Chess is young and hip now
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Chess is no longer just an old-school pastime — young men and women are making the game their own.
The big picture: The pandemic, pop culture and a wave of content creators have turned a centuries-old game into a Gen Z phenomenon.
What they're saying: "It was not the coolest thing in the world to be a chess player" when I was growing up, 30-year-old chess master and educator Levy Rozman tells Axios.
- "Nowadays, kids come up to me who love chess and they look like they would've bullied me in school," he says.
The latest: There are now popular chess livestreamers (like Rozman, aka GothamChess), chess dating clubs, chess nights at bars, and even chess romance scenes on TV.
Between the lines: It's not just men trying to capture the king. Women are also livestreaming and learning the game.
- Rozman says his YouTube audience went from roughly 99% male in 2020 to more than 10% female today, and viewers of his "How To Play Chess" video are now about 25% female.
By the numbers: Younger people are now more likely than their elders to play chess, according to recent YouGov data.
- As of June 1, there were 6.4 million active U.S. Chess.com players, up from 4 million on the same date the year prior, according to data shared with Axios.
- And there was nearly a 10% increase in chess experiences on Eventbrite nationally from 2024 to 2025, the ticketing platform tells Axios.
- Meanwhile, chess grandmasters keep getting younger.
Catch up quick: Chess play spiked in 2020, when millions stuck at home rediscovered the game online. The Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" also helped.
- And several other moments since — like a major cheating scandal, arrival of a chess bot called Mittens and an infamous table slam — have kept the game in the zeitgeist, Rozman says.
The bottom line: No matter your age, learning chess could be a winning move for connection and self-improvement.
- "If you're impatient, or too aggressive, or you have too much of an ego, or you're bad at regulating your stress and emotion," Rozman says, "chess kind of exposes this and challenges you to fix it."
