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One afternoon, thousands of non-combatants watched from the sidelines as their general ordered his troops across the battlefield and were caught in a fierce duel with the enemy.
At one point, he rebuked himself for a misstep that could have accused his team of the high-risk conflict. Then he smiled and began to outwit his enemy.
“I can’t lose,” Hikaru Nakamura, 32, told exultant viewers. The victory was closed when members of the opposing army were defeated one by one. “I win again.
Nakamura gave himself only a moment of respite, then plunged into another scrum. Pawns, horses, bishops and even kings fell in front of him as the wonderful chess master demolished a list of online challengers, as he told tens of thousands of enthusiasts watching the The Course of Live War on Twitch, Amazon’s owned site where other people play video games like Fortnite and Call of Duty.
The coronavirus pandemic and orders to stay home have crowned a number of unlikely winners for an annoyed audience. But watch live broadcasts of chess games?Could one of the oldest and most important brain games in the world be renamed a pastime alive enough to capture the interest of the masses on Twitch?
Turns out this is already the case.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the audience for live chess games has exploded. From March to August, other people watched 41. 2 million hours of chess on Twitch, 4 times as many hours as in the past six months, according to the online research page. SullyGnome. In June, an amateur chess tournament called PogChamps in short, the most watched broadcast on Twitch, with another 63,000 people at a time, SullyGnome said. And popular Twitch players like Felix Lengyel (best known for his 3. 3 million subscribers). like “xQcOW”) have also recently started broadcasting chess.
This collision between chess and the player general created a “giant bonfire,” said Marcus Graham, Twitch’s artistic progression manager.
The popularity of online chess has been driven in part by Nakamura. Last month, one of the world’s most sensible professional video game teams, Team SoloMid, beat several e-sports rivals to point it out on a six-figure contract, so he can be paired with Nakamura was one of the first chess players to sign up for an e-sports team, just a week after another organization singled out a Canadian player , Qiyu Zhou.
Although Nakamura began broadcasting chess on his Twitch channel, GMHikaru, in 2018, almost all of its 528,000 subscribers have joined since the start of the pandemic. And as his popularity skyrocketed, media attention increased, adding an appearance as himself in the television drama “Billions” in May.
“It’s just amazing to see the meaning and love I’ve noticed in the Twitch community,” Nakamura said. He added that the most exciting component of chess and transmission was simply “the fact that I’m so smart at it. “
It is a great help that you have an impeccable failure pedigree. In 1998, at the age of 10, he became the youngest player in the United States to be appointed master, a name achieved through forged performances. Five years later, he has become the youngest player in the United States. The youngest American player to graduate as a grandmaster, the name. Since then he has won five national championships.
On his Twitch channel, Nakamura, who lives in Los Angeles, rarely stops talking. His flow of comments and talks, even when he directs his works with the precision of a director, is one of the reasons enthusiasts came to him.
It attracts other people because it’s very good, but there are also other more sensible players on Twitch who are as as he is, not as funny, not as in songs with the Twitch cultural genre, said Brandon Benton, 34. Postdoctoral researcher in physics at Cornell University who studies the Nakamura Stream. He is a ‘member with his feet on the ground and a prankster’.
If you think chess fits like a long-term job, well, you’re not wrong. A classic game with no time limit can last five hours. But many online battles, in addition to almost all of The Games’ broadcasts via Nakamura, are flash. Chess. Each player has only a few minutes to complete all their moves, leading to a competitive and fun game flavor that enthusiasts find exciting to watch.
A player’s stopwatch only stops when it’s the other person’s turn to move a room, so making plans forward and making quick calls is essential to manage the watch. The climax occurs when there are only a few seconds left and the wrestlers exchange an immediate burst of movement.
In a recent broadcast, Nakamura had fewer coins than his opponent and 20 seconds remaining, but 41 punches later, smiled after achieving an unlikely matte fault involving loading a pawn into the set and plotting him as queen. Seconds.
“More than anything, it’s the ability to play very high-level chess and win when I’m not focused on the game and I’m not talking to my cat,” Nakamura said of his ability to attract a giant audience. who holds regularly while playing 20 or more games in a bachelor session. “At least in lightning chess, I’m probably the most productive or productive player of the moment in history, at least online. “
If Nakamura is as smart as he says he is, and he is, judging by his many titles, foreign awards and 288 victories in 302 broadcast games, then it makes sense for chess enthusiasts to listen. exclusive talents every single day in a live broadcast, right?
However, chess, to put it mildly, is as visually stimulating as a tennis or a 100-meter race. So what’s the component of the secret?
Many fans of Naka’s PogUniversity, Nakamura’s network call on Discord, a voice chat and text messaging app, said they had been absorbed after rediscovering therself in recent months while trapped inside. Many had entered the game as children.
“When I was developing, high-profile chess was behind secret closed doors, played through other privileged and wealthy people in society,” said Clayton Chan, 43, from Tustin, California. pointing and seeing players on Twitch communicating their minds with the network really shocked me. “
Noah Olsen, 24, who lives in Washington, D. C. , said he appreciated Nakamura’s interactivity with his fans. The grandmaster invites his subscribers to play against him in the broadcast, and will start with fewer pieces as a handicap or play blindfolded.
“It’s a laugh to know that you’re opposed to a chess spirit of Hikaru’s caliber,” Olsen said. “But the other 10,000 people who watch while he takes you aside are a little scary. “
In Murcie, Spain, Anthony Nicolaou, 16, recently discovered the Nakamura chain, which encouraged him to return to a long-standing goal: beating his father in chess.
“The most important thing that informs me of him is that it’s general to be bad,” he said, hunting Nakamura. “I learned that you can be informed and improve without feeling stupid. “
Nakamura also coaches streamers. He will endure the exasperation of the shortcomings of his protégés, fans love it when he loses his mind in a ill-thought-out move.
“He does all kinds of grimaces, ” said Benton of Cornell.
The chess fever spread across Twitch has been a boon for those who make money from streaming. Eric Hansen, 28, a great teacher who broadcasts on the Twitch chessbrah channel, said he could earn six figures a year on the platform through product sales, ad sponsorships and subscriber contributions.
Nakamura said all the attention was a victory for chess.
“I’ve noticed a lot of booms and busts,” he says. But this time, ‘I don’t see a slowdown now. I think the long run is incredibly bright.
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