Mediaboss Marketing

Source: xQc | Twitter

Chess viewership is growing online at a rapid pace, and not just for the Twitch chess experts. Alongside the streams and videos from chess grandmasters grinding out Blitz and Bullet games, there are also some of the biggest online personalities in the world who are starting to learn chess and make it a part of their regular content.

Events like the PogChamps tournament series and Twitch Rivals Chess Hand and Brain Showdown have helped solidify the popularity of chess and engage mainstream celebrities with amateur chess events, to the point that many of them now feature chess as a regular game on their channels.

Here are just a few of the biggest streamers who stream chess regularly.

Flix xQc Lengyelis one of the most popular variety streamers on all of Twitch, with over 7.8 million followers. The former professional Overwatch player developed his massive Twitch presence playing games and watching videos with his subscribers. His streams are often between 10 and 13 hours long, and in that time he plays a lot of different games. Lately he has been spending occasional stream time playing chess matches on Chess.com.

xQc also competed in all three of the PogChamps amateur tournaments on Twitch, placing in the quarterfinals of the consolation bracket at PogChamps 1 and PogChamps 2, and reaching the quarterfinals of the championship bracket in Pogchamps 3.

If you already enjoy xQcs brand of Twitch content, his chess streams bring a very same vibe from an audiences perspective.

Imane Pokimane Anys is another huge name from Twitch and YouTube that regularly plays chess and participates in chess streams. Not only does she play chess on her own channel, but she also has done a large number of collaboration videos with Hikaru and Anna Rudolf, in which they analyze her game and coach her, among other things.

Pokimane has built up a tremendous fan base online since starting her streaming career in 2015. By 2017, she had already built up 450,000 followers on Twitch, and was ranked in the top 100 most followed on their platform. Today, she boasts 7.4 million followers on Twitch and is one of the leading personalities on the platform.

She participated in the PogChamps amateur chess tournament series on Twitch, and was most recently eliminated in the semifinals of the PogChamps 3 event by fellow streamer and former pro cyclist Michelle Khare. Pokimane is a fun streamer to watch playing chess. She is inquisitive with coaches like Anne Rudolf, and she is ambitious about learning while keeping her games entertaining for viewers.

Andras Sardoche Honnet is a French variety streamer who is quite popular in Europe. He frequently hosts streams with over 10,000 viewers and boasts over 950,000 followers on Twitch. One of the games he enjoys streaming lately is chess.

He is good at chess too. He won the PogChamps 3 championship in a 2-0 match against television actor and producer Rainn Wilson. While he certainly isnt playing at a professional level, he is the best of the chess streaming amateurs, at least for now. He also plays with a lot of passion, something that is obvious in the clip of him winning the PogChamps 3 finals.

Sardoche is a great amateur chess play to watch, especially if you speak French.

Shaun Hutch Hutchinson is an old-school YouTuber who first came to fame as one of the hosts of Machinima Respawn. While he primarily plays first person shooters on his streams, he has been playing chess as a regular feature of his Twitch and YouTube content for years, long before the recent surge in chesss popularity.

Hutch credits his interest in chess to playing chess in parks against strangers when he was younger. While Hutch doesnt play chess at a professional level, his many years of experience came in handy at PogChamps 1, where he took the top place in the Championship bracket.

If you are looking for a chill, old-school streamer who is a genuinely excellent chess player, Hutch is a great creator to check out.

Charles MoistCr1tikal White is a variety streamer and content creator who hosts the channel Penguinz0 on YouTube where he holds 7.8 million subscribers. He has been an active content creator on Twitch since 2018, where he has 2.5 million subscribers. He plays a variety of games, including Super Smash Brothers, Among Us, and chess.

Throughout 2020, MoistCr1tikal started getting into chess in earnest. His content centered on Chess for much of the second half of the year, following his appearance at the first PogChamps chess tournament in June of 2020, where he six-move checkmated xQc.

If you enjoy MoistCr1tikals other content, you are sure to enjoy his chess streams and videos as well.

Rumay Hafu Wang is a Twitch streamer known best for her career as a professional World of Warcraft and Hearthstone player. She has 1.3 million followers on Twitch and plays a variety of games on stream ranging from VALORANT to chess. She first picked up chess in July of 2020, and she has streamed it on a relatively consistent basis ever since.

Hafu won the PogChamps 2 tournament in September, beating League of Legends pro Jesper Gripex0 Terkildsen in a 2-0 championship match. Hafu has been playing less chess recently, but she still plays occasionally on stream and she might pick it back up for future Twitch tournaments.

She was not involved in the latest PogChamps 3 tournament, but with her early success in chess at PogChamps 2, it would be surprising if we didnt see her competing at more Twitch chess tournaments in the future.

Rounding off our list, we have streamer and esports commentator Ludwig Ahgren, better known simply as Ludwig. Despite only starting his Twitch channel in 2019, Ludwig has accrued 1.6 million followers on Twitch. He is best known for his old-school gameplay commentaries and his role as esports commentator for Super Smash Bros Melee tournaments.

Like some of the other streamers on this list, Ludwig started taking chess content seriously in the lead up to the PogChamps tournament in June of 2020. He ended up placing second in the consolation bracket at that tournament. He went on to compete in both PogChamps 2 and PogChamps 3, with his best placement happening at PogChamps 2 where he reached the semifinals of the championship bracket. We can expect him to continue to compete in Twitch chess events in the future.

In February, Ludwig doubled down on chess when he started taking lessons under Levy GothamChess Rozman, an international master, chess coach, and YouTuber known for his chess coaching and commentary. As part of his training, Ludwig has continued to host regular streams where he plays chess on Chess.com, in hopes that he will improve with practice.

The rest is here:
The 7 biggest Twitch streamers that stream chess regularly - InvenGlobal

Peter Svidler and Patrick Leonard will team up to play chess and poker against a rival team consisting of Alexander Grischuk and Isaac Haxton. Patrick and Isaac are as famous in the poker world as Peter and Sasha are in the chess world! We're also launching a Freeroll Series that you can play, each Sunday of March and April, on partypoker.

On Wednesday, March 10 at 8 pm CET, Peter Svidler will give a streamed chess lesson to his partner Patrick Leonard and will receive a poker lesson in exchange.

8-time Russian Chess Champion Peter Svidler started to play poker in 2010 and used to play a lot, but has done so less in the last couple of years. He describes himself as a "bad regular"... which is exactly what a humble "good regular" would say!

Patrick used to be World n1 on the PocketFives rating and is part ofTeam partypoker.

The day after, on Thursday, March 11 at 8 pm CET, it will be the turn of Alexander Grischuk and Isaac Haxton to train each other in order to get ready for the Battle.

You might remember from my articleGreat minds: 10 players who excel at both chess and pokerthat World n6 Alexander Grischuk made 8 cashes in the last World Series of Poker, including a 6th place for $30k!

As good in poker as Sasha might be, he will probably have a thing or two to learn from his partner, the great Isaac Haxton.

Also part of Team partypoker, Isaac is n16 on the All-Time Money List with $28 million in earnings! He is regarded as one of the best Heads-Up specialists in the world... and that's exactly what they are going to play.

The Battle will take place on Friday, March 12 at 8 pm CET.Team Peter and Patrick will face Team Alexander and Isaac.

Here's a quick summary of the format:

If you want to know the details:

As exciting as watching the world's best players can be, nothing compares with playing yourself!

That is why we are launching the Battle of the Minds Freeroll Series that starts this Sunday, March 7.

The whole competition is entirely free and while there are no cash prizes, you can still win some nice prizes.

One freeroll each Sunday of March and April at 8 pm CET/CEST.

All the freerolls are 6-max No-Limit Holdem Tournaments - only the speed changes, alternating between Turbo and Hyper.

In each Freeroll you can win:

At the end of April, after 8 tournaments, the top 4 on the leaderboard will play a knockout Heads-Up tournament and compete for these prizes:

4th place

3rd place

2nd place

1st place

Let's answer a few questions you might have:

Is it really free?There are no fees at all. However, you need a valid account with a deposit.

Where does the competition take place?On partypoker.com

Who can participate?All adults over 18 years old, who are living in a country where partypoker.com operates. This includes: Russia, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Canada, Holland, LATAM

How to participate?Go to partypoker.com and register if you don't already have an account. In the lobby, find the tourney named Battle of the Minds Freeroll Series #1. A password is needed: Chessparty

We will publish the leaderboard soon after the end of the tournament. Good luck!

See the original post:
Battle of the Minds: 4 legends compete in chess and poker - chess24

Chess is undoubtedly a game of the mind. Sadly, some of the nuances are lost when you play on a computer screen. When a game is tactile, it carries a different gravity. Look at a poker player shuffling chips, and youll see that when a physical object is on the line, you play for keeps. [Matou], who is no stranger to 3D printing, wanted that tactility, but he didnt stop at 3D printed pieces. He made parts to transform his Creality Ender 3 Pro into a chess-playing robot.

To convert his printer, [Matou] designed a kit that fits over the print head to turn a hotend into a cool gripper. The extruder motor now pulls a string to close the claw, which is a darn clever way to repurpose the mechanism. A webcam watches the action, while machine vision determines what the player is doing, then queries a chess AI, and sends the next move to OctoPrint on a connected RasPi. If two people had similar setups, it should be no trouble to play tactile chess from opposite ends of the globe.

Physical chess pieces and computers have mixed for a while and probably claimed equal time for design and gameplay. There are a couple of approaches to automating movement from lifting like [Matou], or you can keep them in contact with the board and move them from below.

Original post:
Print Chess Pieces, Then Defeat The Chess-Playing Printer - Hackaday

Besides the Champions Chess Tour, aVidit Chess Tour is taking place as a qualifying event for the tour organized by the Magnus Carlsen Group.This online tournament is being played as a knockout on March 4-7 with 16 playersfrom Indiaon the chess24 platform. The participants qualified to the event by playingpreliminaryblitz tournaments. The first two players from each blitz open tournament qualified tothe knockout tournament.

In the knockout, two games are played per round with a time limit of 15 minutes plus 10 seconds per move four games will take place in the final. In case of a draw, an Armageddon decider will be played.

The first prize is 1,000 US dollars. The top eight players will get an invitation to the Indian qualifying tournament for the Meltwater Champions Chess Tour.

Gukesh and Aronyak reached the final. The former defeated Vishnu Prassana, Mitrabha Guha and Narayanan S. L. on his way to the deciding match; while the latter got the better of Abhijeet Gupta, Harsha Bharathakoti andErigaisi Arjun to reach the final.

The Fashionable Caro-Kann Vol.1 and 2

The Caro Kann is a very tricky opening. Blacks play is based on controlling and fighting for key light squares. It is a line which was very fashionable in late 90s and early 2000s due to the successes of greats like Karpov, Anand, Dreev etc. Recently due to strong engines lot of key developments have been made and some new lines have been introduced, while others have been refuted altogether. I have analyzed the new trends carefully and found some new ideas for Black.

Commentary by Srinath Narayanan and Vidit Gujrathi

The qualifier events took place on February 21-28 on Tornelo. The time control for each event was 3 minutes for the games plus2-second increments.

Here are the results:

Original post:
Vidit Chess Tour: Aronyak and Gukesh in the final - Chessbase News

Historians say chess likely started in India all the way back in the 7th century. And while it's never really been absent over those hundreds of years since, it's certainly experienced waxes and wanes in its public acclaim over the centuries.

Even among all those ebbs and flows of history, chess is having a bit of a moment these days. What started as an uptick in popularity during COVID-infused quarantine exploded last November with Netflix's The Queen Gambit miniseries. Sales of chess sets rose 87 percent in the U.S., while chess book sales skyrocketed by over 600 percent.

But while learning to play is one thing, the set you actually play with is another story entirely. Your chess set makes a statement about you, so whether you choose marble or wood pieces,the right chess set is no small decision.For a modern, yet elegant approach, take a look at this gorgeous Crystal Chess Set that would definitely carve out a distinctive play on your coffee table or bar top.

Crafted from 100 percent crystal, and with each piece standing up to 3 inches high, this set offers a weighty, impressionistic representation of each of the game's iconic pieces. Whether you choose the clear purity of the white crystal side or the smoky darkness of the grey side, you control a classical composed assemblage ready for battle.

The 15-inch square gameboard is crystal as well, featuring a matte white grid game surface to serve as a suitable home for all your clashes to come.

While cheap plastic sets might do in a pinch is you're out and about or in a hurry, this regal set announces its importance. For experts or those just learning the game, it's a statement set that will cut a dashing profile in your home.

This Crystal Chess Set from ChessPro retails for $300, but if you want to get in on the savings, this offer now cuts the total price down to almost half that total, only $159.99.

Prices subject to change.

Read the rest here:
This crystal chess set adds an exquisite touch to your game and is on sale for over 40% off - Boing Boing