Chess is booming in Raleigh as younger players take over

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.

Catch up quick: Chess play spiked in 2020, when millions stuck at home rediscovered the game online.

• The Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" helped, as did a major cheating scandal, the arrival of a chess bot called Mittens and an infamous table slam, Rozman says.

The latest: Now, there are popular chess livestreamers (like Rozman, aka GothamChess), chess dating clubs, chess nights at bars and even chess romance scenes on TV.

By the numbers: 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.

• The number of active users in the Raleigh metro increased roughly 67% from June 2025 to June 2026, up to about 6K.
• And there was nearly a 10% increase in chess experiences on Eventbrite nationally from 2024 to 2025, the ticketing platform tells Axios.

Women challengers are boosting the game's popularity, too.

• Rozman says women grew from roughly 1% of his YouTube audience in 2020 to more than 10% today. They now make up about 25% of viewers of his "How To Play Chess" video.

What we're watching: As chess grandmasters keep getting younger, we have to wonder if Generation Alpha will keep the game's popularity in play.