The world of esports is ever-expanding. There's no telling which new hot piece of gaming steps up to the big leagues. Sure there's the established big three of Dota 2, League of Legends, and Counter-strike: Global Offensive, but there's no end to new titles popping up here in there. It's a given matter for the industry to expect new games to take only broadcasts by storm and rise in popularity. This is why it was surprising when the classic game Chess took to the online stage.
Opening move
One of the proponents of online chess streaming is American grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura. Nakamura started playing chess at the tender age of seven before being crowned the youngest grandmaster in America at only ten years of age. Nakamura once streamed a video of himself playing chess in a video game. He won numerous accolades in chess prior to becoming one of the most famous streamers of the game. His achievements eventually landed him in a spot with Team SoloMid as one of its streamers in August 2020.
He began streaming chess on Twitch in 2015 but it was mainly a hobby for the grandmaster at that stage. In 2019, he amped up his broadcasts to around 30 hours per week. His audience began to grow exponentially adding to his impressive channel record. Nakamura's Twitch channel now has over 9.95 million hours watched. His stream's current peak record is a cool 45,000 concurrent active viewers. His records are commendable especially considering he's not playing traditional esports titles that are famous on Twitch.
Nakamura may have ignited the current rise of chess on a vastly different platform but several other personalities have taken note and followed his lead. Twitch and Chess.com held a tournament on the platform earlier this year for its most popular gaming streamers.
The gambit
Sixteen streamers congregated from June 5 to June 19 to compete in an online amateur chess tournament called PogChamps. Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura provided commentary for most of the games. The first PogChamps featured only Twitch streamers but later expanded to other content creators for its second iteration. The tournament boasted a modest USD 50,000 prize pool. Twitch announced a follow-up tournament in July 2020 and it was held between August and September of the same year.
Tournament viewership vastly exceeded the expectations of sponsors Chess.com. Twitch also noted that the chess category on its platform received a considerable bump around June 2020. It was clear that chess games were a viable online streaming choice and that fans enjoyed them immensely.
The chess category on Twitch currently boasts a respectable 1.1 million followers across numerous active channels. At the time of writing, around 6.6k viewers are currently tuning into their favorite chess streamers. It's a truly exciting time for fans of the classic game but it still has one challenge it needs to face to be completely etched into the halls of esports and broadcasting history.
The check
Chess may be the hot thing right now on online streaming platforms but it needs to stand the test of time. There have been many games that have been discarded once the hype died down. Chess is an immensely popular sport and it's been around for ages but that doesn't automatically mean it will stay famous forever.
The ongoing global pandemic most likely helped boost the game's current online popularity. Viewers tried increasingly unusual games in the time of community lockdowns because there was literally nothing better to do. The global health crisis forced all of us to slow down and enjoy a lot of things we would never have considered in the days pre-quarantine. It's a definite factor to consider as to why chess received such a surge in popularity.
This isn't to say that chess is doomed and that no one would watch it on a regular day. No, it speaks to the game's potential once events are allowed once more. Imagine thousands of rabid esports fans heading to arenas and stadiums to watch grandmasters and streamers battle it out on chess blown up on a big screen.
Hopefully, chess grows bigger as an esports title and inspires more people to pick up the game. The industry would be a lot kinder if it had more chess players than rage-filled MOBA and FPS people. For now, viewers can still tune into grandmaster Hikaru's and many other personalities' chess streams live on Twitch. Perhaps this will serve as a springboard for other traditional games to break through the online streaming space. I'd be down to watch Othello tournaments with famous personalities and streamers.
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