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 moments and a wave of content creators have turned a centuries-old game into a Gen Z phenomenon, Axios' Carly Mallenbaum writes.

"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."

📺 Catch up quick: Chess play spiked in 2020, when millions stuck at home rediscovered the game online. The hit Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit" also helped.

• 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.
• There are now popular chess live-streamers (like Rozman, aka GothamChess), chess dating clubs, chess nights at bars, and even chess dates 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.
• Plus, chess grandmasters keep getting younger.

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."

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