The Dark Side of Streaming

 After a long day yesterday getting through the final assignments of an admittedly quite mediocre first semester of college, I woke up rather late this morning. As a typical Gen Z chess addicted nerd, the first thing that I did when waking up was flip open my computer and hop on chess.com. After combing through copious amounts of daily games (I'm still not sure why I started all of them), I decided to hop in the pool for a bit of ten minute rapid, and found myself staring at this:

 "Nelsi" I thought to myself. Where had I seen that name before? Suddenly, it dawned on me. I was playing National Master Nelson Lopez of Chess Vibes, a YouTuber with over 600,000 subscribers! I'd seen Nelson's stream a couple times, and I knew he liked streaming his rapid games in the pool... which meant that I was likely on stream. (It turned out that I was!) Immediately, I started shaking. What I had assumed was going to be a casual warm-up game where I would likely randomly hang a piece and instantly start another one had turned into a broadcast for over a thousand viewers. Strangely, this both increased and inhibited my focus, the importance of the game clashing with the thought of being on YouTube in my brain. 

 Unfortunately, the result of my nerves was this absolute dud of a game. In fairness, Nelson is definitely a stronger player than me. He's a national master, and outrates me by around 100 points both online and in person. However... it's only an 100 point gap, and you would think that the matchup would at least be somewhat competitive.

 I'll prelude this game by assuring the reader that my 2300 rating was legitimately earned, and not a result of any sort of boosting, although this game would suggest otherwise. I don't consider myself an amazing chess player, but this was a new low. 

 Well, ouch. If you want to see Nelson's perspective (mainly confusion on why a 2300 is playing so poorly), check here (it's the first game he plays, starts about a minute in).

 I don't like making excuses. However, I will honestly say that I believe if I hadn't known I was on YouTube, I could've probably put up a slightly better fight. As someone who has obtained the perfect level of chess to be beat up on by most streamers, I've been the subject of a few public executions over the last few months (and by that I mean losing on stream of course). I'll be sharing these with you today in hope, dear reader, that you show me an ounce of sympathy, and only laugh at me when I make an incredibly stupid blunder.

 In other words, you should be hysterically laughing at each and every one of the clips.

 I must note that I actually have met both GothamChess and Hikaru before. Levy pulled up to an OTB tournament that I was also playing in, and Hikaru was playing at the Saint Louis Chess Center on the day I happened to visit. My interactions with both of them were very brief (a couple of seconds), and would both be used as examples in an essay that shows how socially awkward I was in the early years of high school. However, my big debut in the world of chess streaming came in an ironically similar way to what happened to me this morning: I got paired against SadisticTushi in the rapid pool and, as he would say, I was the dummy this game.

 Another pathetic, low-level game by our protagonist. But as fate would have it, just days later, I was paired against Tushar again (he has two accounts, which I didn't think was allowed, but I don't see the issue with it considering the only boosting he seems to be doing is randomly getting matched with me in the pool).

 And as it turns out, I got my revenge... well, I guess I won't spoil it.

 I have absolutely no words. Except that Tushar is a really, really, really nice guy.

 For those who have already forgotten the abomination of a game above, here's a short summary: I got a winning position in about ten moves because he castled kingside and then put his pawn on h5, and then I was up an exchange which I didn't take for some reason. I ended a great (the engine evaluation looks like a roller coaster, how fun!) game by mouse slipping away a rook and then he gave me a pity draw.

 So what could cause a 2400 to play this badly? The culprit was nerves. As soon as I knew I was winning, my heart started furiously beating, my hands were sweaty, knees were weak, arms heavy... oh wait, that's an Eminem song, but the point still stands. The old nerves got to me, and the fact that I was playing a YouTuber was definitely the cause. (No hate to Tushi though of course! He's a great guy for giving me the draw).

 Anyways, that fortunately concludes my examples of being publicly humiliated on chess.com.

 Unfortunately, that means that these next few examples happened in person.

 A bit of backstory to get us started. Around this time last year, I was accepted to a small college in North Carolina, just outside of Charlotte. A good bit of my motivation to apply there was the fact that I could sacrifice my GPA in order to go play at the Charlotte Chess Center on a regular basis. Last March, in my senior spring of high school, I decided to attend one of their tournaments there to remind myself what the scene was like, since it had been a few years since I'd made it over there.

 I had an absolutely mediocre tournament to the point where my rating did not change. I played a grandmaster, which I suppose is remotely interesting, except it likely wasn't for him as he easily ground me down in a late middle game. In any case, my most interesting experience came during the blitz tournament, in which I was paired against popular chess streamer Dina Belenkaya, who is a regular at Charlotte Chess Center events. I sat down at my board and was immediately greeted with a camera and a live audience of a couple hundred people, which I thought was pretty dandy until I hung mate in one in an interesting position. In fairness, she likely had me beat anyways, and I went on to only lose two games in the blitz, the other being to an International Master. 

 After the game, I immediately pulled up Dina's stream and scrolled through the chat. "How did he hang mate?" I saw one chatter say. I made myself feel better about this trash talk by realizing that statistically, the average person watching the stream is probably rated 700. (Of course now that I said this, this chatter will come into the comments of my blog whining that he's been 850 this entire time). In any case, I thought it was a cool experience, but little did I know that it would be far from my last with Dina.

 I officially moved to North Carolina in August, and just a week into college, I went to a tournament at the Charlotte Chess Center, which turned out to be a terrible idea. Don't get me wrong, their tournaments are incredibly well run and very enjoyable, except when you're slightly under the weather and forced yourself to wake up at 7 am in an unfamiliar bed in a distant state in your first week of college. To top it all off, I was slightly sick, but I still went and played, because um... not sure exactly. (I lost 50 rating points my first month of college, mainly due to my cold refusing to go away). Midway through the hour-long Uber ride to the hotel, I flipped open the tournament website on my phone. "Ooh, pairings" I thought to myself. I clicked the button that said "Pairings", and was greeted with the name "WGM Dina Belenkaya" right next to mine.

 Welcome back to Twitch, Ben.

 Or it turned out that it wasn't Twitch, since Dina decided to stream on Kick that day. It didn't make a difference. The only thing that got kicked was me. Multiple times. And not just by Dina, I lost three games in the tournament, including to two lower rated players, before withdrawing.

 Here's my pathetic effort against Dina. I won't try to hide the fact that I was playing for a draw. I didn't analyze the beginning of the game much, since I found it rather boring, and didn't think that either side had much of an advantage.

 This game, as poor as it was, was unfortunately the best game I played all tournament. Additionally, it featured a few funny moments, which I didn't think were all that special, but, well... you'll see. 

• After Dina played 29... Qd6, I returned from the bathroom. Inexplicably, I suddenly couldn't remember what had changed in the position. "Where did you move?" I whispered. After staring me down for about four hours (makes for good content), she pointed at her queen on d6. I nodded, wrote it down, and played the poor move 30. Qh4.
• As I played the move 40. Qxg4 (the move after my blunder), my hand suddenly let go of the knight that I was in the process of taking off the board.It smashed into Dina's a5-pawn, taking it down as well. After apologizing, I picked up the a5 pawn but forgot its location on the board, and awkwardly hovered it around the queenside until she eventually put me out of my misery by pointing at the a5 square.

 In terms of my performance, it was a quite forgettable game, considering I missed a back-rank tactic. Somehow, I managed to play even worse in my next two games (if you've read this blog that shouldn't be a surprise) making the tournament a forgettable one altogether. I withdrew after the second day.

 I would've loved to forget about the game entirely, but a few weeks later, I was scrolling through YouTube when I saw this... (note: click on that link to watch the reel...)

 I suppose this is a face reveal. And in any case, Dina's schedule of posting videos about our game directly paralleled my blunders during it. Once the first one had been made, more of them quickly followed, such as this one.

 I wasn't too sure how to feel about this. I'm still not sure. At first, I was admittedly somewhat annoyed, given how many people saw me epically flop at a game which I've devoted years of my life to, especially considering it was my first month of college away from home and I was dealing with a nasty cold. On the other hand, however, I still think it's pretty cool that I got the chance to be on stream, even if I did hang a full piece. I guess the one thing that I'm sure about is that I'm very grateful for the multiple people who noted in the comment section (live or of her various reels) that I resembled either Magnus or Clark Kent. (Except for the dude who said that "bro resembles Magnus but doesn't play like him". I hope to find you over the board one day and smothered mate you in fifteen moves, jerk.) 

 In any case, watching the reels made me extremely motivated to get revenge on Dina Belenkaya over the chessboard. And that very weekend, I ended up getting my chance. At the Charlotte Chess Center's monthly blitz tournament, both Dina and I found ourselves having won our first two games (her admittedly more smoothly than I, who swindled a 1500 in a drawn position). And of course, it was only fitting that we would be paired.

 Oh, how I wish I'd saved the clip of that game. 

 I took the black pieces, and we played into a King's Indian defense. She misplayed the opening slightly, and I got my knight into an outpost, so she traded it for her dark squared bishop, but suddenly my bishop on g7 was completely wide open pointing down her queenside, so I launched my a-pawn down the board to undermine her defenses there, promoted a pawn to get her rook into a certain position, and then sacrificed my queen for two knights and a fork on king and rook at the end. She then put her king on the wrong square, and I was able to mate her with  my minor pieces. "He can't contain the smile" remarked a chatter, as I shook her hand. Admittedly, I couldn't. I had done what I'd set out to do, defeating Dina on stream in what I must say was a beautiful game (at least compared to the garbage that I typically produce).

  I'd finally shown the world that I wasn't just some overrated 2000 who missed back rank tactics. I went to bed that night feeling a sense of peace that there would be no way for her to make me look like a goofball based on the context of the game, until I woke up to this.

 For context, that's not an illegal move in USCF, since I never moved the rook like a queen. It can be explained by the fact that I knock all my pieces over every five turns or so, as Dina saw in our first encounter. In any case, it remains unclear who had the last laugh between Dina and I, although I omitted a chuckle or two when I saw that she had made yet another reel. 

 Anyways, that brings us to the main question of the blog: is streaming an overall positive for the chess community? As a whole, I would say that it is, considering I've met many casual online players in my day-to-day life who reached 1000 on chess.com mainly by watching GothamChess. I'm a huge fan of this, of course because popularizing chess is good and all that jazz, but mainly because it makes these people more impressed when I tell them I got over 2500 on blitz. Of course, as I've detailed in this blog, my experiences being on chess streams have been... very 1500-like to say the least, which is a bad thing considering I'm 2300. It definitely does make me extremely nervous when I'm playing a streamer, and I usually play way worse, as you just saw. I'd also say I don't fully agree with people bringing full, visible, streaming equipment such as a camera into a playing hall at an over-the-board event (which is why Dina beat me, not because she is a stronger player than I, of course), although had I beaten Dina in that one game I'd probably be writing about how it's the coolest thing ever. It definitely helps out the Charlotte Chess Center, which I'm grateful for. In any case, this is a very interesting topic of discussion, and I'd be happy to debate it further in the comments.

 So yeah, that's it! Thank you for taking the time to read this and bearing with me throughout all of the horrible blunders that I showed you in this blog. I'm usually slightly better at chess, I promise. Anyways, I'll likely be making more of these blog things in the future, for various competitions, to improve my writing, and mainly because I do find this fun.

 Oh and one more thing. If you ever find yourself playing a streamer with thousands of viewers, don't hang a piece or get mated out of the opening. But if you do, don't worry about it, because their blatant exploitation of you for content is likely only making them around five cents.

 Bye.