Become an Audience for the Game of Chess
“There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine.”
— Mikhail Tal
In the previous article, I laid out a guide for people who want to start playing chess. In order to expand your vision and enjoy superior tactics there are many resources that you can benefit from.
In this article, I will explain why and how becoming an audience for chess is fun and helpful to get better at it. At the end, I will share some of the streamers that I enjoy watching.
Chess is a game that gives pleasure when the mind-blowing moves are calculated and seen. You can see or calculate fascinating moves only up to a point by thinking about them in your own mind. After a while, it will become a repetitive and tedious task, where only a few moves ahead can be calculated, unless you are Mikhail Tal or Bobby Fischer.
In order to keep enjoying the game and having more fun, improving yourself in the game and learning more is an important step. A good way to improve and learn is to be an audience for the players who play the game on an insane level.
How Insanely Good a Super Grandmaster Can Be?
FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) awards professional chess players who have an outstanding play with official titles. The highest of these titles is the Grandmaster. The player who reaches 2500 ratings in official tournaments and fulfills certain requirements gets the Grandmaster title.
There are some Grandmasters who are unofficially separated from the other Grandmasters with the Super Grandmaster title. Usually, players who have over 2700 ratings are considered a “the Super Grandmasters”.
If you ask them, they will say they are not geniuses…
But, are they really not?
Magnus Carlsen, the reigning World Chess Champion, is capable of playing and winning multiple chess games, simultaneously and blindfolded. I, a regular and amateur chess player, can’t even memorize after 10 moves without the vision of the board.
By the calculations of the American mathematician Claude Elwood Shannon, there are 69,352,859,712,417 possible games by move 10 in a game of chess.
Can I Watch the Broadcast Games?
You can see top players clash in top-level tournaments every year. These tournaments are broadcast live. In those broadcasts, other high-level players and commentators explain the plays to the audience in a way that the audience can understand. With all the explanations, you can easily be a part of it and enjoy it.
The best tournaments and matches that I love following are the World Cup, Grand Chess Tour, Candidates Tournament, and of course the World Chess Championship.
What About Games from the Past?
Chess provided a mega-metaphor of war for centuries. Being better at it was considered a psychological advantage, especially during the Cold War.
Chess was always more than just a game and it has been played at a very top level. Thanks to the streamers, today, we are able to analyze and enjoy those top-level games in a very short amount of time.
Streamers and Channels to Follow!
Here are some of the channels and streamers that I enjoy watching. I clustered them into 3 sections. The first section is to watch the tournaments live and get educational content, the second is to have fun with the streamers, and the last section is to watch the analysis of the games from past and current tournaments.
Channels to Watch the Tournaments
Chess.com is a great website that brings the chess community together. They have every kind of chess tool and content. They are one of my favorites to watch in the tournaments. They broadcast live with very good streamers. They also have educational videos, streamings, shorts, and fun content.
Chess24 is another very creative and good chess content hub. They also have every kind of ingredient for a chess fan and a website. They broadcast most of the top-level tournaments with famous commentators. They have channels for multiple different languages including Spanish, German, Turkish and more…
The World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen also has a Youtube channel that broadcasts important tournaments with great commentators. You can watch them live and you also can reach the special content from the Champion!
Streamers & Fun Content
The Botez sisters have created fun content on twitch for a long time now. Two sisters with fun chess content, from analysis, to even chess boxing…
He is a streamer, a 5-times US Chess Champion and the #5 player in the world. The absolute chess prodigy plays live with his followers and shares interesting chess content.
IM Levy Rozman — known as GothamChess — is the biggest chess streamer on Youtube at the moment. He has every kind of good for chess in his channel.
Eric is also an International Master. He has a calm style and it is very peaceful to watch his content and streams mostly. He also has educational content at the Saint Louis Chess Club (I learned the London System from his classes).
Absolutely one of my favorites. With their explanation, they are pushing the boundaries of chess entertainment.
Game Analysis
All these channels are analyzing and sharing content from games of the past but I have an absolute favorite in this category.
Agadmator shares very educational and interesting chess content pretty much every day. He analyzes interesting games from the past and the latest tournaments.
There are of course many other very entertaining chess content creators to follow. These are the channels I watched and followed over the past few years.
I think it’s useful for beginner and amateur chess players to follow some of these channels. Try some of their content and see if you will also enjoy it.
Have fun!
