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Good chess players are masters of strategy and problem solving. Alexandra Botez is an award-winning Romanian-born chess player, who especially stood out on the Internet. It gained hundreds of thousands of followers during the pandemic and especially as a result of the streaming of the Netflix series “Queen’s Gambit.”, according to the New York Post.
The performance of Alexandra Botez, 25, attracted her 450,000 followers on the video game platform Twitch, where she broadcasts live chess and personal content games with her sister, Andrea, 18 years old.
The numbers it recorded have skyrocketed this year. In January, he only had 61,000 fans on Twitch. The pandemic forced people to stay home without having to watch too many competitive sports. He also has more than 250,000 followers on Instagram and more than 25 million views on the YouTube channel BotezLive.
He says that a trait that is acquired in the family is the ability to insult.
“My father is a great troll. He used to speak nonsense to demoralize me when he played, so I had to survive and learn to answer his words. I think he is very disappointed if I do not succeed,” said the chess influencer about his father and former coach, Andrei.
Now Alexandra has received help from the Netflix series “Queen’s Gambit”, which has become the most watched miniseries, written based on the novel of the same name. The production is about a very good chess player, played by Anya Taylor-Joy.
“I think everyone in the chess world agrees that it is the best projection of the game,” said Botez, who holds the prestigious title offered by the International Chess Federation – FIDE Female Master. “Chess game sales on eBay have increased by more than 130%. It had a big impact on girls’ interest in chess.”
The same can be said of baptism itself. Born in Dallas, she is the daughter of Romanian immigrants who fled communism and sought political asylum. The family moved to Vancouver, Canada, when she was very young, and her father, an engineer, began teaching Alexandra when she was 6, following a bet.
“My mother plays a bit. So he bet that he will be able to teach me how to play and that, in just two weeks, I will be able to win it,” Botez said.
She did and her father realized that she had a special talent. Two years later he began taking her to the parks to play with the elderly.
He said, “Is it okay if my daughter tries a game?” They made room for me to play, but they were not satisfied, ”Botez recalls. But the downside turned to confusion once it hit them. “They said, ‘Who is your daughter?'”
After her family moved to Texas, she won the US Girls National Championship at the age of 15. At Stanford, where she studied international relations with a specialization in China, Botez was the first female president of the university’s chess club.
She is also a co-founder of CrowdAmp, a former social media company that used artificial intelligence for more personalized communication.
A self-proclaimed workaholic, she began streaming chess games on Twitch and in 2019, when her startup closed, she decided to make gambling her main occupation.
“Some of my advisers told me things like, ‘You should work at a new company and try to start a company again. You won’t learn much by being a chess streamer.” It wasn’t the best reaction, so on the one hand, that’s why I moved to the east coast. I wanted a new beginning, “says Botez.
He moved to the East Village in September 2019 and went into streaming and content production for chess.com. She didn’t have a backup plan either: “I was very determined to make it work.”
That’s when Covid arrived.
“Chess exploded on Twitch and we were some of the best streamers. I remember being so happy I couldn’t sleep. I was under the influence of adrenaline,” said Botez, comparing the moment to Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself.”
He managed to win over his parents. They did not initially understand his switch to transmission. “When people asked me what I was doing, my mother asked them to work with venture capital. Now my parents are watching me on Twitch. Sometimes I stream with us,” Botez said.
For top influencers and streamers, the income potential is exciting. The # 1 streaming player on Twitch, the Ninja Player, has 16 million followers and appears to be worth $ 15 million. Most streamers make money from endorsements, but their main income comes from subscriptions and commercials.
Alexandra and Andrea, who took a year off after graduating from high school in the spring, will soon be signing with an agency that represents the best athletes in digital sports. They recently moved to Austin, Texas, where “the income tax is so much better,” Botez said.
“I want the game to be more accessible to normal players. I think my sister and I did a good job of explaining the ideas clearly,” he added.
And while being a female streamer in a male-dominated world has downsides like sexual harassment online, Botez gets by with her specific calm.
“There will always be some stupid actors. I’m disconnecting from this right now. Their opinions don’t matter,” explained the chess player.
Editing: Alexandru Costea
