Your move, mate.
September 9, 2020 10:53 AM   Subscribe

Chess (Yes, Chess) Is Now a Streaming Obsession. SLNYT. "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...." Meet blitz chess prodigy, Hikaru Nakamura.
posted by storybored (14 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Speaking of Pogchamps (a tournament that Nakamura helped organize), I just finished watching Pogchamps 2 on Sunday. The idea is to pair popular streamers with chess coaches and see how well they do in a chess tournament while doing their streaming thing.

It was a mostly enjoyable mix of blunders that I could understand and some great progress by a couple of players who took full advantage of the coaching and practise time. When the commentators pointed something out on the board, I could actually follow along since the players were at my level.

Many of the streamers also posted their coaching sessions, which is another great resource for average players.

The one thing that wasn't enjoyable was the Youtube chat. There was a flood of misogyny in the chat whenever a woman came on the stream. One of the competitors (QTCinderella) called out misogyny in the chess community quite powerfully after her semifinal match. (I'm trying to find a direct link, but it looks like one of the streamers in the semifinals used copyright music during their stream and the video is blocked in my country, but she also talked about it on her own stream.)

The tournament winner mostly shut them up by winning every single game she played except one where she offered a mercy draw in a dominant position.
posted by clawsoon at 11:56 AM on September 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


Previously, on chess and streaming centered around Alexandra Botez
posted by andycyca at 12:03 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]


That Youtube chat felt like it explained most of why there are so few grandmasters and super-GMs who are women. If I were a 7 or 8 year old girl who was a potential chess genius - at the age when most of today's chess geniuses got their start - checking out that chat to see if chess might be a fun activity for me to get into, it wouldn't take me long to figure out that I was not wanted and that I'd have a better time, a less abusive and unwelcoming time, doing just about anything else.

It seems to be the curse of every activity which is assumed to be about "genius" (math, physics, economics, philosophy, etc.) Men who have a sneaking suspicion that they aren't in fact geniuses can't stand the thought of being shown to be dumber than a woman, any woman. Easier to just abuse those women and tell them they're worthless and stupid so they'll leave. And then once they've chased away 99% of the women, say, "See, I told you, women suck at this."
posted by clawsoon at 12:13 PM on September 9, 2020 [11 favorites]


Sorry for spamming the post... finally found the link to QTCinderella's post-match interview. Audio is a bit out of sync, but worth listening to.
posted by clawsoon at 12:38 PM on September 9, 2020


Sorry for spamming the post... finally found the link to QTCinderella's post-match interview

For the entire length of her game commentary, there is a far-right hate symbol sitting on the left of the screen.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:22 PM on September 9, 2020


For the entire length of her game commentary, there is a far-right hate symbol sitting on the left of the screen.

I believe she put that there herself as a message to her chat and that she's using it in one of the reclaimed senses. I sure hope so, anyway.
posted by clawsoon at 1:37 PM on September 9, 2020


What symbol are you seeing? All I see is something that looks like a mustache? Which isn't in the ADL's database?
posted by Windopaene at 3:08 PM on September 9, 2020


What symbol are you seeing? All I see is something that looks like a mustache? Which isn't in the ADL's database?

Pepe the frog, in the "post-match interview" link. Here is the ADL entry:
In the fall of 2016, the ADL teamed with Pepe creator Matt Furie to form a #SavePepe campaign to reclaim the symbol from those who use it with hateful intentions.
posted by clawsoon at 3:42 PM on September 9, 2020


I didn't see Pepe. Would have noticed that one. Seems sketchy AF.
posted by Windopaene at 3:51 PM on September 9, 2020


Pepe is all over Twitch and and was never an alt right symbol there. Even the chat for Hasan, the biggest leftist streamer on the platform (and one of the most well-known streamers on Twitch overall) is full of Pepe.
posted by airmail at 4:30 PM on September 9, 2020 [4 favorites]


Yeah Pepe on twitch indicates merely a normal amount of edgelord/shitlord.
posted by fleacircus at 5:11 PM on September 9, 2020


Hoooooo, boy. Twitch culture, the pandemic, and chess. Where to even begin?

I'm thrilled Storyboard made this post and for the increasing coverage of online chess (setting the Twitch bucket aside for the moment). Chess had already been seeing a massive resurgence over the last couple of years, and the pandemic supercharged that. It was practically a perfect storm, as general interest in chess was already piqued as the candidates tournament to decide who would play Magnus Carlsen in the world championship was midway through when it had to be canceled.

As the article covers in good detail; strong American GMs (and IMs, and FMs) such as Hikaru Nakamura and Daniel Naroditsky began streaming online playing mostly blitz or bullet Chess online. We also saw, out of necessity, fully-online tournaments between super GMs organized. The Magnus Carlsen Tour Final wrapped a month or so ago with a top prize of $140K, which is not too shabby.

Nakamura has been on Twitch for a couple years now, and he typically gets anywhere from 7,000 to 15,000 viewers when he's live, or up to 30,000 when something big is going on. This probably doesn't earn him a HUGE income, per se, but he takes it seriously to the point where he has said on stream that he considers himself a streamer who plays chess, and not a chess player who streams. I'm purely speculating, but at this point, he probably earns a better living from his chess than anyone but Carlsen.

One important reason? While Nakamura is ranked only 18th in the world in "slow" or Classical chess, he's ranked FIDE number 1 in blitz and number 4 in rapid. In a world where no one wants to devote 6 hours to watching a classical chess game, a LOT of people find it entertaining to watch him churn through a dozen 3-minute blitz games while he constantly interacts with his chatters.

Another? It's SUPER awesome that Nakamura and other chess players are actively encouraging the people to embrace a game that has been for far too long been considered too "high class" to be approachable. He has talked a lot on his streams about the damaging effect of elitism on chess and works to counteract that, which brings us all the way back to Pogchamps, which had more people watching it on the platform than did the world championship in 2018.

So, back to Twitch.

Twitch communities ARE moderated, and the moderation can be better in some channels than others. I've watched Nakamura's stream for a while, including before he blew up and started attracting a lot of viewers from streamers like xQc, a former Overwatch player who basically destroyed his career by making repeated racist and homophobic remarks (for which he has apologized, and maybe? reformed for). In any event, Nakamura didn't really know how to react to a sudden gigantic gaggle of memeing, skeevy, mostly teenage boys, and the adjustment process has been something that sociologists should probably study some day.

By this point, the communities in the predominantly-chess Twitch channels are, well....not bad, honestly. There's a great deal of really wonderful people in these communities, and Twitch's general practices are fairly inclusive (though a number of individuals will unfortunately be turned off and excluded by the reality that there will still be people saying incredibly insensitive shit very casually on a not-infrequent basis). The channels are only as good as their mods, and chat is largely real-time.

Anyway, if you think Chess isn't your game, you might want to rethink that! It's easier than ever to find people to play against who AREN'T just going to mop the floor with you.

(On preview: Yes, Pepe on Twitch seems to be platform universal and wholly disconnected from its right-wing pedigree at this point.)
posted by Room 101 at 5:28 PM on September 9, 2020 [6 favorites]


Considering Pepe an alt-right symbol only empowers in that way, they win when you call it that and consider it taboo. Matt Furie's work and personal politics are extremely against everything the alt-right stands for. Don't let the alt-right steal someones art to co-opt it in this way especially not when the original artist yet lives and campaigns against the alt-right and their thrwarted attempt to co-opt the character/image.
posted by GoblinHoney at 11:04 AM on September 10, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh cool yet another thing I was bullied for enjoying as a kid is now popular
posted by Drumhellz at 12:27 PM on September 10, 2020


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