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By Reid Forgrave
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Levy Rozman began, in his deceptively pretentious familiar style. “There are many tactics to practice the glorious game of chess. You can watch YouTube videos. You can buy courses. You can read books. And when it comes to gambling, you can play in front of your friends. Maybe at the bar “–as opposed to robots. “
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This is how a first-generation American — half Russian chess brain, half American showman brain — has breathed life into an ancient game: by posting half-hour instructional videos to YouTube, by streaming on Twitch, by turning what began as a late-night hobby with friends into a career as one of the most influential figures in chess. The 28-year-old New Yorker known as both the Internet’s Chess Teacher and GothamChess, the name of his wildly popular YouTube channel, was sitting upstairs in the two-story apartment in Queens that he shares with his wife. The shades were drawn; a lava lamp bubbled in the background.
Rozman is a commentator and player; his opponent, a Chess. com robot named Martin, “a complete jerk,” Rozman called him, “like an IQ at room temperature, or even lower. “Chess. com houses several chess robots. to an amateur robot; A grandmaster can play an expert robot. The site has hosted robots such as Catspurrov, encouraged by the ever-wonderful Garry Kasparov, and Beth Harmon, a reproduction of the main character from the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit. “Being a parent who plays against your children. “I don’t think Martin has kids,” Rozman said. I don’t think that if a human saw Martin’s talent in chess, they would agree to have children with him. “
To bring Martin to his skill point (Rozman is a foreign master, one point below the grandmaster) he gave Martin a starting setup of 15 queens and a king, unlike Rozman’s popular chessboard. Rozman, dressed in a sky-blue hoodie, opened by moving his horse to F3. Martin soon took a pawn. Rozman moved his other knight to C3. Martin moved a few girls from his back row. Rozman captured one. “He had 14 queens left,” Rozman said with a laugh. I only have” – he was counting aloud – “seven pieces that pawn, so I can’t really take all of their queens. I’m going to lose all my coins. I want to do this in a smarter way. So what’s this smarter way? »
It was cheating, anything you mix with his more normal training sessions or his reviews of chess news, but Rozman’s effect was the same as when he relays commentary, say, about a showdown between two of the world’s most productive players. . He continued to avoid the strategy and make Martin laugh. “Is he susceptible enough to take this shot?” Rozman chided. Soon, Rozman cracked the robot’s code (Martin seemed to have a blind spot for pawns) and hit it twice, laughing the entire time.
The attack on Martin has been viewed more than 11 million times, making it Rozman’s most-viewed video on YouTube. That’s about the same number of viewers who watched the last NBA game. Endgames – and this underlines how Rozman, unknown only a few years ago, has one of chess’ biggest celebrities.
He launched his YouTube channel a few months after the pandemic. In the summer of 2021, it had one million subscribers; Earlier this year, it reached 4 million. Its total number of page views amounts to two billion. On the GothamChess YouTube channel, Rozman enjoyed all the wonderful chess moments of the past few years: the rise in popularity of Covid; the good luck of “The Queen’s Gambit”; the cross-appeal of Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian grandmaster and all-time wonder; the lewd cheating scandal that had to do with Carlsen’s accusations against Hans Niemann, a 20-year-old American grandmaster. This scandal ended up in court and caused GothamChess’ audience to grow for months.
Some in the chess world were concerned that the expansion of the game would not continue, but so far it has. At the end of 2021, NBC Sports Network dedicated an hour of programming to the World Chess Championship. This year, a record number of competitions were held at the U. S. Chess Federation’s National High School Championship. UU. Chess. com reached the top spot among free gaming apps on Apple’s App Store earlier this year. The site’s membership, which has been growing slowly for more than a decade, has tripled since the start of the pandemic, to more than 153 million.
Along the way, Rozman’s fame transcended the hermetic world of chess. He recorded a combined video of chess and martial arts combined with the U. F. C. When he traveled to Washington, D. C. , to appear on “PBS NewsHour,” students at the school asked for his autograph. Fans hounded him for selfies as he traveled to Europe with his wife last summer. And his book, published through Penguin Random House in October, has been translated into Spanish, German and Czech. It debuted as a New York Times bestseller.
There’s an easy explanation for why someone like Hikaru Nakamura, one of the few chess streamers and YouTubers whose reach rivals Rozman’s, has attracted such a vast audience: Nakamura, an American grandmaster, is one of the highest-ranked chess players in history. The influence of Rozman — the world’s 6,689th-ranked player, according to the International Chess Federation, known by its French acronym, FIDE — is tougher to account for, the product of an attention economy where packaging, social media savvy and on-camera charisma are at least as important as expertise.
Today, more people play chess than at any time in human history: 605 million adults worldwide, according to the United Nations. But you might see an oddity as to who gets the benefits: the money will go to the elite content makers. , if not more so, than elite players. Erik Allebest, co-founder and CEO of Chess. com, sees Rozman as the best combination of talent and influence. “He’s first and foremost an artist, but he knows enough about the game. and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way,” says Allebest.
Rozman will never be able to compete against a bumbling robot in the so-called Match of the Century in 1972, when Bobthrough Fischer defeated Boris Spassky. But their strategy is potentially much more lucrative. ” I’m probably the second largest entity in the world. global chess behind Chess. com: I’m not an entity, I’m a community, a chain, the highest engagements, the highest views, and so far,” Rozman told me during my stopover earlier this year. “It’s all said and done, I’ll probably be among the 3 most sensible among everyone who has ever been professionally involved in chess. Of all time. “
A few years ago, Rozman made the decision to take the exam to become a grandmaster. This effort almost led him to a nervous breakdown: 8 hours a day of reading for classic and exaggerated tournaments was incompatible with generating captivating daily virtual content. I have intellectual fitness problems!” He shouted in a 2022 video announcing his retirement from in-person tournaments. “In those games I play, I cringe. I’m cold. I’m tense, I’m nervous. The acidity in my abdomen builds up after 3 or 4 hours. I hate it!” But the search made him realize his true calling. He’s like the NFL’s Tony Romo or the NBA’s Kenny Smith: never mistaken for the most productive player, but unrivaled as an entertaining and applicable commentator. For Rozman, this means posing as an outstanding chess player. gamblers. (The son of Soviet émigrés, Rozman is an expert on accents. )
On a delightful spring Friday afternoon the year before, Rozman was driving rush-hour down Harlem River Drive on his way to his grandparents’ house in New Jersey. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, his grandfather, Solomon Zeldovich, a theoretical physicist, and his grandmother, Belya, a computer programmer, arrived in the United States with a suitcase and $150 each. A few years later, his daughter, Lina, met Ukrainian émigré Eugene Rozman; soon after, Levy was born. While Levy drove, his wife, Lucy, cradled their dog, a Bernedoodle named Benji, in the passenger seat.
Levy grew up in New Jersey and was a restless kid, “a bit of a killer on the playground,” according to his mother. When he was five years old, his parents enrolled him in chess lessons, and something unexpected happened: the game calmed him down. The opposite is true for the youngsters he plays against. He continued to beat his classmates, who were still crying.
When Levy 8, his father’s father took him to Cropsey Park in Brooklyn, where old Russians played chess. The elders were skeptical of the young. “And he beat them all,” Zeldovich recalled as we sat down to grab takeout kebabs. “It’s an insult to them, very insulting. They said, “Don’t bring it!”Never again!'”
Rozman earned good grades at Baruch College in Manhattan, where he studied statistics and quantitative modeling, with a career in finance. I was also bored. His side hustle, training chess at a private school in Brooklyn, was much more fun and paid $100 an hour. “New York is the most productive place in the world to teach chess,” says Rozman.
In early 2018, Rozman and a few friends started streaming on Twitch. It was a ruinous operation — background music coming from iPhone speakers, beer humor, and chess research — but Danny Rensch, Chess. com’s director of chess, took note. “My project was to track down our chess ‘Ninjas,’ the guys who can be stars,” Rensch says, referring to Ninja, a player with the most followed Twitch channel. Rensch liked that Rozman didn’t take himself too seriously. , who posts nasty comments directed at him on his YouTube videos, once reposted a comment calling him the “Chicken McNuggets of chess content”). Rensch asked Rozman to call. When Rozman called, Rensch was at a birthday dinner with his wife. “I think I’m talking to one of the stars of long-term chess,” Rensch tells him before walking away.
Two months later, on May 29, 2018, Rozman launched his own Twitch channel. His first solo broadcast averaged 13 and four viewers. It continued to broadcast until 3 or 4 a. m. , celebrating the moment when the broadcasts surpassed two hundred viewers. His father chided him for his “high-tech begging,” like a busker performing for a dollar tip. His circle of relatives questioned his end.
Then the pandemic hit. “Since everybody’s stuck at home right now,” Rozman said on GothamChess’s YouTube channel, on April 18, 2020, “and there’s a ton more online chess being played, I decided, Why the hell not? Let me give this a shot.”
At his grandparents’ house, after finishing the kebabs, his grandmother published an article about Rozman’s fifth-place finish among 11,000 participants in a school money skills competition. They thought he would move on to computer science or finance: “They gave him a computer in his brain,” he says, and they were involved in that chess career. “My circle of family would say to me, ‘Are you going to be a chess instructor all your life?’Rozman recalls. “‘ You don’t have fitness insurance!’ Rozman’s uncle allayed their fears: “He’s becoming the first millionaire in our family circle,” he told them.
Rozman’s grandfather now brought homemade currant liqueur, strawberries from his garden, and tea in small Russian piala cups. Later, at home, I asked Rozman about his future. He’s got big ideas: GothamChess summer camps in cities across the United States. Elimination style chess exhibition that he intends to present. A high-level chess club in Upper Manhattan with food, drink, and deodorant requirements.
He has no idea how to accomplish this. Instead, he’s focused on tomorrow’s YouTube video. He fears all this will go away, and he’ll acquire the dreaded title Former Internet Celebrity. But he can’t imagine getting bored with chess, so he’ll go as long as he can.
I asked him what he makes. Seven figures?
“Comfortably,” Rozman replied. “The biggest YouTubers in the world make probably close to $100 million — not chess. That’s nuts! It’s also kind of sickening in some ways, kind of gross.” Livestreaming sites, he went on, “are offering contracts for people to be exclusive with them for like $25 million a year. It’s ridiculous.” He laughed: “Nobody’s offered me this amount of money.”
“Starting soon, nerds.” The going-live notification for Pro Chess League was on one of Rozman’s two computer monitors. Rozman wasn’t playing for his team, the Gotham Knights. Instead, he would spend three hours announcing four rounds of four simultaneous games. He had already posted a 23-minute YouTube video that morning, “The SECRET to Gain Chess Elo,” which would soon surpass 800,000 views.
He dipped into the chat: What did he think of the Spanish Opening? The Petrov Defense? He read a question aloud — “Thoughts on Messi going to Saudi Arabia?” — and scoffed. “Oh. Yeah. I don’t care. Thanks for telling me though. We’re not big fans of cricket on this stream.” (Lionel Messi, the superstar soccer player, would end up taking his talents to Inter Miami instead of Saudi Arabia.)
Rozman never mocks commentators any more than he laughs at himself. He has already faced 3 11-year-olds who are among the most level-headed players in a tournament. One of them, one of his former students, largely ruled Rozman. “like, ‘Man, I lost to a 4-foot-5 little kid who wasn’t hunting on the board for 80% of the game!'” Rozman told me. I would walk around the room and at the 3 or 4 critical moments of the game. In the game, he immediately took the best shot. It’s ridiculous, but it’s also ridiculous.
The games have begun. Rozman looked at Stockfish, a chess engine, to facilitate his research. Things were tense between Vladimir Fedoseev, a Russian grandmaster, from Rozman’s team, and Nikolas Theodorou, a Greek grandmaster. “The question is,” Rozman said, “can Fedoseev win?” With the black opposite of Theodorou, as an absolute giga-boss?
After twenty-four moves, everything seemed to be heading for an apparent draw. For Rozman’s team to advance in the league with a $150,000 prize pool, a win is crucial. “The only chance we have is if Vladimir wins,” Rozman said.
But then Theodorou made his first mistake. That opened the door for Fedoseev’s brilliant retort: bishop to D7. “I sense weakness!” Rozman cried.
On Theodorou’s 34th move, with 36 seconds left on his 10-minute clock, he moved his knight to E6. Smart, Rozman thought — until Fedoseev countered by moving his rook two spaces to D2. He hadn’t taken Theodorou’s bait. Theodorou took 28 seconds to make his 36th move, leaving him with only four seconds. Under time pressure, he then made a blunder, and a few moves later, Fedoseev won. Rozman reacted as if his favorite N.B.A. player, Luka Doncic, had just sunk a buzzer-beater.
“Oh Lord!” -Rozman shouted-. What a victory! It is a beast! He goes into analyst mode: “When you play the E6 knight, you mentally give up. Because you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve figured it out, that’s it. ‘ And then the D2 tower is a ridiculous bloodless shower. The game continues and then you lose, because you have to be precise. And it turns out that it is not easy.
After 3 hours of non-stop, match-alternating commentary, Rozman was tired and hungry. But his task required him to stay connected, so he stifled the yawns. As Rozman’s team moved forward, he celebrated Fedoseev’s genius: “By the skin of his teeth!
The Gotham Knights took home the most sensible prize of $25,000. A few days later, Rozman posted a new video on YouTube, a version of his most-viewed video of all time. It was titled “Martin vs. Martin: The End of Chess” and pitted the incompetent chess robot against itself. “Essentially, we bet on chess, with 75% of his brain removed from the skull,” Rozman said. They were, he added, “failures at a point that I don’t think I’ve ever been in a position to see. “, more than 1. 5 million people have watched the video.
Reid Forgrave was founded in Minnesota. La last time I wrote for the magazine was about Jason Lentz, a world-class competitive lumberjack. Chris Buck is a photographer known for his unique portraits featuring Jay-Z, 4 Presidents, and Grumpy Cat. He last photographed Wee Man for the magazine.
An earlier edition of this article misrepresents Levy Rozman’s family history in the United States. Levy is a first-generation American, not a first-generation immigrant.
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