreparable harm" in the absence of a preliminary injunction and that "the balance of harms tips sharply in Epic's favor". The filing described the iPhone maker as a "monopolist" that maintains its monopolies by "explicitly prohibiting any competitive entry". Late last week, Apple terminated Epic Games' account on its App Store amid a legal battle over the iPhone maker's in-app payment guidelines and accusations they constitute a monopoly. Apple sa...
Post a Comment
Read more