Reading Time: 12 minutes

The Queen’s Gambit, a show about a fictional chess prodigy, sparked a cultural revival, amplifying years of underground work by the chess community.  

Chess sets were sold out, Google searches spiked, and people who didn’t care about the game wanted to know how the knight moved and what it meant to checkmate an opponent. 

Online chess tournaments and content creators began to capture the world’s attention. Now, you can start your chess journey by watching a few short clips on TikTok and a ten-minute video on the basics of the game.

In Africa, the chess scene also got a massive boost when Tunde Onakoya played for 60 hours straight in Times Square to set a Guinness World Record.

While Gukesh and Magnus are the stars of the sport, content creators like Anna Cramling and Levy Rozman make chess feel personal and entertaining.  

Together, they’ve helped transform chess from a game confined to boards and books into one that is alive and buzzing across every screen you look at.

Here are the top 10 biggest chess content creators in the world.

10. Dina Belenkaya

Before becoming a chess content creator, Dina Belenkaya was famous for her remarkable chess career. 

She started playing chess at the age of three as she learnt from her mother, who was a local children’s chess coach.

At age five, she began to play competitive chess, and at age 13, she earned her first FIDE rating of 1872 at a Petrograd Side Open in January 2007. 

This tournament set the tone for her junior career as she participated in the Lyudmila Rudenko Memorial Women’s Open and St. Petersburg Women’s Championship, which she eventually won after finishing joint-first in December 2008. 

At 17 years old, she went on to win the Russian Women’s Championship First League, and in 2016, she was awarded the Woman Grandmaster title. 

Following this achievement, Belenkaya won the bronze medal at the Moscow Open B. She also beat Luke McShane, an English Grandmaster, at the Bunratty Masters. Then she won the St. Petersburg Women’s Championship three more times, earning her the sixth most wins among women in the tournament’s history.

Belenkaya’s journey as a chess content creator began in 2020 when she started streaming on Twitch. She launched her Twitch channel in April 2020 after being invited by Alexandra Botez to participate in the Isolated Queens women’s online chess tournament. 

Around that same time, Belenkaya opened a YouTube channel with her sister, where she posts educational chess content. Apart from streaming and moderating online chess competitions, she also runs a chess school where she connects with enthusiasts. 

With about 2 million followers across all social media platforms and 87k subscribers on Twitch, Dina Belenkaya is one of the biggest chess content creators.

9. Agadmator (Antonio Radić)

Antonio Radić, popularly known as Agadmator, is a living chess historian and commentator. Unlike most creators who started as chess prodigies, Radic’s story is different. 

Hailing from Križevci, Croatia, Radic didn’t grow up in the world of elite chess academies or professional circuits. Instead, his journey began as a passionate amateur who saw an opportunity to bring the beauty of the game to a global audience. 

He was introduced to chess by his grandfather when he was four, but he later stopped playing and didn’t return to the sport until he was 17. Before becoming one of the biggest chess content creators, Radic worked with his father, who was a wedding videographer. He opened a YouTube channel to promote the business.

While he built a life outside of chess, the sport was still dear to him. In 2016, he began to post chess videos on the channel, and once he hit 20,000 subscribers, he left his father’s business to focus entirely on the channel. 

His content was based on a simple format. He ran commentaries on famous historical matches, guiding viewers through the history of chess. His ability to break down even the most complex positions into a straightforward, approachable narrative made his videos very easy to follow.  

He makes it feel like you’re sitting across from a friend who happens to know a lot about chess. He explains, he pauses, he invites you to think about your own move before revealing what the masters played.

Today, his YouTube channel has 1.34 million subscribers. And in a world where fast-paced editing rules the media and everyone is chasing the next wave,  Agadmator stands as the voice of history.

8. Anna Cramling 

For Anna Cramling, chess has always been a family tradition. Born in Spain and raised in Sweden, Anna grew up in one of the few households where both parents were professional chess players. 

Her father, Spanish Grandmaster Juan Manuel Bellón López, and her mother, Swedish Grandmaster Pia Cramling, introduced her to the game really early. 

Anna began competing in tournaments as a child, making her way through junior competitions across Europe. She also played on the same team with her parents in international competitions, which helped her become a formidable chess player. 

In 2018, she earned the Woman FIDE Master (WFM) title after reaching a peak rating of 2175. In July of that same year, she defeated Renier Castellanos Rodriguez, a Spanish International Master (IM) rated 2498. 

When COVID hit in 2020, it limited the number of over-the-board tournaments Anna Cramling could play in; that was when she started her streaming journey. 

Cramling launched her Twitch channel, where she played occasionally with her mom and also ran commentary for online chess tournaments. 

Sometimes, she would invite other creators like GM Hikaru Nakamura to play against her. Her content is mostly a combination of her humour, classical chess training, and storytelling.

Rather than focus on her parents’ legacy, Cramling is creating a new lane for herself and bringing joy to the faces of casual and hardcore chess fans. 

Having grown her social media following to about 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube and 486,000 followers on Twitch, Cramling is forging her own path. She is also signed to the esports group, Panda, as a chess streamer. 

7. BotezLive (Alexandra & Andrea Botez)

When you think of on-camera chess ambassadors, one of the first names that comes to mind is the Botez Sisters. 

Alexandra and Andrea Botez started playing chess in Canada when they were kids. Alexandra, who is the older sibling, won the Canadian girls’ national championship at the age of 8. 

After winning four more Canadian national youth titles, Alexandra would later move back to the United States, where she kept dominating at the junior level. She represented the state of Oregon twice at the SPF Girls’ Invitational, which Susan Polgar and her foundation organized. 

Alexandra won the US Girls Nationals at 15, and in 2013, she earned the WFM title after finishing jointly in first place at the North American girls’ U-16 national championship with the winner Megan Lee.

Her sister Andrea followed in her footsteps. Andrea started playing competitive chess at age seven in USChess tournaments. 

She won the U8 Girls Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2010 and was crowned champion in the 2015 Women’s British Columbia Chess Championship. Andrea also won the Girls U14 category of the Susan Polgar National Open in 2015.

During Alexandra’s junior year at Stanford in 2016, she started streaming, and soon, Andrea joined her. Together, they created the BotezLive channels on YouTube and Twitch, which have a combined following of over 3 million people. 

On their channels, the sisters either play against each other or comment on ongoing tournaments. They also capture users by bringing their sibling rivalry on screen, which occasionally sees them banter with each other. 

They have become a big part of Chess’ meme culture as the “Botez Gambit” is used in chess vernacular to define the multiple times both sisters blundered their queens. 

6. Daniel Naroditsky

Daniel Naroditsky, fondly known as “Danya” in the online chess community, is one of the few creators who bridges the gap between professional chess mastery and approachable, down-to-earth teaching. 

After picking up chess at the age of 6, Danya wasted no time in announcing himself to the world. At age 11, he became the youngest player to win the Northern California K-12 Championship. 

When he turned 12, he won the under-12 division of the World Youth Chess Championship, establishing himself as one of America’s brightest talents.

In 2013, at just 18 years old, Naroditsky earned the title of Grandmaster. In 2014, he was awarded the Samford Chess Fellowship. 

He played in the 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2021 US championships, where he beat Fabiano Caruana, who has a FIDE rating of 2800 and was ranked number 2 in the World as of 2021. He also finished in first place at the US Masters Championship. 

In 2010, he became one of the youngest published chess authors with his book Mastering Positional Chess. He followed it up with Mastering Complex Endgames in 2012. He also wrote a column titled “The Practical Endgame” in Chess Life Magazine for six years, and in 2022, wrote a series of 19 columns for The New York Times.

Danya was also one of the high-profile victims of Vladimir Kramnik’s scattergun anti-cheating crusade. Despite dealing with the pressure of having such allegations leveled against him, Danya handled the situation with so much class that it ended up winning him more fans than detractors.

Naroditsky is also a wizard at Bullet Chess and a regular top contender on Bullet Brawl, going against Hikaru Nakamura and Alireza Firouja every week. He also features on commentary for Chess.com events. 

5. Rey Enigma

In a world where chess creators often put their personalities front and center, Rey Enigma stands out precisely because he hides his identity. 

Always masked, always anonymous, Rey is a performer as much as he is a player. His identity remains secret, but his impact on chess culture is anything but hidden.

Rey’s story began on the streets of Spain, where he shocked crowds by challenging anyone to blitz games and offering them up to a hundred Euros if they could beat him. He started uploading videos of his games online, turning his street character into his online presence. 

In 2021, he quit his day job as a digital marketer to focus on creating chess content. Now, he has over 5 million followers across YouTube and TikTok. His masked persona and charisma make his content immediately recognizable. 

Although he is not a rated player, he has held his own against Levy Rozman, and former world champion Anatoly Karpov, whom he played at the Got Talent España final in 2021. 

Hikaru Nakamura has also speculated that Rey could get a FIDE rating of 2400. While the internet continues its search to uncover his identity, Rey just seems like a cool guy who wears a masked outfit and wants to play a lot of chess.

4. ChessBrah (Eric Hansen and Aman Hambleton)

If most chess channels feel like classrooms, ChessBrah feels like a late-night hangout with friends who are extremely good at the game. 

Led by Canadian GM Eric Hansen and GM Aman Hambleton, ChessBrah is less about formal instruction and more about experiencing unique personalities, listening to great music, and having fun while being entertained with great chess content. 

The ChessBrah story started with Hansen’s idea to bring energy and personality into chess content, pushing them to offer something different from the regular robotic chess videos.. 

Streaming from Canada, Eric and his “chessbrahs” mixed blitz sessions with music and banter. Over time, the channel became a hub for collaboration, with guests like Magnus Carlsen even dropping by for appearances.

What makes ChessBrah unique is its vibe. They stream bullet and blitz battles, do commentary on significant events, and interact with fans in a way that feels more like being part of a movement than just watching a stream. 

Aman’s calm demeanour and genius were on full display in that viral clip where he completed one of the most humiliating checkmating sequences in online chess.

By contrast, Eric Hansen’s most infamous clip features him fighting a drunk Hikaru Nakamura on the lawn after a disagreement over a game of chess. 

Today, ChessBrah is a chess content channel that represents a side of chess that is social and expressive, yet educational. 

3. ChessBase India (Sagar Shah)

If you want to know everything about chess in India, there is no better platform to visit than ChessBase India. It is currently the biggest chess news portal and software distributor in the country.

Chess Base India was founded in 2015 by Sagar Shah and his wife, Amruta Mokal. As co-founder, Shah is an International Master with two GM norms and an undying love for the game, which has helped him build Chess Base India from the ground up.

Sagar launched Chess Base India at a time when the Chess community in India needed a platform to cover its progress desperately. 

At a time when talents like Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, and Gukesh Dommaraju were coming up, chess enthusiasts in India needed a way to keep up, and Chess Base India became that outlet. 

Through Chess Base India, Shah documented the progress of chess in India while providing resources to help young talents improve their game. 

In 2020, Shah began streaming with Samay Raina. He later launched Chess Base India’s YouTube channel, and currently, they have 2.8 million subscribers. 

By sticking to the goal of promoting chess in India and providing chess enthusiasts with world-class learning facilities, Chess Base India has become the voice of chess in India. Sagar’s diligent work has given the work a sneak peek into India’s chess boom post-Anand. 

2. Hikaru Nakamura (GMHikaru)

For most of his life, Hikaru Nakamura has been one of the best chess players in the world. A five-time US Chess Champion and a top-10 player for much of his career, Hikaru was already a household name in the chess world long before Twitch or YouTube entered the picture. 

But what makes his story so remarkable is how he reinvented himself in the digital age, becoming not just a competitor but the face of chess streaming.

As a child prodigy, Hikaru earned his Grandmaster title at 15, becoming the youngest American to do so at the time. In the professional scene, he built a reputation as someone who could beat anyone, anywhere, especially in rapid and blitz formats. 

Hikaru broke the mold when he began streaming in 2018, making him the first super GM to embrace the medium. 

He was already popular on Twitch as he streamed with other chess grandmasters while playing chess games against other streamers. By the time COVID hit in 2020, Hikaru’s channel shot up in popularity.

One of the fascinating aspects of Hikaru’s career is the fact that he is able to combine his professional career with his status as one of the biggest chess influencers in the world. 

Although he will never fail to remind you that he’s retired, he still participates in over-the-board events while commanding an audience of about 2 million followers on Twitch. Fans always look forward to his “Chess Clasico” match-ups against Magnus Carlsen and his vitriolic rivalry with Hans Niemann.

Through his social media channels, Hikaru has turned chess into a digital spectacle while maintaining his standing as one of the best ever to play chess. 

1. Levy Rozman (GothamChess)

Famously known as “the internet’s chess teacher”, Levy Rozman is the biggest chess content creator in the world. 

From starting at an early age to almost quitting chess and later becoming the most followed chess content creator in the world, Rozman’s journey has been an eventful one. 

Born to parents who had a background in Physics, Computer Science, and Mathematics, Rozman was introduced to chess through an after-school program. 

His parents kept him in the program, seeing that chess had a calming effect on a hyperactive Rozman. But to Rozman, chess was more than an after-school program; it quickly became his hobby. 

At age 7, Rozman entered his first chess tournament, and by age 12, he reached a FIDE rating of 2000. 

However, after his progress stalled for three years, Rozman thought about quitting chess. He would later return to the game in 2010, earning the title of National Master through the US Chess Federation a year later. 

When he joined college in 2013 to gain a bachelor’s degree in statistics and quantitative modeling, he began teaching chess to kids in local schools. By 2015, he ran his own K-12 chess program, and kids enrolled in the program won state and city titles. Between 2016 and 2020, he devoted himself to teaching and playing competitive chess.

As his chess program grew, so also did his chess career. In 2016, he obtained the title of FIDE Master, and in 2018, he gained the title of International Master. He also hit his peak US Chess rating of 2520 and a FIDE rating of 2421 the same year. 

When the world changed in 2020, he took things online. Rozman had already launched his Twitch channel in 2018, and during the pandemic, he focused on building his online audience. 

His streams are mainly focused on instructional videos and chess commentary. He later opened a YouTube channel where he posts highlights from his streams and games against other chess giants and content creators. 

He also posts content for beginners, affirming his stance as the internet’s chess teacher. Other times, he runs commentary on chess tournaments while posting analysis of games between chess players worldwide, where he highlights the blunders and brilliance in such games.

Levy Rozman has also featured in a lot of instructional videos for GQ and Wired, as well as tech companies in New York and Silicon Valley.

With more than 6 million subscribers on YouTube and over 1 million followers on Twitch, Rozman has built the largest chess social media channels. 

For millions of people, GothamChess was their first real introduction to the game. His work also represents the new era of chess, as he combines his humor and simple teaching principles to make chess feel less intimidating, especially for newbies.