Chess Renaissance
Computers and online chess
Since 1997, when IBM’s “Deep Blue” defeated the World Champion (Kasparov), the world of chess has changed dramatically. Chess engines gradually improved and they are now much more powerful than any human could ever become. Computers have significantly impacted the chess world by changing the way players study and play. Nowadays, almost every chess player uses chess engines and their preparation is based on databases with millions of games, updated every day. Before the computer era, understanding the games of the world championships was difficult even for strong chess players. Nowadays, it is possible to watch the games live on the internet and run a chess engine on one’s computer. The engine evaluates each possible move and tells you the best one, so accurately that even beginner players immediately realize when the world-class players make mistakes.
Computers and chess engines were crucial factors for the birth of online chess. The first online chess website was the Internet Chess Club, born in 1992, but the most popular online chess platforms came with the improvements of chess engines and the popularization of the internet, at the beginning of the 2000s. Chess engines allowed beginners to easily learn chess, and the internet allowed them to play against each other from their homes. In 2005, chess.com was launched, and it’s now the most popular online chess platform by far, with 78 million members, which accounts for around 65% to 70% of total online players. The second most popular online chess platform, lichess.org, was launched in 2010 and it is last reported to have approximately 12 million members (8 months ago). Until 2020, these platforms experienced a steady increase in their number of users of around 20-50% every year, but in 2020 there was a spike in growth never seen before. This was due to a combination of the pandemic, the popularity of Netflix miniseries “The Queen’s Gambit”, and Twitch streaming.
The pandemic and the effects of lockdown on chess
In March 2020, lockdown forced people to stay at home, increasing their free time and drastically limiting possible activities. With the high accessibility of online platforms, chess was the perfect filler for this void. Since the beginning of lockdown, all chess platforms have experienced huge growth. Chess.com had 1.5 million new subscribers in April, compared to 670,000 in January. At the end of March, Chess.com’s CTO stated: “We are now expecting that our next 10 years of growth could happen in the next three months.” It has gained more than 700,000 members over the first three weeks of lockdown, even creating a problem to the website’s servers capacity. Daily registration numbers at Chess24.com, the third most popular online chess platform, have tripled in many countries since the beginning of the pandemic and the number of games played daily on average has doubled compared with this time last year.
Grandmaster Maurice Ashley said, "A boom is taking place in chess as we have never seen maybe since the Bobby Fischer days" attributing the growth to an increased desire to do something constructive during the pandemic.
Chess.com daily active players (the unit used on the y axis is 150,000) (11/2019-09/2020) Source: Chess.com
Games played on lichess.org from November 2019 to April 2020 (Data source: Lichess.org database)
The same trend can be seen in the number of accounts banned from Chess.com:
Source: chess.com
Impact of Netflix show “The Queen’s Gambit”
“The Queen’s Gambit” was released on October 23, 2020, and in only one month it had already been watched by 62 million households. Following the pandemic, it gave another spike of interest to chess: chess.com saw more than twice as many account registrations in November as it had in previous months, and the number of games played monthly on Lichess doubled as well. Chess app downloads on the App Store and Google Play Store rose by 63% after the show debuted. Chess.com has even launched Beth Harmon bots, so that users can play a game against the series' protagonist. There was also a demographic shift in players, with female registration on Chess.com shifting from 22% of new players to 27% of new players, mainly due to the popularity of the protagonist, Beth Harmon.
The graph of Chess.com daily active players previously used shows, if considered the term from November 2019 to November 2020, the impact of the miniseries.
Chess.com daily active players (the unit used on the y axis is 150,000) (11/2019-11/2020) Source: Chess.com
Daily and monthly count of new Chess.com members (Source: https://www.bloomberg.com)
A sample group of 5000 random chess.com users who joined the website before September 2020 showed an increase in the average number of games per player, which hints that “The Queen’s Gambit” has also motivated existing users to play more online chess.
Chess.com average number of games per player (Source: https://towardsdatascience.com)
Using Google Trend, Return.co analyzed how the growing interest in chess compares to some of the most popular board and party games in the UK. For chess, the increase was 189% compared to the average of the previous 11 months.
The numbers on the y axis represent the interest with respect to the highest point in the graph. 100 indicates the highest search frequency of the term, 50 indicates half of the searches. 0 indicates that not enough data was found for the term. (Source: https://return.co)
It is worth mentioning that the increase in users seems to be unrelated to the different release dates in various countries. As shown for the UK, Italy, Colombia, and China, they all increased at the same time, even though the release date (marked in red, except for China where Netflix is unavailable) was different. It’s possible that this may be due to the availability of VPNs and other unofficial methods, which allow people to access Netflix shows outside of their country. The lower increase in China is potentially due to the greater online restrictions present there.
Source: https://towardsdatascience.com
Not only did The Queen’s Gambit bring more players to chess online platforms, and increase the average games per player, but it also marked a huge growth in the chess business and industry. In the first three weeks from the release, chess books sales went up 603% and chess boards sales jumped 87% in the US. eBay recorded a 273% increase in chess sets sales just 10 days after the release. Crafts site Etsy has seen a 364% increase in chess items searches in November compared to the same time last year. Toy retailer Goliath Games has seen chess set sales spike in November and December, up 1,100% from this time last year.
Twitch chess streams
This huge interest in chess made its way onto the most famous live streaming platform of today, Twitch. Chess has always been a part of Twitch, which partnered with Chess.com in 2017, but the platform has seen significant viewership increases in 2020.
It all started when Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura offered to give xQc, a famous Twitch streamer and professional Overwatch player, a chess lesson while streaming. Nakamura's channel was already gaining viewership, but his lesson with xQc marked an inflection point. In the weeks leading up to the lesson, Nakamura's channel would attract around 2,000 live viewers; by May 2020, average live viewership was above 13,000. Of course, Nakamura wasn't the only chess streamer benefitting from the broader Twitch community's interest in the game. In fact, his channel accounts for around 20% of the total time spent watching chess on Twitch. Channels such as BotezLive (Women FIDE Master Alexandra Botez and her sister Andrea Botez), GothamChess (International Master Levy Rozman), and many others saw significant viewership increase too, both on Twitch and YouTube.
If xQc's first stream with Nakamura was the most important event for starting the chess boom on Twitch, then PogChamps has been the most important for sustaining it. PogChamps is an online chess tournament played in June 2020 organized by Chess.com in collaboration with Twitch, featuring mainly popular streamers and YouTubers, but also rappers, actors, and athletes, who brought a great amount of attention to the game. All these players would get coached by professional chess players, such as Nakamura or Alexandra Botez, who also acted as commentators for the games. As a result of the first PogChamps’ success, 3 more were organized, in August 2020, February 2021, and August 2021. The first and second PogChamps had prize pools of $50,000 each, while the third and fourth had prize pools of $100,000 each. The tournament significantly raised the profile of chess in the esports and streaming world, and it showed that it is not necessary to be a top chess player to create chess content. About it, Nick barton, VP of business development at Chess.com, said “We were able to create this roster of diverse personalities so that someone could log on and watch an untitled player that might be at the same level they are or they could watch Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, and everything in between.” Taking elements of the frenetic presentation of Twitch streamers has made chess seem less boring. Additionally, the streams allow viewers to learn in a way that they wouldn't elsewhere, as most of the top players educate and entertain while playing.
The presence of chess on Twitch and YouTube was both a result of the growth started in March, due to the pandemic, and also a cause for further interest in the game. Chess popularity experienced the first spike in June 2020, when PogChamps was played, another one in November 2020, as a result of “The Queen’s Gambit”, and the biggest one in February 2021, during PogChamps 3. Chess got on the top 20 most streamed games on Twitch, with the number of hours watched increasing from around three million in March 2020 to eight million in May 2020 to 21.9 million in February 2021.
Chess category on Twitch average viewers (TwitchTraker.com)
The following graphs show the growth of some of the most popular Twitch chess streamers in terms of average viewers (in green) and total followers (in blue) from January 2019 to January 2022. (Data source: TwitchTraker.com)
GMHikaru (Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura):
GothamChess (International Master Levy Rozman):
Anna_chess (International Master and Woman Grandmaster Anna Rudolf):
GMNaroditsky (Grandmaster Daniel Naroditsky):
imrosen (International Master Eric Rosen):
