Odd Lots - Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura on Twitch Streaming and “The Queen's Gambit”

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

We're in a rare moment where chess is popular in the United States. There are two big factors driving it. One is the smash hit Netflix show "The Queen's Gambit." The other is the rise of Twitch streaming, as gamers play online for thousands of fans. On this episode, we speak with Hikaru Nakamura, a popular chess streamer, about the economics of this new environment for chess.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanks for listening to Oddlots. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes or just ask Alexa play the podcast, Oddlots on Amazon music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Allaway. So Tracy, I know that you don't play chess that we've already established. But is the show Queen's Gambit? Is that stream in Hong Kong? Okay, so two things. First of all, I do play chess. I know how to play chess. I just don't play it with any regularity. And I don't know like the names of the moves and the openings and all of that in the same way that you do. Secondly, I did watch Queen's Gambit and I thought it was excellent. Did you after watching it get excited and like want to play chess and go online and have any interest? Because a lot of people apparently did. Yeah, I heard that. So my problem with chess has always. been that I'm just not very good at it and I'm not motivated to get better. So when I watch

something like Queen's Gambit, I actually find it demotivating because I think I'll just never be as good as these people. So why bother? But yes, I heard that it set off a huge wave of interest in chess over, well, in the States primarily. Yeah, no, it has been pretty wild. I was, I mean, I've played chess all my life, but very off and on, like, I'll go through these phases where I'll play a lot and get addicted, and then I realize I'm playing too much, and I won't play for two years, and then I'll start playing again. So I was among the people who, after watching it, started playing a bunch again. And now, like, when I'm, like, getting makeup done for going on TV or on the subway or something like that, I'll like, or at a car, I'll play, like, a quick,

a quick game of a blitz on chess.com. So I am one of those people who has got the bug again after watching that show. Now, if you're going to get addicted to something, I'd say playing chess online is probably a reasonably healthy addiction, right? Yeah, I guess so. You know what else I've gotten really addicted to besides playing chess? Go on. Watching Grandmasters stream their chess games live online and talking about them. See, now this is something that I don't think I would necessarily get. Why is that, why is that interesting? Well, I don't know. I mean, it is, I find it to be extremely transfixing.

But there's something I particular like watching someone do something and seeing them talk about their thought process at the same time. Like I find that I learn well that way. So it's like better than reading for me, better than listening, like watching someone do something, whether it's cooking, whether it's some other skill or whether it's playing chess, the process of watching someone sort of like talk out their thoughts in real time, I find to be very compelling. Yeah, I could see that being mildly interesting, sure. But you're, I mean, you're right that chess has had a massive year. And alongside this renewed interest from Queen's Gambit, we are seeing like a major, major uptick or a major, let me say, a major change in the way people are actually like watching and engaging in chess. Yeah. And of course, this whole like phenomenon of people streaming their chess games live, it's part of a much bigger phenomenon. which I'm really fascinated about, but I actually haven't, like, dug into that much, which is the whole world of, like, Twitch streaming. And there are people who make lots of money and are just incredibly popular playing video games live online.

So people watching someone play a game like, I don't even know what a popular game is Halo. I think that's a popular game. Stuff like that. I don't know, a World of Warcraft or something. Streaming that live on Twitch, people have, like, millions of fans. It's this massive, massive phenomenon of which chess is a sort of, sort of. a small part of it. Yeah, I think that's right.

But also, I mean, 2020, we did see a pickup in people watching video games on Twitch. Everyone was stuck at home. You're sort of looking for new sources of entertainment. And somewhat surprisingly, chess has also been part of that 2020 streaming or Twitch boom. So I am very excited about our guest because not only are we going to be talking to someone who streams on Twitch. He's also in his own right, one of the best chess players in the entire world. Twitch aside, a real treat to be talking to him about the sort of, I guess the chess economy.

He's actually someone we had years ago on odd lots to talk about trading and overlaps between chess and trading. But I'm very excited. We're going to be speaking to Hikaru Nakamura. He became a grandmaster at the age of 15, beating at the time, breaking the record. Apparently, some people have broken the record for the youngest ever American Grandmaster at the time. He's also the highest rated Blitz chess player in the entire world, also just one of the top players in regular time controls. And he is fantastic to watch on Twitch.

So, Hikara, thank you very much for joining us. It's good to be here. It's been quite a while. So what's this year been like? What's the post-Queen's Gambit world? how different is it compared to the pre-Queen's Gambit world? So, I mean, I think you kind of have to go back to the beginning of COVID in terms of the chess. So one of the weird things with chess is that Queens' Gambit certainly has been a boom,

but there's actually another boom of chess on Twitch specifically between March and about June of this year. So in about March, when the lockdown started happening and everyone was staying at home, the viewership for chess and the viewership in general on Twitch started exploding. But in particular, one of the things that's very unique to Twitch is that when you see the top streamers or the top influencers, what they gravitate towards in terms of games. Now, I know you mentioned Halo before. If you said that on Twitch to people, they'd be like, you're such a boomer. Because Halo, I am a boomer. Popular at all.

I don't know anything about video games. That was the first one that came to my head. I knew I was going to embarrass myself when I said that. No, it's fine. But so like this kind of thing is there are a lot of games that people play. And one thing that's unique, I think, to chess is a sort of, it's had this presence offline over the board chess has been around, I mean, forever, basically. But online, there hasn't really been this interest or there hasn't been where you can find people who are streaming it in the way that Twitch really sets itself apart. Because with Twitch, you can just go, you can look up the chess category and find people to watch.

So probably in March, I would say March or early April, a couple of the biggest streamers on the platform, they started getting interested in. chess. And that sort of created this snowball effect where because of them, a lot of other streamers started playing chess as well. And then eventually it kind of culminated in this major event that we had called Pog Champs in June. But there was this big boom from March to June. Then there was sort of it dipped a little bit, I would say, in July, August and September. It didn't like go down to where it was before COVID, before COVID happened. But around like late October and then, of course, in November, it's taken off again. And I would say, actually, in many ways,

my viewership now is higher than it was, even at the peak, when there was a first boom on Twitch. I think that's largely because that boom in March was solely people who are already on Twitch, who are used to watching streamers and influencers on the platform, whereas Queens Gammon, I think there's a lot of people who are just watched the show on Netflix, and they were like, they weren't on Twitch or they weren't looking on Twitch

and YouTube, and then they sort of were trying to find chess content, so they end up filtering over to both platforms. So we're going to get into a lot of what's going on on Twitch and, like, the dynamics driving that and things like that in more detail. But before we do, since you mentioned Queen's Gambit, how accurate was that of a portrayal of the world of competitive chess? And did you like it? Yeah, so first of all, I love the show. I think in terms of chess, whether it's a television show or whether it's a movie, it's by far in a way the best portrayal of chess because there are a lot of moments in the show. I don't know if you both watched it or not,

but there were some moments where you see this character, Benny Watts, who's the United States chess champion, and you see him living in this very sort of, let's just say, it's not a great apartment in New York City. And in many ways, that's been,

that's a very accurate portrayal because even the best players in the world of chess, outside of say the absolute best, like the top two or three players, they would not be making a lot of money from the game of chess itself. So there are a lot of moments in the show when I was watching where it's like,

wow, you know, It reminds me of some experience that I had or things along those lines. So for the most part is very accurate. The only part that I think, unfortunately, was not so accurate is that there are some, I would say players don't always treat female players as nicely as Beth Harmon is treated in the show. So there can be a barrier to entry for female players. So that's the only thing that I would say is not necessarily accurate. But overall, it's fantastically done.

And I loved it. So you mentioned that you're in the post-Quins Gambit world, that your streaming numbers are as high as ever. Let's talk about the business of streaming. First of all, like, how many people watch you at any given time typically? Right. So just to give some more background, I think probably when I started streaming about a year ago, and up until maybe January, February, I would get maybe, let's just say, 2,000 or 3,000 viewers, concurrent viewers. on average. And then during the peak, when it really started going up in March and April,

I was getting around 10 to 12,000 every stream. So it went up there and then there was a summer low, where it dipped a little bit below 10,000, maybe it was around 9,000. But nowadays, especially in the last month or so, I'm getting around 15 to 16,000 concurrent viewers for every stream. And when there have been major chess tournaments, which I can talk about esports as well, but when there been major competitions. The peak viewership I've had has actually been close to 50,000 viewers. So it's really, really large, yeah. So you mentioned that it all kicked off with some existing Twitch streamers who suddenly got interested in chess. Why did that happen? And what's, what's the overlap between the usual video games people are streaming on that platform versus

the oldest game in the world? So I think, first of all, it's very tricky because It's one thing that a lot of streamers who do variety where they don't just play one game per se, they tend to move around and try to see where they get the best audiences and most people watch. So when you think about chess and especially like in March or April before it had gotten this traction, you would think that most streamers, especially the biggest ones, they'd be worried that their numbers would be going down if they tried to stream chess. But I would say one streamer in particular, his name is X-Q-C-O-W. He started streaming chess pretty much regardless of what his viewership was because he loved the game.

And so naturally, more streamers started seeing that. And then beyond that, I think it's just a very easy game to get into. I mean, you don't, you really, if you, you only have to learn the basic rules of how the pieces move, and then you can just go off on your own and play games. And so I think it's very friendly. And the barrier to entry is really low, unlike, say, a major esport, like League of Legends, for example, where you have to learn all the different, basically different champions you can pick. You have to learn a lot of different strategies.

There's a lot to learn. And so the barrier to entry, even just starting out, is very high. high, whereas with chess, it's a lot lower. So I think that's one of the biggest reasons that it started getting going is that there were a couple of streamers. They just like, they didn't care. They just love the game of chess and they just start playing as much as they could. You can get the news whenever you want it with Bloomberg News Now.

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We create customized episodes that can only be heard on Bloomberg News Now. And we don't wait an hour to publish breaking news. When news breaks, we'll have an episode up in your podcast feed within minutes, so you're always getting the latest stories and developments. get the reporting and the context from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts we're all over the world. Listen to the latest from Bloomberg News Now on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. So you mentioned in the show that one character, he was like the best player in the U.S., I guess,

and his life didn't seem that great. He wasn't like rolling in riches. What is the revenue model for you in terms of how audience, on Twitch is monetized and then what's like the combination of like ad, sponsorship? Like how does that all work as a pro? Yeah. So, so none of this, to be clear, none of this really existed in a substantial way if you go back nine months. So I've been very fortunate.

Yeah. So in terms of, in terms of the audience, I think the way that you monetize your viewership is when you have very high numbers and you have high averages or say the 30 days or 90 days periods, sponsors see those numbers. and then you have opportunities where their sponsor who come to you and they ask you to promote their product, whatever it may be. For example, I've done a couple of them, but probably I did a bounty, the paper towel company. I did an ad for them several months back.

And so when you have these very high concurrent viewers and these averages, a lot of sponsors are interesting getting their product out there. And I think this also speaks to media as well that you see more of these sponsors moving, moving to Twitch, moving to YouTube, and seeing that in this day and age, most people are now like getting their content from the internet as opposed to watching on TV. Probably the biggest way that's the biggest way that the numbers matter. You can also run, run ads. A lot of streamers run ads.

You can run like 30 second ads, a 60 second ad or a three minute ad. So that's usually the periods of times that you run ads. I don't know exactly how that revenue is calculated in terms of how much you make, but more viewers you have, obviously, obviously it's higher. And then the third part is, um, is, subscribers. So you can subscribe to any channel on Twitch for $5 a month for Tier 1. There's a tier 2 option, which is $10, I believe, and then the Tier 3, which is $25 a month. And basically what you get out of this is you get the usage of the emotes. So I don't know how familiar the audience is

going to be with Twitch. But when you go on Twitch, a large part of it is the interaction between the streamer and the community itself. So when you're watching the chat scroll, a lot of times or these emoes. They're basically like, where they just, you know, things are moving. And it just becomes this big community. And so a lot of people subscribe for that

on top of essentially just supporting the streamer as well. So it's very similar, I would say, to like tipping, but you get some added benefits on top of that. Yeah. So I wanted to ask you about this, I guess that interactive element of Twitch streaming. So we already mentioned that you,

you play Blitz or speed chess. And I think you're sort of known, for playing in a very specific way. And you've done stuff in the past, like playing blindfold matches or matches without queens and rooks and things like that. Do you think your particular style of chess is especially well suited to a live platform like Twitch?

And is there anything that you do or that you've started to do in order to adapt to that platform? So I think certainly I'm very well adapted to it because when I look back to my, I was much younger, some of my earliest experiences of playing chess were on the internet. I used to play on the site called the internet chess when I was like 10 or 11 years old. And in many cases, I would play games. I would actually type at the same time.

So it was basically, I'd play the games. So I'd be talking to people via typing because at the time there wasn't the technology. So in many ways, I think I'm very fortunate that I had that because that certainly has helped me transition onto Twitch. I don't think I don't think I've really had to change anything specifically. The one thing that I have done is I've tried to make chess. much more friendly to the people who are not say grandmasters the game. So, you know, like Joe could, Joe could allude to this.

But when he watches, I definitely will use certain words at times that make no sense whatsoever. So if you spent, if you spent a lot of time playing chess and you tune into my stream, you might be like, wait, what did you just say? What's that piece? What's going on? Because I use some jargon that's not a not standard per se. So that's the one thing I have done. But I think a large part of it and probably the biggest reason that I have the success I do is

the fact that I am as good at chess as I am over the board having that credent, having that credibility and the fact that I can also play the games and more or less in some cases just talk to the audience while I'm playing the game and still win most of the time. All right. Here's a stupid question that I've been wondering about the whole time. And I have to say like I've tuned into a bunch of your streams. I find it really enjoyable. I think you're sort of a natural host, extremely engaging.

It looks like you're having a fun time. It's clear your fans are enjoying it. what if someone is, is someone you're playing against? Did they ever watch it? Like you're talking about your thinking, you're talking about potential moves, you're talking about, you know,

certain ideas that you may be exploring in the game. Does it ever happen that like the person on the other end is like watching you talk through the game? So this is, this is a common, I think, to streaming in general. It doesn't matter whether it's chess or other games.

What you're referring to is essentially called stream sniping where someone watches the stream. And so like, you know, if it's like a shooter game, for example, and you're on a map, someone will watch a stream, they'll try to magically, they'll see where you are.

So there's a word for this. There's a name for this phenomenon? Yeah, it's called stream sniping. Oh, I love it. So that's what's called. Yeah,

so I mean, it does happen from time to time again. There is a difference in the competitions. When I'm normally just doing my regular streaming, it's more for fun. It's just sort of in the spirit. So it does happen from time to time, but very rarely does it really affect the outcome of the game per se.

and most players don't do it. So it's not that big of an issue. When it comes to like the more serious competitions and chess like having these big prize funds, these sort of e-sport competitions, then of course I'm not actually usually streaming, but they complement each other. So I wanted to ask you about the response from,

I guess, the traditional chess community. The game is not necessarily known for adapting and evolving. quickly people have been playing well from my understanding like fairly similarly for many many years has there been any pushback to playing chess in this particular way on this new platform do people think that you know it's somehow like denigrating the game to be doing it in this way yeah so i would say when during the first movement around april april and may specifically there were certainly some people who were who were really unhappy to see what was happening um

because chess has traditionally has been very sort of closed or hasn't been much in the way of change. If you look at chess now versus, say, 20 years ago, there isn't really much of a difference. It's generally the same players, the same organizers, just the general structure and everything around it has been pretty similar. So I think there were definitely people who are upset. My argument, I think, in many ways,

the thing that is most important and the key is if you look at, if you look at the game of chess, I think there have been, it's not studies, but I think there was a fact that was given by the governing body of Chess Fide that said approximately 500 million people or 600 million people around the world have been exposed to the game of chess. Now, that is a very large number. I don't think there is any other game, sort of basically non-sport,

where you can make that claim that there's that number of people worldwide who are familiar with something. So from that standpoint, when you see a number like that, you have to realize the vast majority of those people are not people who are going to play the game at a high level. In fact, most of those people are simply going to probably know the basic moves or know what chess is that you have, you know, the king, the queen, the bishop knights, and so forth. So for that reason, I think when you have such a large potential market, it's very important to be inclusive of people of all levels. And like you were saying earlier, Tracy, very oftentimes when someone's new to chess and they play the game, let's just say they start out playing, they lose some games, it's like, well, I'm stupid.

I, you know, I can't play this game. I'm just not going to ever going to be any good at it. I think that certainly turns people off. And so you really do need to be very inclusive of everybody. And so that's also why like when I play very often times, I do keep it simpler. I do try to make it more understandable. And also like there are many times when I'm streaming, I'll say, oh, what a stupid move I made. And to me, it is very stupid because I really like perfection.

I try to be the best I can. But I think that's also very relatable for a lot of the audience because most people are watching are not super strong chess players. They're just trying to get something out of the game. game of trust. So just on that note, again, I haven't spent that much time on Twitch, but one of my understandings of it is that it's not exactly the friendliest place in the world. Like a lot of the people who are watching you play might be insulting you at the same time and saying, oh, you just made a really stupid move. How do you deal with that sort of element of toxicity when you're trying to make the game as welcoming and inclusive as possible?

Well, now you come to basically the thing that makes Twitch the most amazing, which is that all channels have moderators. And these are people, just normal people on Twitch who, for the most part, they volunteer their time and they moderate so they can like time out a comment or block a comment and these sorts of things. And I'm very fortunate that I've had a team of moderators over the last couple of years who really work very hard to keep the chat as friendly as they can. And there are many ways that you can do that. For example, you can you can time out of comment. you can block a comment so it just vanishes.

You can also ban some from the channel. But there are other ways you can do it where I mentioned emotes, which are like these gifts. They're just like moving emotes on the screen. And sometimes the chat becomes too, like too rowdy or the comments are too negative. Sometimes you just turn it into what we call emote only. So you can literally only write with emotes.

You can't even like write a comment in the chat. And so the moderators really in many ways are what make Twitch amazing because you have a lot of people who volunteer their time. They just love watching stream. They love being on Twitch, and in most cases, they do this for free. So that's probably, that's one of the most important things is having a good atmosphere. And I think because of the team of mods that I've had, at least this year specifically, they do a very good job of controlling it and people sort of understand what is acceptable and not

acceptable. When you're playing, how do you find, who are the people you're playing with? Are they people just challenge you on chess.com or are you challenged or is there like a pool? Like, how does that work? So in most cases, I will just challenge people to various time control and play games, whether it's Blitz Chess, which is three minutes, bullet chess, which is one minute or a slower control. That's one thing. But what's really great about chess is there's just, I feel like so many avenues of content.

So I can play blitz against people. I can do what are called viewer arenas where people who are watching the stream have the chance to play against me. I can play against subscribers of a channel. I can do blindfold games. I can also play occasionally serious competitions as well when I'm streaming. So I feel like there are just so many possibilities in terms of content that, I mean, that's why chess is still booming even now. Because there are just so many different ways of doing various ideas with chess content that a lot of the fans enjoy. Could you, in theory, play a few games against a podcast host on the day that a podcast that you were on came out?

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course I could. Yeah, yeah. It's very unsettled, Joe. So actually, we did a test. I think it was maybe a month. It was a little over a month ago where I played against, I believe, 70, I think it was 77 players at the same time. So I was streaming.

I played against 77 players at the same time. And actually, we did like a, there was a little bit of an entropy to play, but all the money was was donated to Doctors Without Borders. And we just did this sort of on the fly. There was nothing specific set up, but we just, we just did it. So yeah, it's definitely possible. We should do a- We're going to make that happen. Yeah, we should do a finance Twitter chess tournament like we did.

with poker and just have a bunch of people play. That's a good idea. Yeah, and then donate it to charity, which is what we did, and then got all our credit cards defrauded. So that was fun. Hopefully that doesn't happen again. Okay, I had a question actually on a related note. I was watching some of your videos, and I saw a few of them, in a few of them, you take

on bots. Like there's one here saying that you took down like all of chess.com's bots and things like that. Why is that interesting to people? And is it different playing against bots live in this way, you know, on a streaming platform in a very speedy way to taking down a real-life opponent? Yeah. So I think this, what you're referring to is where there was a competition amongst chess streamers, where we played against the, I think, 30 or 35 program bots that they have on chess.com. Each one has a different personality and a different skill. level. So the reason that I think people enjoy watching that is because they see they see the challenge.

Like it starts out really easy. You play against these bots that are basically beginners. And by the end, they're, they're essentially better than all the human players are. So I think players like to see the progression. But that's the second thing is that a lot of the is that it's not just Twitch. So a lot of my content, I also upload to YouTube as well. Because strangely enough, the YouTube audience is actually significantly different from the Twitch audience. So there are a lot of people, I've I feel like there are a lot more people from outside the U.S. who will watch YouTube versus Twitch, which I think is very, it's very North America-synstric to the U.S. and Canada. Do you think that if Tracy and I did a thing on Twitch where we, like, had our Bloomberg terminals on the screen instead of the chess board and talked through charts and talked macro and talked trading, that that would be popular? Yeah, so there is a streamer who's had quite a bit of success streaming about finance on Twitch.

I don't remember his name right off. I'll definitely try to find it. But that's one of the great things about Twitch as well. So for example, just briefly about politics. So obviously there's the presidential election. And I think when the election happened or when the debates were happening, at some point there were maybe 300,000 plus people on Twitch who were watching a couple of the biggest streamers talk about it or just watch the debate itself.

And I think there was a New York Times article about it. There were several other articles. And also, I think at one point, AOC, Alexandria, Euras Echia Cortez, she actually played on Twitch with some other streamers. And when she did it to one time, there were, I think, about 430,000 people who watched her stream. And that I think was the second or third highest ever on the platform. So across the board, there are many, many opportunities. And I think people are seeing, I think especially like big sponsors, these big companies are seeing that people are watching more and more content on the platforms like Twitch

and YouTube. So you mentioned towards the beginning of this episode, Benny Watts from Queens Gambit and how he was living in this really decrepit basement apartment in New York. And that was an accurate depiction of how chess players exist. And many of them don't actually make that much money and can't exist purely off the game. Is Twitch going to be enough to change the economics of competitive chess? And secondly, are there any other ways that the economics of competitive chess are actually changing at the moment. So at the moment, I mean, let's just pre-COVID, I would say that, no, the economics of chess were not changing. It's something where maybe the top 20, top 30 players in the world make a pretty good living. Everyone after that, I mean, you struggle going from tournament. Tournament, you pay your expenses.

It's a very difficult lifestyle. Now, because of Twitch, what you're having, first of all, is you're having a lot of streamers who are, I would argue, making more money than everyone except the top 20 players in the world from streaming. And beyond that, the economics have changed because now you're having more major tournaments being held online. And the reason that that's different is because when you have these eyeballs, when you have the numbers of the concurrent viewers, and you can show that to brands, it's very different than saying trying to hold a major tournament over the board at some location and try to get sponsors. So this is also why I would argue that when people talk about like

trying to be, you know, preserve the game as it is, you want more people watching the game because that's going to lead to more sponsors, which then can potentially shake up the structure. You can have more and more people playing tournaments online and making money. So I'm very hopeful that chess can potentially become an esport down the road. And on that note also, like, I actually signed a deal in August with one of the ESports organizations, TSM or Team Solo Mid, to sort of rep them and be part of their chess team. So a lot of stuff is going on. Oh, that's cool.

So do you ever play anything besides chess on Twitch? So from time to time I do. I mean, I've played games like Among Us, which is the game that AOC was playing. I've played, what else have I played on stream? I've also played Fortnite. I've played Call of Duty. It's not something that I do frequently

because most of my audience, they do watch me for the chess. But again, I think from time to time, people do enjoy seeing that, one of the things that I would say is very unique to me specifically is that I am a I I I do stream a lot um but I do have that credibility as a very strong chess for one of the top of one of the top in the world whereas there are a lot of other chest streamers who are successful but none of them really have that sort of um that long history of playing the game and so I think because of that when people see me playing so much and always being so so good and winning you know winning almost

all the time when I start playing other games or you know I do something that looks dumb or it looks clumsy I think it's good for people because it kind of it puts it all in perspective that, yes, I'm really good at chess. But, you know, I can be bad at other games. I'm not just automatically a genius at everything. On April 4, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the fact.

founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, The Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. So a lot of what you're discussing in terms of getting ads and sponsorship, it kind of reminds me of the Instagram economy and being an influencer on that platform. And often on that platform, you have to go out and sell yourself and you have to think about your particular brand, your content, what you're offering that no one else does, and which companies might see that as beneficial to them. Is it similar on Twitch? And does that mean that it might take a different skill set to be commercially successful on that platform to, you know,

playing competitive chess in the old-fashioned or traditional way? Do you have to sell yourself in a particular way that you didn't have to do in competitive chess tournaments? Well, I think, first of all, I'm very lucky because I do have an agent. And I am. represented by a United Talent Agency. So I don't actually have to do the selling of myself per se. But most of the time, what happens is like the agent will come to me and he'll ask me about, you know, this brand or that brand, do you want to like do sponsored streams? How do you want to promote them?

Does it fit in well with what you do? And one thing is I have a lot of people who watch my stream as well because I tend not to, you know, curse. I don't, I keep the language pretty pretty PG. And so there are a lot of kids who watch my stream. So I am very cognizant of that in terms of, in terms of sponsors that I want. to be talking about or representing. Now, over the board, this is one thing that's very, I mean, it's very odd to me just thinking

about my whole career being a pro chess player for the last decade or more, which is that I struggled very much to get sponsors. Like it was very difficult getting sponsors when I would go compete and play over the board tournaments. I think, again, it's because it's not something that you can directly quantify. Like, I can say I play this tournament and the organizers might say, well, you know, we have X amount of viewership online, but it's not, it's, it's, I think, a lot harder of a sell, whereas when you're, say, streaming on Twitch, I can just say, well, you know, I had this number

of viewers. That's what I had. Or I've had this number of last 30 days is it's right there. It's quantifiable in a way that I think trying to get sponsors for over the board chess isn't. And so I think that's why that's also why I think chess is very well suited for being on the internet because the whole audience or, you know, 99% of the audience is already online when they watch the over, over the board tournaments as well. Magnus has been in like perfume ads and Kelvin Klein ads and stuff, hasn't he? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.

I mean, that's one thing that's really difficult about chess is that there are certain places where chess is really revered. It's viewed as something that's like a sport, it's like super serious. I mean, people like Magnus in Norway, I mean, he's probably one of the five most popular people in the whole country. Right.

And so in some countries, it's like that. But say in the U.S., for example, I mean, I mean, as a streamer, now I'm being an influencer and being on Twitch, I think I'm much more recognizable. But prior to this boom, I mean, I was essentially nobody. I mean, people knew who I was to some degree, but it wasn't something where I was really known. And that tends to apply to most places in terms of chess. But there are a handful of places where it's really, really serious. And people view it as a major sport. And so there's a lot of reverence given towards, towards players and towards the game in

general. Why has the U.S. lag behind some other places in terms of making chess a big thing that people are really dedicated to? And secondly, are there any efforts underway to try to change that? Are people actively trying to develop U.S. chess? Rex Sinkfeld, he's a billionaire. He was the co-founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, I mean, they basically promote ETFs. He's done a law for chess. He's done a law for chess. probably starting around 2010, so essentially the last decade or so, St. Louis started out by holding the U.S. championship, the U.S. women's championship, and the U.S. Junior's Championship. So those were the championships for best players overall, the best female players, and also the best

junior players under the age of 20s. So they started out with holding those major events, but now they've started holding tournaments for trying to get the titles like International Master, Grandmaster, and so forth. I think there are programs at St. Louis University, West, Webster University and I think Lyndonwood also, those are three universities in St. Louis. So there's been a big push in St. Louis, which I think is really important because a lot of times kids stop playing the game around the time that they're about 16, 17, which is normally when you have to make the decision, whether you're going to be a pro chess player or whether you're going to say, go to school and pursue a different career. And having these opportunities,

I think has led to a lot of junior players continuing to play the game now. And there is an American player right now who's actually, I think, the number two ranked player in the world under the age of, I believe, 21. So St. Louis has been at the forefront of trying to, of trying to promote U.S. chess specifically. And then in terms of why is chess lagged behind in the U.S., I would say, in large part, that's because after the Fisher boom in the 1970s for about 20 to 30 years, the interest just waned and kind of die. It died out. There just wasn't much interest in the game until a new generation came around. So that's also why when I look at this boom on Twitch or on the internet in general, I try to do as much as I can to try and push chess and promote chess because I've seen these boom-to-bust

cycles happen at least two or three times actually in my lifetime alone. So I try to do what I can to keep pushing it ahead. So my daughter is four and a half. Actually, she's almost five and I'm trying to teach her chess. And I started with like rook end games, like her having two rooks, against my king to see if she could checkmate me. Is that a good start? Yeah, so I actually remember one of the first checkmates I learned was king and queen against king. And I think the basic checkmates are really, really, really important.

You know, one thing I would say that really makes chess also unique besides, you know, everything else, is that you can do puzzles. Like, you can do these puzzles on an iPad on your computer where you just learn these basic checkmating patterns and you can do puzzles over and over and over again. and when I think of a lot of other major e-sports and a lot of games, like, for example, something, you know, like a shooter game, like Call of Duty, it's very much in the moment. Like you try to make sure you aim correct. You try to get the best spot when you're shooting and so forth.

But it's not something where you can replicate it or do it again in exactly the same way. It's always going to be different. It's sort of the instincts or the skill on the spot. And with chess, you can go back and always like replay a game, start a new game. You can do puzzles. It's just very easy, I think, to get into it. And that's why a lot of people, I think, are finding it once again after not playing for a while. This was something I was wondering after watching Queen's Gambit, actually.

So a prominent part of that series for anyone who hasn't seen it yet is this genius chess player, the main character of the story. She sort of at night sits there and thinks and envisions chess plays on the ceiling of her bedroom. and you can see her sort of thinking through all the different permutations, the ways that the pieces could actually move on the board. How much of being a successful chess player is about memorizing those different possibilities versus, I don't know if I'm going to say this right, versus sort of actively, I don't know, like trying to size up your opponent and reacting properly to your opponent. like how much of it is is wrote memory and mathematics versus something else? I mean, I think a large part of it, I mean, up until maybe you're a grand master, is very much about about like memorization of opening strategies,

but also the pattern recognition of seeing, you know, when piece on certain squares, it's like you can sort of sense that there's some sort of combination of using one or two of the pieces to create a check meter to attack your opponent's king. And so I think a large part is definitely about memorization. and just pattern recognition, if you're trying to become like Grand Master better. But I think even if you don't have that, you can still probably get to about an expert level, which is about 2,000 Elo or better than probably, I would say, 98% of players in the world.

So you can still get to a very high level, even if you don't have everything memorized, you know, or you don't have it all down super, super hard. I have another Queen's Gambit question. And this is where I thought that Tracy was going to go at the last question. But how prevalent is the use of performance? enhancing drugs in the world of top-level chess? And is that something tested? Like, what's the deal with stuff like that?

So, yeah, to my knowledge, I don't, I mean, I've never come across any drugs that I think are performance enhancing. Now, I know for quite a while, the governing body, Fide, they were trying very hard to get chess into the Olympics. So at the chess Olympics, which are held every two years, they were doing drug testing. I think the last like three or four of them they did. but other than I think Adderall and there's modephanol, I think, or is that the same thing? But I think there are a couple of drugs that are banned and they try to say you can't have more than three or four cups of coffee.

But that's about the extent in terms of what they consider performance enhancing drugs. So no, as far as I know, I don't think there really are. Now, maybe people will prove me wrong, but it's not something that's widespread or is even known. Most players don't do drugs. Is there anything else you see coming up on the horizon of the world of chess that's going to be the next big thing? So this year we had the shift to streaming and we had Queen's Gambit. Is there something else that you're keeping your eye on at the moment? Well, right now there's, I mean, I think the final part of it for me that I see is is chess becoming sort of a bona fide e-sport.

And what I mean by that is having top-level competitions with some frequency like once a month, or thereabouts. And actually at the moment, there is what's called the chess champions tour where they're holding one online tournament every month. The first one was in November. There'll be one in December, one in January, all the way out through, I think, October of next year. And these prize funds are very substantial.

I think the first prize of the event that I just played was $30,000. The next one will be $60,000. So the prizes are quite large. And I think once you have these events established, you have the top players competing, you'll have more sponsors involved. And I think chess can become very, very big.

So that's really what I'm looking forward to the most is seeing if chess can become a true esport the way like, say, Dota or League of Legends have become around the world. All right. So what I play, as I mentioned at the beginning, I don't have much time to play. I sometimes play in between like a meeting or something like that.

I'm about 1,500 right now on Blitz. Should I, if I want to, like, get up to say like 1,800, should I spend more time learning openings and really like sort of like committing those to remember or should I spend time doing tactics puzzles? If you have to pick one, I would say tactics puzzles, but I think mainly you're at a level where you should have a pretty good, you should have pretty good pattern recognition.

So I think mainly it's just playing as much as you can. Thank you. Thank you for that endorsement of playing as much as I can. I'll keep doing that. Yeah, I mean, that's one thing that's very interesting, is when we had this tournament called PogChance, which featured streamers. A lot of streamers had some understanding of the game,

but they're pretty new to it. And so in cases like that, it's very important that they sort of do puzzles to try and get pattern recognition. But you're already past that stage where you're sort of a, I would say, you know, intermediate-ish player. And so you've already had quite a bit of experience with puzzles. So there it's more, I think, just playing as much as you can because you're going to pick up the, you're going to see what you did wrong games much more easily than someone who's new to the game. Or say if I'm totally new and I play a game, I don't know what to look for once I've lost a game. I just go start the next game.

But I'm not really learning anything per se. Whereas because you've played quite a bit, I think it's more likely that you're going to be able to pick up on what you did wrong. And so that's where playing a lot will really come in handy for someone like you. Well, I think on that note, Hikarro, there's a great place to leave it. Really appreciate you joining us. And I will definitely take internalize your advice to play as much as possible to improve my game. Great. Well, it's great talking to you guys once again.

We should do the charity tournament. Yeah, that'd be fun. Sure. Sure, yeah, that would be great. Yeah, we can figure that out, but that would be awesome. All right, thanks, Takaro. Really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem. Thanks, Takar. Talking to Hikaru is really fun, and I think, like, just anyone listening to that and anyone can see he's just like very like easygoing, sort of positive person. I think you could sort of understand why in addition to being really good at chess, like why he's a popular person to watch on Twitch. Yeah, this was what I was sort of trying to get at with a few of the questions.

I think it maybe does take a particular personality and a particular brand to become that successful on a streaming platform. But I have to say, Kikaru is really nice. And I personally, as someone who doesn't play much to us, endorse his message of making it as accessible as possible to a wide range of people. He is really nice. I also think that's like kind of different from the like traditional like chess master stereotype. I don't know if the chess master stereotype, you know, you always sort of think of these sort of like dark, intellectual types who like get really angry and like knock over the board when someone, you know, makes a wrong pawn move or something like that. And that's not his vibe at all. It's certainly not how he comes off.

I don't know, maybe like when he's like practicing for like true like grandmaster tournament play, he's a more severe. but, you know, really comes through and I think like, you know, it lends itself to this sort of this new era of the game. Yeah, I guess the stakes are lower when you're streaming on Twitch, I suppose. Wait, people get mad if you make a wrong move

with a pawn if you like mess up their game or their strategy. No, I think it's like, did you ever see that movie like searching for Bobby Fisher where it's like the teacher is like teaching the kid how to play and he's like, it's like more like the stereotype of like the stern old chess master like teaching. Remember even like the the guy like in

the show, Queen's Gambit, like, you know, the teacher in the basement. He took a very seriously. That's true. Right. Like that kind of vibe, I think. Yeah. But that is, I mean, it feels like that's the vibe that we are beginning to see change slightly. You have this cultural movement in the form of Queens Gambit. you have these new online economics and dynamics that might be reshaping the game. And speed chess or blitz chess is a pretty good example of one way that maybe it's evolving and one way that it might become more popular. And I guess Hikaru made the point that this has happened before and we've had these boom bust cycles, but maybe this is a significant one. Yeah, hopefully it lasts because it's pretty fun. I enjoy it.

Okay. All right, shall we leave it there? Yeah, let's save it there. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Allo. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Allo. And I'm Joe Wisenthall. You can follow me on Twitter at the stalwart.

You can follow our guest on Twitter, Hikarro Nakamura. He's at GM Hikaru. And on Twitch, he's also GM Hikaru. Definitely check them out there. Very fun. Follow our producer, Laura Carlson, at Laura. I'm Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesca Levy, at Francesca Today, and check out all of our podcasts under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening. I'm June Grasso, inviting you to join me for the Bloomberg Law podcast. Every weekday, we help you make sense of the legal stories that shape the nation and the world.

Listen for complete analysis of the biggest court cases, the latest actions from Congress and regulators, and the legal moves driving the markets. corporate law to constitutional law and from state courts to the Supreme Court. At Bloomberg Law, we go beyond the day's headlines. We speak with top attorneys, judges, scholars, and policy experts to break down what the rulings really mean. We do this every weekday, then bring you the best conversations in our daily podcast. Search for Bloomberg Law on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen. On the East Coast, listen as you start your day. and on the West Coast, catch up in the evening. That's the Bloomberg Law Podcast with me, June Grasso.

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