Chess is booming among teens. Here’s why

Chess has always been a part of Henry Lien’s life. He’s played it since he was 5 years old or so, his tiny hands just big enough to hold the pieces. Marin in the Bay Area was where he grew up. This area is well-known for its chess talents. He also had good coaches and a good team of chess experts at his school. Lien created ChessPals a non-profit to teach the game in local schools. No one would ever call chess a niche; it’s an old game with a ton of history, played by millions across the world. But in high school, it’s typically contained to its own circles, played in chess clubs. And that’s why Lien was shocked when he showed up at school one day in January and saw chess All over.

“I have no idea what happened in January, but since then I’ve seen probably 90% or 80% of our school playing chess,” Lien told Polygon. “It used to be probably 20%.”

And it’s not only Lien’s high school. People all over the country are enjoying playing a lot more chess — usually online or in apps. High school and middle-school students play chess with their phones between classes. A school student even transformed the winter formal in to a chess tournament.

“I heard some cheering down one of the hallways off the main dance area,” Hunter Nedland, a South Dakota-based biology teacher, told Polygon. “I figured some mischief was going on. I was surprised to find a group of freshmen sitting with their laptops and phones in the middle of some very heated chess games.” Nedland said upperclassmen have started calling chess the “weird freshman thing,” due to the ubiquity of the game with younger students — but noted that it’s spread across all grades, too. Most teachers said it’s a lot of male students, but that female students partake, too.

These schools reflect an increased interest in chess that began in 2020, credited in part to Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit. Chess hadn’t seen this level of popularity since the 1972 World Chess Championship, according to the New York Times. It was the start of chess boom. Since then it’s grown even more popular, and in January, chess hit middle and high school students. Chess.com was the most widely used chess site and it collapsed. The company had to make significant upgrades to its servers due to the sudden increase in popularity. It claimed that Chess.com had already reached 10 million users by January; it was averaging 12 million members per day in April. That’s in contrast to its usership BeforeThe pandemic had less than 2,000,000 active participants.

Photo: Charlie Gray/Netflix

Chess’s popularity isn’t necessarily sudden, given that data — it’s been growing steadily since 2020. The sudden increase in popularity of chess among teens is certainly not unexpected, as Polygon interviewed teachers and teens. Schools that don’t have chess clubs are rushing to start them. Although teachers are confused, they love the idea of a new and healthy hobby. Administrators struggle with the disruptive nature of chess in schools, and blame it for disruptions to classrooms as well as drama and attention problems. Is it possible to ban chess altogether? According to some schools, it was necessary.

Levy Rozman, a popular chess content creator who goes by GothamChess online, told Polygon his YouTube channel peaked in January — he got 25 to 30% of his lifetime views during that time. Even now, months later, traffic has declined, but it’s still 10 times higher than the first chess boom, when The Queen’s GambitIt was published in 2020.

“All kids across all high schools [and middle schools] in the U.S. are playing chess and screaming out chess memes,” Rozman told Polygon. “What a time to be alive. I don’t remember anything like this even in 2019 when I was just a chess teacher.”

There’s no easy answer for how chess has spread among preteens and teens. Its popularity has grown over the years. The Queen’s GambitIt’s a vital part of the game. Chess’s anal bead controversy may have given chess a boost, too: A cheating scandal involving Hans Niemann and Magnus Carlsen, not actually involving anal beads, thrust chess into the spotlight. Carlsen accused Niemann, in September 2022 of cheating at Sinquefield Cup. Niemann countered the next month by filing a lawsuit against Carlsen as well as Chess.com. This cheating scandal became a national news item. The theory was originally a Reddit joke that Carlsen could cheat and win games by using an embedded supercomputer in anal beads. Although the theory was completely unproven, it made the scandal viral.

And then there’s chess’s growing popularity on Twitch and YouTube. Popular streamer Ludwig Ahgren hosted a $1.6 million chessboxing event — an event that combines chess and boxing, of course — that reached millions of viewers. Twitch also has a lot of people watching normal chess. Esports have signed some chess stars, such as Hikaru Nagura to Misfits or Alexandra and Andrea Botez respectively to Envy. Rozman’s YouTube channel has over 3.5 million subscribers. His videos are also popular on TikTok, where they go viral quite often. Polygon heard from Rozman that his popularity increased even further after he began posting shorter-form content like TikToks or Instagram Reels in November 2022.

“People like Levy Rozman started to catch the interest of the junior high, high school, college-age dynamic,” Chess.com CEO Erik Allebest said. “And once that happens, there’s more TikToks, more memes, and then kids are downloading the app. And then when a couple of kids in school are playing it, everybody’s playing it. It really snowballed.”

It’s all these little things and perhaps a few others, like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo playing chess in a Louis Vuitton campaign and Carlsen showing up to a chess match late with 30 seconds to go but still winning, that created the perfect storm of chess. TikTok’s #ChessTok chess video is gaining more attention and securing its own place. Now everyone’s playing chess — look down a school hallway and you’ll see students playing chess against each other on their phones. In some cases, it’s one of the few games that are allowed past school firewalls, teachers told Polygon, which plays a part in its ubiquity, too.

However, are they good at chess for kids? It’s not so. Lien explained that other children sometimes approach him in order to help them analyze their strategies. “People are always trying new things, and so they’ll come to me and say, ‘Is this good?’ and sometimes I have to tell them it’s not,” he laughed. Rozman told Polygon that chess’s new growth is opening doors for the game — you can be a low-level chess player and still be entertaining to watch. Maybe that’s Why? you’re entertaining. “The young audience […] doesn’t have as serious and uptight of a relationship with chess as historically thought was necessary,” he said.

A viral post on Tumblr described another creative strategy that claims students have invented “the evil advisor gambit.”

“He gets a third person to give out constant terrible advice to both teams hoping that his opponent falls for it straight-up or that his opponent thinks HE fell for it and will act accordingly thus worsening their own strategy,” the Tumblr user wrote. “He has won every game he has been able to pull off a coordinated evil advisor gambit in. It is a very good thing. [a] chess innovation never before seen in its 700 years on earth.”

Another unconfirmed viral post, this time on Reddit, suggested that chess was banned at one school because it’s caused bad behavior — including bad-mannered chess play and so-called “roaming chess bans” that disrupt lunchroom matches.

The majority of teachers are open to chess. Polygon found that most teachers allowed their students to play chess in between classes and they enjoyed watching them try out new games. Sometimes, teachers also play against their students. Chess is a classic game that’s a lesson in strategy and problem solving. It can teach patience, reasoning, and creative thinking — all good skills to have.

Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images

All news players are welcomed in the chess community. Lien enjoys seeing new players come to ChessPal classes and bringing this venture to other schools and regions. Because of this, chess has seen a shift in its face. Chess has been long seen as a men’s game, something The Queen’s Gambit highlighted. This show is credited with increasing the participation of girls and women in chess. Rozman told Polygon he’s seen an increase in the number of women watching his content — he’s now got a 94/6 split between men and women. It’s not huge numbers, but it’s 4% more than before the chess boom. “One of my videos, [on] how to play chess, the ultimate beginner’s video, that video in some months is 75/25 [men/women],” Rozman said. “That’s a historic percentage between male and female [players].”

It’s not easy to learn chess. There’s so much strategy to learn and catch up on. Not for everyone, chess is seen as a game that’s only for smart players. That’s no longer the case. You’ll see kids of all ages and genders whispering “en passant” Each other as they walk by each other through the halls.

The mental barriers that prevent teens from playing chess have been removed and they are now openly admitting to being terrible at it. “Everyone plays bad chess, except for the very top players,” Allebest said. “Why not celebrate that? It’s how we all play.”