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

Joe Weisenthal (0:11)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:17)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:19)

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?

Tracy Alloway (0:28)

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 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.

Joe Weisenthal (0:46)

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.

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

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.

Joe Weisenthal (1:18)

Yeah, no, it has been pretty wild. I was, I mean, I've played chess all my life, but very often 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 in a car, I'll play like a quick game of Blitz on chess.com. So I am one of those people who has got the bug again after watching that show.

Tracy Alloway (1:55)

Now, if you're gonna get addicted to something, I'd say playing chess online is probably a reasonably healthy addiction, right?

Joe Weisenthal (2:02)

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.

Tracy Alloway (2:15)

See, now this is something that I don't think I would necessarily get. Why is that interesting?

Joe Weisenthal (2:23)

Well, I don't know. I mean, I find it to be extremely transfixing, but there's something I particularly 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.

Tracy Alloway (2:55)

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.

Joe Weisenthal (3:18)

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, 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 a small part of it.

Tracy Alloway (3:56)

Yeah, I think that's right. But also, I mean, 2020, we did see a pick up 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.

Joe Weisenthal (4:15)

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 on 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.