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Fast-and-Loose Culture of Esports is Upending Once Staid World of Chess (nbcnews.com) 41

Posted by msmash from the pushing-the-limits dept.
Grandmasters and upstarts are reinventing the game online, becoming its most visible ambassadors and arguably its first entertainers. From a report: On Twitch, the most popular internet platform to livestream esports, time spent watching chess has risen by more than 500 percent since 2016, according to data from the company. With that consumption has come some money, mostly donations from viewers facilitated by Twitch but also in sponsorship dollars. That growth persuaded Botez in September to try livestreaming chess full time. She now has more than 60,000 followers on Twitch. And while streaming is offering players like Botez a new way to make a living from their chess skills, it's also giving new life to one of the oldest games in the world. "It's crazy to me to have this kind of support and this kind of viewership online for chess," Botez said. "Chess has always been a passion of mine, but it was never something that was popular. It was never something I would have imagined would have grown to what it is today."

Chess came to the attention of Twitch less than four years ago, when the company formed a partnership with Chess.com, the largest chess website, with almost 33 million members. "Across all the different various competitive games on Twitch, chess has seen some of the most substantial growth in the same period of time than any other esport in the world," said Justin Dellario, Twitch's vice president of global esports. The rise of esports -- both in terms of competitive gaming and more social online gaming -- first gained attention in the 1990s and the early 2000s before emerging in the past 10 years. The gaming and esports market research company Newzoo forecast that 2019 esports revenues would hit $1.1 billion. Twitch is by far the largest esports platform. Chess hasn't enjoyed similar growth. While the game has a young, marketable genius in world champion Magnus Carlsen, it has struggled to attract the kind of money that can help sustain its growth.
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Fast-and-Loose Culture of Esports is Upending Once Staid World of Chess More

Fast-and-Loose Culture of Esports is Upending Once Staid World of Chess

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  • The headline is just a fancy way to say that people are streaming chess on Twitch. BTW if you're looking for a good streamer, check out Hikaru Nakamura.

  • If you're thinking of people watching a traditional, slow moving chess match, they're not. Since the nineteenth century, competitive chess has always been played on a timer with each player given a set amount of time to make his moves; if he runs out of time, he loses. It used to be (and still is in truly serious matches like the World Championship) each player got something on the order of 90 minutes or two hours, with more time added if the game went on for a lot of moves. These people are mostly playi

    • These people are mostly playing blitz chess, where the typical time limit is 5 minutes for each player.

      Five minutes is actually a long time among streamers. Hikaru Nakamura, for example, typically plays one minute games.

  • On first glance, I read "Fast-and-Loose Culture of Escorts is Upending Once Staid World of Chess".

    Made perfect sense.

  • (Presses chess timer)

    Your move, bitch.

  • oh look... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @10:25PM (#59741586) Journal

    ... /shock, she's bangably hot.

    Here's a news flash, they're not watching the chess.

    Young (and sometimes old) men will watch anything with a hot chick on it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The internet has an endless supply of free porn. Twitch itself has cosplayers doing body painting or gamers with low cut tops. This lady dresses modestly and plays a slow game of chess. I doubt many of her viewers are in it for the cheap thrills.

      More likely they are in it for the community. Twitch attaches an IRC style chat room to every stream and a big part of becoming popular is making your chat a place where people want to hang out. A lot of revenue comes from chat too as people pay for things like spec

      • You can watch chess games a lot of places.
        Your choice is watching chess with some dullard, foreign white dude, or a vivacious young woman.

        99% of straight men are going to go for the latter.
        Still think her hotness or femininity is irrelevant?

  • All the games we like are because of the graphics and the filling. If the game is simple, players forget it very quickly. I like to play chess in reality. It's a long game with my dad. But computer games for me is Modern Warfare. I've been playing for a long period of time. This game binds to itself for a long period of time. Unfortunately now I can't spend a lot of time playing because of work. So I buy CoD MW weapon camo https://legionfarm.com/cod-mw/... [legionfarm.com]. This allows you to stay in the game and watc
  • Botez isn't a strong player (source: have seen a couple of her vids and heard her commentary). But she is quite attractive. Why shouldn't chess benefit from means that are standard in selling just about everything... other sports, cars, cosmetics, Instagram influence, fashion, politics...

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