HashtagChess Update! Jan/Feb 2022
Hey everyone, Happy New Year, and I hope your 2022 is off to a great start! I’m writing this post to give you an update on what’s been (or will be) happening over at HashtagChess, in case you’ve missed anything. I’ll be posting an update every few months, so if you want to stay up-to-date, you can click ‘follow’ at the top of the article, if you’re not already following.
2021
Firstly, a big thank you to everyone for the support you’ve shown in 2021 - be it tuning into a stream or video, participating in events, engaging with social media posts, or supporting the channel financially. I’m especially grateful for the support shown during the transition from HashtagChess being a duo channel to a solo channel, and I’d like to thank the community for being so great!
YOUTUBE
In case you missed it, the YouTube channel has been a lot more active recently. Since late October, I’ve been posting videos every Wednesday at 18:00 GMT+2 (which means there's a video dropping today if you're early to this update post!) - at the moment, most of these videos are educational videos recorded specifically for YouTube, and they’re aimed at sub-1200s (but over-1200s should be able to learn a bit too!).
Here's a video about a tactic that even 2000-rated players miss! If you find it helpful, you can check out the channel for more content like it.
In 2022 I’ll also be working on producing more ‘chess entertainment’ content (some of it coming over from Twitch, and some recorded offline), so if you’re not looking for educational content, keep an eye out for this! You can sub to the channel to see the content when it’s posted, and turn on the bell notifications if you want to be notified every time I post.
GAME SUBMISSIONS
Have you recently lost a game that you felt you were completely winning? Did you have a completely winning game that you struggled to convert? I’ve started accepting game submissions from viewers rated around 1600 and below where you can ask me your chess questions. I’m not looking for brilliant games, but rather things that you’ve struggled with, so I can help you (and others) level up your chess. Game submissions are currently being accepted in the HashtagChess discord (check the #roles_and_links channel), and the answers are being posted regularly on YouTube.
Here's an example of two mini-questions from viewers' game submissions.
HASHTAGCHESS LADDER
If you’re looking for a little friendly chess competition off-stream, we’re working on revamping the HashtagChess ladder. Sign-ups for the first season are underway and run until Jan 23 in the Discord server, and the first season will be a round-robin tournament in rating categories (u1000, u1600 and open), lasting 8 weeks in total. At the end of the season, the top placed players will have an on-stream match for various prizes - hop into the Discord to join and to get more information!
STREAMERS' LEAGUE
The HashtagChess team will be competing in the first edition of the ‘Streamers’ League’! The team has already been selected, but everyone can watch the matches and take part in the end-of-season arena. For more information on the league, you can check out the official website, and keep an eye out for future sign-ups (preference is given to active community members)!
TINKIES TAKEOVER
On the 13th of January the HashtagChess stream is going to be taken over by Tinkies! South Africans will have the chance to win a prize during the stream - you can expect some marbles to select the winner!
DAILY CHESS CHAMPS 2022
I’ll be participating in the Daily Chess champs, but if past experience is anything to go by, I may be knocked out quite soon! I’ll be creating content around the event (videos and blog posts), so if you have any good games/tactics (or any games that went terribly, that you’d like analysed) please send me a message via chesscom/discord or post your game in the discord. Thanks, and good luck to everyone playing!
BLOG
My personal @beccrajoy blog was pretty inactive last year, but I’ll be trying to post a bit more frequently this year (at least once a month). If you’d like to follow the blog, you can check out this post and click the ‘follow’ button at the top of it! Some of the content on the blog will be educational, some of it will be South African-specific, and some of it will hopefully be about my travels in 2022 (if I can get back to OTB chess).
COMMUNITY GAMES NIGHT
Although we love chess, it’s good to take a break from it every now and again! Saturday, 29 Jan at 20:00 (GMT+2) will be a community games night that’ll take place in the discord - more information will be posted in the discord towards the end of January.
Twitch streams in Jan/Feb
I have a lot of exciting content planned for the first few months of 2022, so make sure you’re following the Twitch channel and checking out the schedule every week so you don’t miss any of it. As a hint of what to expect, there’ll be a lot of viewer events, sub battles, game reacts (submit your games for ‘Guess the ELO’ and more!), game shows (have you ever seen a ‘chess meme-off’?) and some high quality speed chess from some of South Africa’s top chess players!
The stream schedule is updated weekly and can be found here or here (in your local timeszone)
Special events will be posted on social media (so if you want to see these, you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram), and other updates, and game submissions will be happening in the Discord server (so if all the previous discord mentions haven’t yet convinced you to join the discord server, maybe this mention will?)!
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If you made it this far, I’m impressed - thank you! I’m really excited to see where 2022 takes us, and I hope you have a great year both in your chess and personal lives. HashtagChess is nothing without all of YOU, and I appreciate each and every one of you.
As always, happy chessing 
