A grandmaster who got Twitch hooked on chess
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The best computers can easily beat the top humans just as an aimbot could beat Navi easily at CS:GO.
So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.
That makes it much more like a strategy game.
Embracing memes makes it more accessible to viewers who are used to watching hearthstone, csgo, league, dota or other esports and it's been really fun to watch.
I started watching chess on twitch a while ago during the Tata steel tournament and I thought back then it would quickly grow if they focused their commentary on casual level viewers and it's been fantastic to have been proved correct.
There is a certain skill level, which I want to say is somewhere around 1400 to 1500 but it has been over a decade so don't quote me on that, where most the players at that level seem to focus on memorizing openings. It ended up being what separates them from the players a one to two hundred points lower. This leaves them vulnerable to a bit of a hack, as using a non-standard opening can completely remove any usefulness of their memorized openings. It almost disorients them and makes it much more likely for them to make a mistake that can then overcome the disadvantage of such a non-standard opening. I loved playing in this area as I hated memorizing openings so I just used non-standard openings to not to avoid having to. Eventually I hit the ranking where players were good enough to take advantage of my non-standard opening more than any advantage from disorienting them and I quit playing because the only option to advance would've been to go back and memorize openings.
I was not good enough to play an unknown variant and come out better, as you were!
So over time I drifted to variants like bughouse or speed chess variants, to play for fun and not feel like it was studying or being constrained by the standard moves.
And then boardgames took over; for me personally I need to have a mix of luck and skill in a game to enjoy it.
I do this trick a fair amount in Go, and actually have accumulated some "standard" non-standard openings that I play when the oppurtunity arrises. Because I play them fairly often, I actually have more experience with them then my opponent, so end up with the "memorization" advantage.
Also, in my experience, players will notice the mistake and then try a bit too hard to take advantage, instead of being satisfied with getting the "normal" result.
Nb however that most tournaments and such ban loads of bidding strategies with all kinds of special rules, so you can't do this just anywhere.
I broke through a plateau by studying openings more than memorizing them. Slowly working through the early possibilities to separate what works from what doesn't helped to reinforce basic principles.
So like hammering away at 30+ identical problems in high school math class, with some tedium it really did help me internalize the principles. I did not continue to memorize openings and common lines to any great depth. I remain a meager, but much more contented, chess student.
He read out a nasty email someone sent him on the stream apparently, his ban should expire shortly if it hasn't already.
Also the specific issue was reading the email address, not the message. This, naturally, invites chat to send messages to that address. Regardless of intent, this is a very reasonable expectation to have. If the email is not a troll, that amounts to inviting a horde of people to send nasty messages to a suicidal person.
He seems to have streamed yesterday and the day before, so he was probably unbanned after 24 hours with a warning.
Edit: he also covers engines which I find pretty interesting, a lot of Leela but my favourite so far is this game with AlphaZero and Stockfish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m5oXlZ_e_A
I remember growing up in the chess community being asked whether chess was a "sport". Most people within the community would say yes, while most people outside the community would unequivocally say no, since it wasn't physical.
Let me also mention Mato Jelic. His videos got me hooked!
Tournaments and news on reddit.com/r/chess
Later Samay became friends with India No. 2 Chess Super GM Vidit Gujrathi [2] and together they have created quite a bit of following on YouTube. In one of his videos, Agadmator [3] said that Indians sign-ups on Chess.com have gone through the roof.
However, most of the content is in Hindi. Here are some videos which are in (mostly) English, Vidit's trash talk with anther Indian GM Baskaran Adhiban[4], Vidit Playing Serious Chess Blitz tournament on Chess.com [5]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAov2BBv1ZJav0c_yHEciAw
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpjTx5WsF4yqyvGIYY8nuVg
[3] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL5YbN5WLFD8dLIegT5QAbA
https://www.twitch.tv/botezlive
Botez Compilation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9VVcrwQGqU
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https://www.twitch.tv/chessbrah
ChessBrahs Nightcore Bullet Run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCYEUQvjq4
(comment reposted with video links from a submission I posted on the subject the other day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23397314)
Don't forget about the old, funny chess masters :)
I mean, good for who? "Chess"? Chess is a game, it doesn't give a fuck who plays or watches it. It may be argued that chess is rather a field for studies, which, like any science, benefits from more resources spent on studying it, but let's be honest: future GMs are not bored 20 y.o. kids, introduced to chess by watching xQc. So, no, it is not good, nor especially bad for chess.
Is it good for Hikaru? Definitely. It is good for Hikaru, Botez, maybe Naroditsky or whoever else will manage to catch a ride on the hype train. Because they get more money. Alexandra's channel is now worth like 50 times more than 2 months ago, and market for coaching will be probably bigger now. Likewise, it is good for chess.com, which has all these guys on a payroll under contracts that forbid them streaming while playing on any other platform than chess.com
Community... Well, it's hard to define who exactly constitutes a community, but if we are talking about people who were playing chess and watching GMHikaru or BotezLive 2 months ago, it doesn't seem to me they got anything out of it. It was a community of somewhat similarly-minded people, there was at least some space for meaningful conversations in twitch-chat. Absolute majority was actually somewhat into chess (probably like 1100-1800 ELO) and there was a nice homely environment. Now all the trash previously contained within xQc's channel is spilled all over the place, it's just mindless spamming emotes and such. 50% of Hikaru's content is now "reacting to xQc doing stupid shit". 700-ELO player who at least attempts to think before making a move is now "naturally talented player and definitely not a newbie". I mean, honestly, it just isn't enjoyable anymore. It isn't the place these people used to come for.
And people who got introduced to chess because they were Forsen's of xQc's viewers didn't actually get much either, because they don't really care about the subject. If xQc was suddenly an avid crossword-puzzle sover, they would obsess over crossword-puzzles all the same. It doesn't matter.
So what if a large proportion aren't in it for the chess and will move on to the next craze? Some of them will be converted and grow the game.
As for the "trash previously contained within xQc's channel", I'm not sure how that's different (except in quantity) to the level of chat there has been for a long time in chess on twitch/discord etc.
It's quite sobering to think of chess as an intellectual game and find out that your average young "community" member is not really demonstrating intelligence above the norm in other subjects. The influx of non-chess newbies has not lowered the bar in that regard that I've noticed, tho there has been an inevitable swamping effect.
I think while it's good to caution against rose-tinted views of this recent phenomenon, we also need to be careful not to fall into the gatekeeping I mention in my initial post - it's really important to remember we all have to start somewhere.
Nobody comes in to this game as a master.
Hikaru does an amazing job of sharing his knowledge and skill without spilling over the top with information about why certain moves are theoretically better than others 30 moves down the line than only a small percentage of people would understand. The skill gap is insane, but he makes it feel approachable.
Its been fun watching the pogchamps series for the most part because himself and Botez (and a few others) can share their knowledge without being affronting or elitist, but instead exploring and explaining why certain good moves are sometimes hard to find or don't feel natural. Simplifying the language and using arrows on the board to show moves, rather than just blasting chess notation at the screen. You can see them holding back when a player makes a certain move, and then openly assess the goods and bads.
They've shown behind the scene training sessions on pogchamps too, showing a little into the world (again at a much lower level) how you would begin to prep and build your chess opening repertoire that is approachable for someone who is learning.
And then at the end of the day, its also just fun to watch someone who has an insane amount of talent be a complete boss in their field. Honestly feels like the top players are scanning a QR code and know what to do without a second thought [1]
...
To pin onto this for those who enjoy chess but perhaps don't like the stress of online play, I've found the puzzles on lichess [2] to be a great way to learn and be challenged by the game.
WTF?
OK, I understand they're on another level, but that's ridiculous. Seems like muscle memory. I had no idea they can do that.
As a player who only understands the rules it’s easy to understand why a player would blunder their queen after forgetting that their knight was protecting it and the commentary helps you understand what they should have done. It’s sorta like why the show “High Stakes Poker” was so entertaining vs tournament Game Theory Optimal poker play.
But we need a lichess for Backgammon! Backgammon has tons of strategy but also has the element of chance because of the dice roll - anyone can win anygame (in theory, at least).
There is even a lichess forum post about making lichess for backgammon: https://lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/backgammon-clone-...
The entire thing is also free, open-source and with a very diverse tech stack behind it that includes Scala, Redis, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Typescript, websockets, nginx and more [1]
Although, I had so much fun. I was playing mostly openings with 2nd move being the one with queen. Got to about 1700 rating on that site in bullet (3-5 min game). This was the result of about 1 year of heavy addiction (2-10 hours of chess per day).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/05/13/the-chaos-of-t...
Sadly, Falafel (Matvey Natanzon) passed away in March: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/nyregion/matvey-natanzon-...
Is this supposed to be a good thing in a game? It's kind of like the opposite of being skill-based. E.g., poker has this "problem", and it's a huge part of the game and its skill, but it's not literally a good thing that "anyone can win once". At worst, it just encourages gambling, at best it makes results more random than necessary to establish skill differences.
Bridge also has this property that every beginner can win, and the main consequence I've seen when teaching people is that it trips people up when their understanding of probability theory isn't up to snuff already before they start learning, they end up having way too much trouble distinguishing success and failure.
There's a theory that one of the reasons chess is so highly-developed with so many children playing at such a high level is precisely that not anyone can win, so people just get so much more feedback on their decision making.
Absolutely. Maybe not for a sport, but unless you're talking about the pure competitive aspect of it, most games benefit from having that level of accessibility. Bad players need to feel like they can win games. Even if they don't know how, they'll feel like they can win again.
One of the big draws to any game is the idea that you aren't just measuring your skill/experience at the game against everyone else playing, it's like when everyone comes over to play Super Smash Bros but you can tell the host has been playing on his own to practice, it takes a lot of the fun out of it. You can also use the example in SSB of playing with items on. Sure, really competitive players will hate the randomness that comes from items but the whole point of that randomness is to give everyone else a fighting chance.
I guess it depends on what you want out of a "game". If you're only looking at it through the lens of Chess where luck is virtually nonexistent and skill is the ultimate deciding factor, you're going to take a lot of issue with anything that upsets that balance. But, in practice, most people play games for enjoyment, not for sport.
The fundamental skill in backgammon is managing variance. Since there are many possible outcomes of the dice that you can't control, your job as a player is to put your checkers into position such that you're maximizing good outcomes and minimizing bad outcomes.
Yes, in any giving game, a poor player might roll very well and win that game, but over a large sample, the better player will absolutely dominate.
Backgammon also has the advantage over poker in the sense that it's still fun to play in the absence of gambling. Poker is dreadfully boring if no money is on the line.
Also, in backgammon, you still need to actually win. Contrast this with poker, where oftentimes when playing for money, you don't actually want to reach the end of the hand (i.e. showdown). Which, again, is pointless if there's no money involved since always calling is your optimal strategy.
GM Hikaru have been streaming chess since ~2 years ago [0] but there was little traction. Then one day he got into stream with xQc, one of the biggest streamer on Twitch. Because of Hikaru's skill and meme, many xQc followers started to follow Hikaru.
Soon, Hikaru joined Lindores Abbey Challenge, an online chess tournament where 12 world's best chess players compete, including Magnus Carlsen. I think that tournament was what made this whole trends possible. The recent surge of Hikaru's followers are chanting on the Twitch chat to give support to Hikaru. And Hikaru was playing against Magnus Carlsen, the final boss in the chess world. It felt like you're watching the latest episode of an anime/tv series.
The momentum didn't stop there. Hikaru knew the fads usually won't last long, so they made the pogchamps tournaments, featuring big streamers, to capitalize on the momentum and to make sure it was just not a fad.
- When's the next patch coming out?
- Nerf the queen, too strong
- Blundered a piece, intentionally feeding
- Queen h6 was mate, missed lethal
First of all, chess has been unapproachable for a long time. You see grandmasters making this move instead of that and for a beginner there's absolutely zero chance you're going to understand why. Or you see something that looks good, a fork that you think wins material but the GM doesn't play it; you don't understand why it was bad.
Sure, you could go into analysis in Lichess but are you going to do that for every single game? Is that fun?
Nakamura, Hess and Botez have been doing a great job making it more approachable - at a level anyone can follow.
The coaching videos are great to watch, even if you're a slight bit stronger (I'm ~2000 blitz on Lichess). And some of the players - Voyboy in particular - have been getting significantly better over the course of the tournament. You can follow along, get better yourself, and discover the deeper and deeper levels of the game at a tractable pace, and that I think is the key to getting into a new hobby.
There's also always been a sense of elitism in chess. The opinion against Pogchamps here[1] shows that:
> "If Chess.com wanted to do a show with gamers and streamers, instead of presenting them as fools they should have been respected as the learners they are at chess."
Bull. A beginner is NOT a fool, and the only prerequisite to playing chess is knowing the rules.
[1] https://www.chesstech.org/2020/is-pogchamps-a-good-way-to-pr...
I've been commenting a lot, so this post won't probably get through...
He goes into a couple different lines during the game and explains moves/blunders.
He misses a lot of subtleties, but he does a really good job of being consistent in the format of his videos, which I like.
sometimes doing silly things then absolutely wiping the floor of his opponent like in this clip
Exploiting premoves in online chess is a common "dirty" way to win, such as when FM Lefong Hua plays Bh6 after his opponent plays g6.[1][2] Even Carlsen has been tricked by this, such as when GM Andrew Tang got him with it in a Lichess tournament.[3]
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTPLX8h-KBY&t=8m25s
Kasparov still holds the title for most time spent at #1 at some impressive 255 months though. [1]
[0] https://youtu.be/WjEmquJhSas
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FIDE_chess_world_numbe...
* https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-openings/the-transves...
It's a grandmaster vs world champion match. It's silly and fun. "Feats of chess" like simultaneous or blindfolded matches have always been popular. All that packed into a 2 minute bullet game.
And ofc, there is always people standing around watching someone play. It's a usual sight to enter a pub and a 4 guys in a table playing Sueca in silence, surrounded by some folks watching. It's even more interesting because Sueca "etiquette" makes it a silent game during play, but after, during count, deal, etc, everybody is commenting, add alcohol and people watching, and it's a marvelous thing.
Also, the stereotypes associated with both: -> Drunkard man in a pub drinking their cheap wine/beer - Sueca -> Drunkard woman at friend's house drinking their cheap wine - Bridge
Oh, and the New York Times stream solves of some of their crosswords at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCST13QgqzC5r81Fd6OO7nCQ .. I can get along with NYT levels of cryptic myself, but not British style cryptic which is another level.
Sudoku on Twitch is not well established at all (yet), but if you see someone doing an advanced one (by following the "Sudoku" category – https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Sudoku) it can be worth tuning in especially as the live nature lets you "help" in the chat if you so wish. Maybe I should start streaming my own Sudoku solves! :-)
Edit: just to be clear, I don't agree with this stance. Just echoing what I've seen elsewhere to try to answer the "wonder why no one tried to get together a bunch of celebs to play chess earlier?" question
Reminds me of skateboarding in the 90s when some skateboarders would hate on newbies who got into skateboarding as a result of Tony Hawk, X-Games, THPS, or any other reason that wasn’t deemed pure or authentic. Now they marvel at the fact that skateboarding is an Olympic sport... Yeah, no thanks to you!
I think every ecosystem at points go through this "elitism" fad when it reaches a certain threshold of members. Seemingly to keep X being a niche they can identify with, instead of something mainstream some people only do for fun.
Point is, not exclusive to chess, just as gk1 pointed out.
ninja edit: The question is there because I want to know the reasoning better. It cant just be this.
I suspect the people most troubled by this new wave are those who use chess as a crutch for their own identity. If chess is viewed as a game for sophisticated, intelligent, cultured, etc, people, then they as chess players are also sophisticated, intelligent, cultured, etc. When that image of chess is threatened then they personally feel threatened.
Personally I'm glad to see the sudden rise in popularity, and don't care who's playing as long as they're having fun and not ruining it for others. (I'm at a master level.)
While watching famous celebs do mundane things is a real form of entertainment, I think it's a bigger leap for those fans to follow the celebs into a game of chess.
My granddad used to play chess over his rotary land line.
Some enthusiasts must have tried a game over telegram/morse or other technology.
All but forgotten today, though.
I'll say also if you want to improve at chess, you need to play slower time controls to build that pattern recognition and "muscle memory" up. Blitz is fun, but it's hard to really think deep and learn a lot.
Shoutout to lichess.org - one of the best sites on the internet IMHO.
My favorite person at the club, and I tried to play with him as often as I could, was this boisterous old man who would drop movie one-liners constantly. He'd take a pawn with his knight and bellow "I HAVE YOU NOW." I'd occasionally grab one of his rooks, "Great kid, but don't get cocky!"
Chess may be a bit more complicated and arbitrary than Go, but seeing how the pieces very exactly fit their 1, 3, 5, and 9 point values allowed me to see the mathematical beauty of the game for the first time.
And for endgames too, a queen vs 2 rooks may be winning for either side or a draw depending on a position.
Granted, the pieces naive value matters little compared to the tree search stockfish does.
For shogi there's 81dojo.com and for Go there's online-go.com and shin.gokgs.com
Now if we can get Nascar on to e-sports (large mosfet kind).