
Bringing an Economic Revolution to Chess - venmul
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/05/the-new-economics-of-chess.html
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Steko
Chess is actually experiencing a popularity boom thanks to Hikaru Nakamura (if
we have to credit one player).

~~~
thom
Perhaps I'm counting this wrong, but Chess24 tournament coverage gets 10x or
20x more views than a Hikaru stream gets on any given day. For example today's
Chessable Masters video has 50k+ views, yesterday's 80k+. Hikaru's stream will
get 2k views on a random good day. I see numbers bigger than that on
[http://analysis.sesse.net/](http://analysis.sesse.net/) whenever it's live!

There's no doubt that blitz - and people like Hikaru and Chessbrahs explicitly
tapping into the e-sports potential - is driving a lot of interest, but it
still seems like real tournament play, coupled with in-depth commentary and
analysis, is very popular. I also don't think we should underestimate the
impact of the explosion of content out of St Louis and Atlanta (which again,
get higher views on every educational video than Hikaru gets on his streams).

~~~
kirillbobyrev
> Perhaps I'm counting this wrong, but Chess24 tournament coverage gets 10x or
> 20x more views than a Hikaru stream gets on any given day.

First of all, in the last tournament, Chess24 coverage barely hit 2k viewers
on stream while Hikaru's stream had around 50k if I remember correctly.

> For example today's Chessable Masters video has 50k+ views, yesterday's
> 80k+.

Comparing videos against live stream views does not seem right. Many people
would watch recordings because of the time zones and availability. I think it
might be fair to compare the number of followers: Hikaru has 416k right now on
Twitch and 282k on YouTube, St. Louis Chess Club has only 282k. PogChamps
finals (which Hikaru is the host of) had 85k __live __viewers
([https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1274141325106065409](https://twitter.com/chesscom/status/1274141325106065409)).

> Hikaru's stream will get 2k views on a random good day.

This is simply incorrect. Maybe it has been true a long time ago, but I don't
know if he had below 5k at any day lately (and he's been streaming __every day
__for 60+ days or so). Here are the
stats:[https://twitchtracker.com/gmhikaru](https://twitchtracker.com/gmhikaru).
Average is 13k over the last week and 16.8k over the last month.

> I also don't think we should underestimate the impact of the explosion of
> content out of St Louis and Atlanta (which again, get higher views on every
> educational video than Hikaru gets on his streams).

This is also incorrect. Let's take a look at the St. Louis Chess Club videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/STLChessClub/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/STLChessClub/videos).
There are many 2k and sub-2k educational videos (even sub-1k in some cases)
and just by looking at the numbers it seems like the absolute majority of
educational videos are not even close to the __average __viewers on __live
__Hikaru streams for the past month. Tournaments are obviously different.

To be fair, I agree with the importance of tournaments and in-depth
commentary, analysis and educational videos. I just want to point out that the
analysis you provide is not correct.

Tournaments are great and super exciting, but the general problem with chess
is that most people who are below 1800 ELO can not relate and the content
creators in the past were not generally interested in explaining the concepts
to a wide auditory. Simply understanding what the commentators are saying
would require an enormous amount of work for an average interested person.

Hikaru, on the other hand, makes it accessible for most players and,
undoubtably, that's why there are more people interested in seeing him play
blitz with random people than seeing GMs and super GMs comment Carlsen match
in Chess24 tournament. I'm glad it's changing fast, but Chess24 tournaments
should be grateful to Hikaru instead making a drama because he had more
viewers and trying to stop him from streaming the tournament. Funny enough,
that was after explicitly allowing him to use the channel to stream the
tournament. If it wasn't for him, I doubt Chess24 would even get their 2k
viewers on Twitch for the last tournament.

Both casual chess and tournaments are skyrocketing in popularity lately and I
couldn't be more excited about Chess becoming really popular, I just think
it's clear that casual chess has been the driver.

~~~
thom
Thanks for the corrections and showing me how to run the numbers on Twitch
correctly - I was just looking at the figures on the past broadcasts page
which presumably mean offline views.

I will still hold on to my curmudgeonly grumpiness about this trend but
clearly it's valid and real.

------
tartoran
Chess has been on the rise in the last 10-15 years and a lot of it was thanks
to the internet and social media. I got into chess 15 years ago after playing
on a defunct site called instantchess.com which had a live screensaver with
chess matches on their site. Since then plenty of chess apps added to the
effect and lastly the social media gave it another boost for the masses. It’s
a great game and more popularity will never hurt. I wonder what else will make
a comeback next

