Why teens are suddenly obsessed with chess

Chess has always been part of Henry Lien’s life. He’s been playing it since he was about 5 years old, his little hands just big enough to hold the pieces. He grew up in a part of the Bay Area, Marin, known for producing some excellent chess players, so his schools always had a good chess team and coaches. Lien even started a non-profit around it, Chess Pals, teaching him the game in local schools. No one would ever call chess a niche; it is an old game with a lot of history, played by millions around the world. But in high school, it is usually held in its own circles, played in chess clubs. And that’s why Lien was shocked when he showed up at school one day in January and saw chess everywhere.

“I have no idea what happened in January, but since then I’ve probably seen 90% or 80% of our school playing chess,” Lien told Polygon. “It used to be probably 20%.”

And it’s not just Lien’s high school. People play nationally a lot of more chess – usually online or in apps. Both middle and high school students play chess on their phones in the hallways between classes, slinking when their instruments don’t work during orchestra practice. Students at one school even turned the winter formal into an impromptu chess tournament.

“I heard some cheering in one of the hallways by the dance hall,” Hunter Nedland, a biology teacher from South Dakota, told Polygon. “I thought something mischief was going on. I was surprised to find a group of college freshmen with their laptops and phones in the middle of some very heated chess games. Nedland said upper-class people play chess as the “weird freshman thing.” have come to mention because of the game’s ubiquity among younger students – but noted that it is also spread across all classes, most teachers said there are many male students, but female students are also participating.

These schools reflect an increased interest in chess beginning in 2020, attributed in part to that of Netflix The queen’s gambit. Chess hasn’t been this popular since the World Chess Championship in 1972. according to the New York Times. That was the first chess tree. Since then it has become even more popular, and in January chess hit middle and high school students. The abrupt surge in popularity caused Chess.com, the most popular chess app, to crumble, forcing the company to upgrade its servers significantly. At the end of January, Chess.com had 10 million active members, it said; in April it was about 12 million a day. That is in contrast to its use for the pandemic, that was less than 2 million active players.

Chess’s popularity isn’t necessarily sudden, given that data — it’s been growing steadily since 2020. But the new growth among teens certainly seems sudden, according to the teens, teachers, and chess experts Polygon spoke to last week. Schools that do not have chess clubs are rushing to establish them. Teachers are confused but happy to see a healthy new hobby. Administrators grapple with how chess sometimes disrupts classrooms, and blame it attention problems and drama in classrooms and corridors. Can you ban chess? Some schools have reportedly had to.

Levy Rozman, a popular chess content creator passing by Gotham Chess online, Polygon said his YouTube channel peaked in January — getting 25 to 30% of its total views in that time. Even now, months later, the traffic has decreased, but it is still 10 times higher than the first chess boom, when The queen’s gambit came out in 2020.

“All children from all secondary schools [and middle schools] playing chess in the US and shouting chess memes,” Rozman told Polygon. “What a time to be alive. I can’t remember anything like that, not even in 2019 when I was just a chess teacher.”

There is no simple answer to how chess has spread among young teens and teens. The general popularity of the game follows The queen’s gambit is absolutely part of it. The controversy over the anal beads of chess may also have given chess a boost: A cheating scandal involving Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen, which did not actually involve any anal beads, thrust chess into the spotlight. In September 2022, Carlsen accused Niemann of cheating at the Sinquefield Cup. Niemann responded the following month with a lawsuit against Carlsen and Chess.com. Naturally, the scam scandal made headlines and highlighted the theory, which originated as a joke on a chess meme Reddit thread, which suggested that Carlsen uses a supercomputer embedded in anal beads to cheat and win chess games. While the theory is totally unverified, it still brought the scandal over the brink and into viral fame.

And then there’s the growing popularity of chess on Twitch and YouTube. Popular streamer Ludwig Ahgren hosted a $1.6 million chess boxing event – an event that combines chess and boxing, of course – that reached millions of viewers. Regular chess is also popular on Twitch. Esports teams have signed a number of chess players such as Hikaru Nakamura to Misfits and Alexandra and Andrea Botez to Envy. On YouTube, Rozman has 3.5 million subscribers and his videos regularly go viral on TikTok. Rozman told Polygon that when he started posting short content like TikToks and Instagram Reels in late November and early December 2022, his channel’s popularity skyrocketed even further.

“People like Levy Rozman started to capture the interest of the junior high, high school, college age,” said Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest. “And once that happens, there will be more TikToks, more memes, and then kids will download the app. And if a few kids at school are playing it, everyone is playing it. It really snowed.”

It’s all these little things and maybe a few others, like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo chess in a Louis Vuitton campaign and Carlsen shows up late to a chess match with 30 seconds left but still win, which created the perfect chess storm. chess content, called #ChessTok, is carving out its own niche on TikTok, making it available to even more people. Now everyone is playing chess – look down the hallway of a school and you will see students playing chess against each other on their phones. In some cases, it’s one of the few games allowed through school firewalls, teachers told Polygon, which also plays a role in its ubiquity.

But are the kids good at chess? Not really. Lien said other kids sometimes approach him to analyze their strategies. “People are always trying new things, so they come up to me and say, ‘Is this good?’ and sometimes I have to tell them it isn’t,” he laughed. Rozman told Polygon that the new growth of chess opens doors for the game – you can be a low chess player and still be entertaining to watch. Maybe that’s Why you are entertaining. “The young audience […] does not have such a serious and tense relationship with chess as historically has been necessary,” he said.

a viral post on Tumblr described another creative strategy that claims students invented “the evil advisor move.”

“He constantly has a third person give terrible advice to both teams, hoping that his opponent will fall head over heels for it or that his opponent thinks HE has fallen for it and will act accordingly, worsening their own strategy,” the Tumblr wrote. user. “He has won every game where he has been able to make a coordinated evil advisor move. This is [a] chess innovation never seen before in its 700 years on Earth.

Another unconfirmed viral post, this time on Redditsuggested that chess was banned in one school because it caused bad behavior – including ill-mannered chess and so-called “wandering chess bans” that interfere with lunchroom games.

In general, teachers are largely welcoming of chess. Most of Polygon’s teachers spoke to let their students play chess between assignments and enjoyed seeing them try out a new game. Sometimes teachers also play against students. Chess is a classic game that is a lesson in strategy and problem solving. It can teach patience, reasoning and creative thinking – all good skills to have.

Photo: Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images

The chess world generally welcomes news players as well. Lien is pleased to see new players flocking to ChessPal classes, bringing the venture to new schools and areas. This craze is also changing the face of chess. Chess has long been seen as a man’s game, something like that The queen’s gambit marked. More women and girls playing chess thanks to the show, at. Rozman told Polygon that he’s seen an increase in the number of women watching his content — he now has a 94/6 split between men and women. It’s not huge numbers, but it’s 4% more than before the chess boom. “One of my videos, [on] how to play chess, the ultimate video for beginners, that video in some months is 75/25 [men/women],” Roseman said. “That is a historic percentage between men and women [players].”

The thing is, chess is a bit intimidating. There is so much strategy to learn and catch up. We see chess as a game for very smart people, not for normies. That is no longer the case. You will see children of all ages and genders whispering “en passant”. passing each other in the hallways.

Teenagers dismantle the mental barriers to entry and are unabashedly bad at the game. “Everybody plays bad chess, except the very best players,” said Allebest. “Why don’t you celebrate? That’s how we all play.”