There is stress in the chess corner of the streaming service Twitch. At an awards ceremony, the Botez sisters, Alexandra and Andrea, received an award as the “Chess Streamers of the Year 2022.” The actual favorite for the award, Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura, came away empty-handed in 2022 and 2023. He scoffed: He doesn’t care, the Botez sisters will never win anything in real chess anyway.
What triggered the dispute? The streamer QTCinderella has been hosting the “Streamer of the Year” awards since 2022, akin to the unofficial Oscars on Twitch. There were a bunch of prizes to win: Asmongold was named the MMORPG Streamer of the Year in 2023, Boxbox the Top Strategist, and Tyler1 won the award for LoL.
Because chess is a big deal on Twitch, since “The Queen’s Gambit” was such a success on Netflix, the award for “Best Chess Streamer” was also presented in 2023.
Nakamura is the strongest and biggest chess streamer on Twitch – Loses 2 times at the award ceremony
These streamers were nominated for Chess Streamer of the Year 2023:
- BotezLive – the Canadian sisters won in 2022
- GM Hikaru – the 35-year-old is the biggest chess streamer on Twitch and one of the best players in the world
- Anna Cramling – the 20-year-old Spaniard was nominated for the first time in 2023
- Levy “GothamChess” Rozman – who ultimately won the title.
In 2022, the title was won by the Botez sisters, also ahead of GM Hikaru.
Why is this particularly noteworthy? GM Hikaru is the biggest chess streamer on Twitch:
- GM Hikaru has 11.83 million viewed hours and an average of 10,037 viewers
- GothamChess has just 2.9 million viewed hours with an average of 4,467 viewers
- The Botez sisters have only 684,185 hours with 6,675 viewers
In terms of viewer numbers, Nakamura plays in a different league than the competition and is therefore actually a favorite for victory.
Nakamura proves to be a bad loser: “I don’t care”
This was Hikaru’s reaction to his loss: The usually lovable Grandmaster appeared pretty much as a bad loser on Twitch. He said in a stream: He doesn’t care. He has won so much, so many prizes, he won’t get super mad about something like this:
“If you ask me, should I really care when I have won things like the US Championship? Of course, I don’t care. If you look at Levy, if you look at the Botez, or these people, they will never win anything when it comes to chess. That’s the truth. So why should it bother me that they win these awards?”
How are the sisters reacting? They are having fun with the sulking Grandmaster. In a video, Alexdrana Botez first shows his sulky statements and then delightfully edits together the two awards ceremonies where Hikaru gets beaten both times.
Even their sister proudly writes: “Hello? I was the Canadian national champion (in girls under 8).”.
What’s behind it: Even though Hikaru Nakamura seems lovable, he is extremely ambitious as one of the best chess players in the world. In his view, the co-nominees simply do not play in his league:
- Nakamura is currently ranked 6th in the world rankings with a blitz rating of 2,879
- The 2023 winner Levy Rozman is ranked 3,628 in blitz with 2,376 points
- Alexandra Botez is ranked 25,859 with her rating of 2,059
An example that pure skill is not everything on Twitch.
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