<story><title>A grandmaster who got Twitch hooked on chess</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/hikaru-nakamura-twitch-chess</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Yanu-3452</author><text>Unironically chess is an e-sport and this recent explosion is because Hikaru, Botez, Hess et al. have woken up to that idea and embraced it.&lt;p&gt;The best computers can easily beat the top humans just as an aimbot could beat Navi easily at CS:GO.&lt;p&gt;So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.&lt;p&gt;That makes it much more like a strategy game.&lt;p&gt;Embracing memes makes it more accessible to viewers who are used to watching hearthstone, csgo, league, dota or other esports and it&amp;#x27;s been really fun to watch.&lt;p&gt;I started watching chess on twitch a while ago during the Tata steel tournament and I thought back then it would quickly grow if they focused their commentary on casual level viewers and it&amp;#x27;s been fantastic to have been proved correct.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SkyBelow</author><text>&amp;gt;So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.&lt;p&gt;There is a certain skill level, which I want to say is somewhere around 1400 to 1500 but it has been over a decade so don&amp;#x27;t quote me on that, where most the players at that level seem to focus on memorizing openings. 
 It ended up being what separates them from the players a one to two hundred points lower.  This leaves them vulnerable to a bit of a hack, as using a non-standard opening can completely remove any usefulness of their memorized openings.  It almost disorients them and makes it much more likely for them to make a mistake that can then overcome the disadvantage of such a non-standard opening.  I loved playing in this area as I hated memorizing openings so I just used non-standard openings to not to avoid having to.  Eventually I hit the ranking where players were good enough to take advantage of my non-standard opening more than any advantage from disorienting them and I quit playing because the only option to advance would&amp;#x27;ve been to go back and memorize openings.</text></comment>
<story><title>A grandmaster who got Twitch hooked on chess</title><url>https://www.wired.com/story/hikaru-nakamura-twitch-chess</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Yanu-3452</author><text>Unironically chess is an e-sport and this recent explosion is because Hikaru, Botez, Hess et al. have woken up to that idea and embraced it.&lt;p&gt;The best computers can easily beat the top humans just as an aimbot could beat Navi easily at CS:GO.&lt;p&gt;So the focus in chess has moved away from manually exploring to find optimal plays and new opening styles as was the trend in the 19th century chess rennaisance to a focus on preparation so that a player can quickly find best moves, under significant pressure, in any given match.&lt;p&gt;That makes it much more like a strategy game.&lt;p&gt;Embracing memes makes it more accessible to viewers who are used to watching hearthstone, csgo, league, dota or other esports and it&amp;#x27;s been really fun to watch.&lt;p&gt;I started watching chess on twitch a while ago during the Tata steel tournament and I thought back then it would quickly grow if they focused their commentary on casual level viewers and it&amp;#x27;s been fantastic to have been proved correct.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bradly</author><text>I got into Chess a couple years ago and Twitch and YouTube were a huge part of it. I had gotten started watching Ben Finegold&amp;#x27;s kids classes. Getting to see grandmasters play and hear their thoughts and ask them questions is an unbelievable resource. I was surprised how good Chess was as a spectator sport.</text></comment>