It was late 2019, and Hikaru Nakamura was staring down a crossroads. The five-time U.S. Chess Champion had just failed to qualify for the Candidates Tournament, the gateway to challenging for the world championship. At 32, he’d been chasing the ultimate title his entire life. The door had slammed shut once again.
But instead of despair, something unexpected happened. Nakamura picked up his phone, opened his laptop, and made a decision that would change chess forever. He was going to stream.
He just needed a break. That break turned into a revolution.
The Quiet Before the Storm
When most people think of spectator sports, they picture roaring crowds, instant replays, and athletes who moonlight as celebrities. Chess has never been that game. For decades, it existed in hushed tournament halls, broadcast on niche websites to small audiences of dedicated enthusiasts. The general public knew Bobby Fischer and maybe Magnus Carlsen, but chess itself remained locked behind closed doors, a pursuit for the intellectually curious but decidedly not mainstream entertainment.
Hikaru Nakamura understood this better than anyone. A chess prodigy who earned his grandmaster title at age 15, at the same age as Bobby Fischer, becoming as well the youngest American to do so at the time.
He’d spent his entire life in that rarefied world. He’d competed at the highest levels, represented the United States at seven Chess Olympiads, and achieved a peak rating that placed him among the top ten players in history. But something was missing.
“When I was growing up, high-level chess was secreted behind closed doors, played by the privileged, moneyed people in society,” one viewer would later explain. The disconnect between the beauty of elite chess and the public’s ability to access it was vast.
Enter Twitch.
The Experiment Begins
Nakamura had dabbled in streaming as early as 2017, testing the waters on Twitch before most chess players even knew the platform existed. But it was in late 2019 and early 2020 that something began to shift. He wasn’t just playing chess online; he was talking to his audience, explaining his thought process, making jokes, embracing meme culture. He was being, well, human.
In a game often characterized by stern silence and furrowed brows, Nakamura brought personality. One observer noted his ability to play “extremely high-level chess” while “seemingly not focused on the game” and conversing with viewers. It was a radical departure from chess tradition, and it was captivating.
By February 2020, Nakamura had cultivated a small but loyal following. Then came March 2020, and with it, a global pandemic that would lock billions of people in their homes, searching desperately for connection, entertainment, and distraction.
The timing was almost too perfect.
The Explosion
Between March and August 2020, people watched 41 million hours of chess on Twitch. The numbers were unprecedented, incomprehensible even to those within the chess world. And at the center of this explosion was Hikaru Nakamura.
But what made Nakamura different from other grandmasters who attempted to stream? Technical skill alone couldn’t explain his meteoric rise. The secret lay in something more intangible: authenticity mixed with accessibility.
“He draws people because he’s so good, but also, there are other top players on Twitch that are not as engaging as he is, not as funny, not as in tune with the sort of Twitch culture,” explained Brandon Benton, a postdoctoral physics researcher at Cornell who found himself drawn into the chess streaming world. He called Nakamura a “down-to-earth memer and jokester.”
Nakamura played “joke openings” like the Bongcloud Attack and the Jerome Gambit. He faced off against lower-rated players with piece handicaps. He played speed chess and blindfolded. He turned the sacred game of chess into something that felt simultaneously profound and fun, serious and silly. Chess didn’t have to be stuffy. It could be entertainment.
PogChamps: The Cultural Moment
Then came June 2020, and with it, an idea that seemed almost absurd on paper: what if some of Twitch’s most popular streamers, most of whom barely knew how to move the pieces, competed in a chess tournament?
PogChamps featured 16 of Twitch’s biggest personalities competing for $50,000 in prizes over two weeks. The field included League of Legends streamers, Fortnite players, variety content creators, people whose audiences numbered in the millions but whose chess knowledge was measured in weeks, if not days. Hikaru Nakamura and WFM Alexandra Botez served as coaches and commentators, guiding these novices through their chess journey.
The chess establishment was skeptical. Would this trivialize the game? Turn it into a circus?
Instead, something magical happened.
On a June evening, 63,000 people tuned in simultaneously to watch PogChamps, briefly making it the top-viewed stream on all of Twitch. They watched xQc, a popular Overwatch streamer, get checkmated in just six moves by MoistCr1tiKaL, a moment that instantly went viral. They watched beginners blunder pieces and occasionally stumble into brilliant moves. They watched Nakamura explain concepts with patience and humor, breaking down the game’s complexity into digestible entertainment.
The tournament exceeded even Chess.com’s ambitious estimates. By the time the first PogChamps concluded, with League of Legends streamer Voyboy claiming victory, something had fundamentally changed. Chess wasn’t just a game anymore. It was content. It was drama. It was, improbably, a spectator sport.
The Netflix Convergence
As if to underscore this cultural moment, Netflix released “The Queen’s Gambit” in October 2020. The miniseries about a fictional chess prodigy became a sensation, watched by 62 million households in its first month and becoming Netflix’s most-watched limited series ever at the time. Suddenly, chess was everywhere. People who had never touched a chess piece in their lives were buying boards, downloading Chess.com, and searching for streams to watch.
The twin phenomena of Nakamura’s streaming success and “The Queen’s Gambit” created a perfect storm. Chess was cool. Chess was accessible. And Hikaru Nakamura was the guide leading millions into this rediscovered world.
His Twitch following, which stood at around 50,000 in early 2020, exploded past 500,000 by September. He would cross one million followers in February 2021 during PogChamps 3, which featured even bigger stars: rapper Logic, actor Rainn Wilson, and YouTuber MrBeast. His YouTube channel, which had fewer than 79,000 subscribers at the start of 2020, would eventually surpass three million.
In August 2020, Nakamura became one of the first chess players to sign with an esports organization when he joined Team SoloMid (TSM) for a six-figure sum. The message was clear: chess players could be streaming stars, content creators, athletes in the modern digital arena.
More Than Just Entertainment
But beneath the memes and the viral moments, something deeper was happening. Nakamura was democratizing chess in a way that had never been possible before. For the first time, millions of people could watch a top-ranked grandmaster play, think out loud, and engage in real-time.
The traditional chess world had always been somewhat gatekept. Tournament games were broadcast, but the players’ thoughts remained mysterious. Post-game analysis came hours or days later. There was a distance between the elite players and the aspiring amateurs. Nakamura collapsed that distance entirely. He made elite chess feel intimate and attainable.
By 2024, Chess.com boasted over 185 million users, a 324 percent increase from January 2020. The world’s top tournaments were being streamed to global audiences. Chess content creators were building careers. The ecosystem Nakamura helped pioneer was now sustaining dozens of streamers, coaches, and content creators.
The Priority Shift
Perhaps most tellingly, Nakamura himself underwent a profound transformation in how he viewed his career. In 2024, competing in the FIDE Candidates Chess World Championship, he made a statement that would have been unthinkable just five years earlier. He openly stated that he now prioritizes his streaming career over competitive chess.
It was a remarkable admission from someone who once lived and breathed competitive chess, who had dedicated his life to reaching the pinnacle of the game. But it was also honest. Nakamura had discovered something bigger than personal glory. He’d found a way to bring joy, education, and entertainment to millions.
The Lasting Impact
Five years after Nakamura’s pivot to streaming, the landscape of chess is unrecognizable from what came before. Chess is now firmly established on Twitch and YouTube as a major content category. Players like Levy Rozman (GothamChess) and the Botez sisters have built massive followings. Online tournaments regularly draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. The game that was once confined to quiet clubs and elite tournaments now lives in the feeds and recommendations of millions.
Young players growing up today have something Nakamura never had: the ability to watch the best players in the world, learn from them in real-time, and feel connected to a vibrant global community. They can see chess not just as an intellectual pursuit but as a form of entertainment, a social activity, a spectator sport.
The Netflix effect that accompanied “The Queen’s Gambit” might have introduced millions to the aesthetic beauty of chess, but it was Hikaru Nakamura who showed them it could be thrilling to watch. He proved that a 1,500-year-old board game could compete for attention with Fortnite and League of Legends, not by becoming something it wasn’t, but by revealing what it had always been: endlessly fascinating, intellectually demanding, and yes, genuinely entertaining.
“What has happened online actually dwarfs what Magnus has done,” Nakamura said in a 2024 interview, referring to world champion Magnus Carlsen’s over-the-board achievements. It was a bold claim, but hard to dispute. Carlsen might be the greatest player of all time, but Nakamura had accomplished something arguably more impressive: he’d made chess matter to people who never thought they’d care about it.
The Future of Chess as Spectacle
Today, with more than four million followers across Twitch and YouTube, Nakamura remains the face of online chess. He continues to stream regularly, coach in PogChamps tournaments, and compete at the highest levels when the mood strikes. He’s married now, expecting his first child, building a life that extends beyond the 64 squares.
But his legacy is already secure. When future historians look back at this era of chess, they’ll talk about the democratization of the game, the explosion of online play, and the transformation of chess into genuine entertainment for the masses. And at the center of that story will be a grandmaster who failed to qualify for a tournament, picked up a webcam, and changed everything.
The Netflix effect made chess trendy. Hikaru Nakamura made it stick. He transformed chess from something you played or studied into something you watched, discussed, and shared. He turned it into a spectator sport, and in doing so, he ensured that generations to come would discover the game not through dusty books or intimidating clubs, but through the warmth and accessibility of a screen, a personality, and a community that welcomed everyone.
In the end, Nakamura didn’t become world champion. He became something better: the person who brought chess to the world.
