Inside minutes of D Gukesh dropping by the wayside in Sport 12 of the World Chess Championship, Hikaru Nakamura is stay on a stream providing his put up mortem of a physique that’s but to get chilly.
Ranked No.3 on the planet, Nakamura completed second on the Candidates event, simply lacking out on being in Gukesh’s chair because the challenger to world champion Ding Liren. Now, because the 18-year-old Indian fights in opposition to the Chinese language grandmaster for an opportunity to turn out to be the youngest-ever world champion, the American grandmaster — who likes to say that his principal occupation is streaming fairly than taking part in chess — is at hand to supply insights into the competition in Singapore.
Sometimes, like when Gukesh rejected a draw supply from Ding and the sport continued longer than anticipated, Nakamura was streaming even whereas the sport was on. Then, for good measure after each sport, his group cuts a separate clip the place he analyses the efficiency of journalists on the post-game press convention.
After ending his stream for Sport 12, Nakamura joins former world champion Magnus Carlsen to type a dream group – or a stream group – to present extra of his views, this time for Carlsen’s new app known as Take Take Take, which was launched simply in time for the World Chess Championship.
Right here, I defined @chesscom ‘s tweet. #DingGukesh pic.twitter.com/tUaJMu0D00
— Hikaru Nakamura (@GMHikaru) December 8, 2024
Carlsen, the person who willingly abdicated the world champion’s throne final yr with no shot being fired on the chessboard, has been at hand to supply his insights on the app after each sport. Some days, his busy schedule doesn’t permit him to look at the complete sport. However he does report these recaps, the place he gives an unsparing and unfiltered opinion of the motion. Amongst Carlsen’s zingers are: “This does seem like a world championship sport, however not a match from this century” and “I used to say that chess gamers must be someplace between optimistic and delusional. This clearly was on the delusional aspect for Gukesh”.
Carlsen isn’t the one former world champion to supply insights on the competition. There’s additionally Vladimir Kramnik, the curmudgeonly Russian, who alternates between doing video evaluation and tweeting concerning the high quality of the continuing match.
After each few strikes, chess legend Susan Polgar posts her views in real-time on X describing how the sport goes: a human analysis bar of types not only for every sport because it takes place, but additionally the general match scenario in a while. As she memorably tweeted after Sport 12: “Somebody please report brutality on the board! The place has this Ding been within the final 2 years? That is Ding’s greatest sport previously 2 years.”
Over on Chess24 livestream, Susan’s sister Judit joins the commentary panel, the place there are already robust grandmasters like Peter Leko and Daniel Naroditsky providing move-by-move commentary.
Chess is a uncommon sport in that sense, the place many of the stay protection may be caught on YouTube streaming fairly than on OTT platforms and tv screens (the uncertainty about how lengthy a sport will final makes it difficult for TV the place broadcast slots should be reserved).
The 2024 World Chess Championship is presumably essentially the most analysed chess match in historical past in actual time. (FIDE by way of Eng Chin An)
Largest conflict ever
However even then, the 2024 world chess championship is presumably essentially the most analysed chess match in historical past in actual time. And for a cause! With the soldiers within the center belonging to the 2 most populous nations on the planet, curiosity within the Gukesh vs Ding battle is at an all-time excessive.
Simply as Carlsen and Nakamura mixed forces for the Sport 12 recap, ChessBase India and chess.com India have been collectively live-streaming video games with stand-up comics like Samay Raina and Biswa Kalyan Rath becoming a member of in, moreover common commentators like Sagar Shah and Tania Sachdev. The joint broadcast has additionally had five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand, Arjun Erigaisi and Anish Giri hopping on nearly throughout broadcasts.
As one of many Ding vs Gukesh video games entered the dreary middle-game section the place issues are inclined to turn out to be glacially gradual, Vidit Gujrathi made an look along with his fiancee Nidhi, simply a few days after the couple had introduced their engagement.
Nearly each ChessBase India and chess.com joint stay stream on YouTube for the 12 video games thus far has touched over 1,000,000 views, with Sport 7 having two million. One of many broadcasts had a peak concurrency on YouTube of two,25,000 viewers throughout Sport 7.
“Sport 7 was by far the best peak concurrency for an Indian broadcast in chess,” Avadh Shah, India Director for chess.com, tells The Indian Categorical. “General, our joint broadcast for the 12 video games of the 2024 World Chess Championship has crossed over 17 million views. In recent times we now have broadcast stay streams for all big-ticket chess occasions, just like the FIDE Candidates and the Chess Olympiad. However viewership for this yr’s occasion surpassed all of them simply.”
Shah provides that the stay broadcast views are along with these for chess.com’s different video content material (together with YouTube Shorts, sport highlights and so forth) for the World Chess Championship, that goes to over 60 million.
For the World Chess Championship, moreover the joint broadcast with Chessbase India (largely in English with a little bit of Hindi), chess.com has tailored broadcasts in 11 languages: English, Arabic, Turkish, Polish, Korean, Portuguese, German, French, Indonesian, Italian and Spanish.
That is moreover the stay broadcast produced by FIDE itself for his or her YouTube web page which has GM David Howell and IM Jovanka Houska with legends like Anand, Hou Yifan and Boris Gelfand as visitors within the middle-game section.
If there weren’t sufficient choices for video recaps, there are additionally streamers like GM Anish Giri, IM Levy Rozman (GothamChess), GM Ben Finegold, GM Aman Hambleton (Chessbrah), GM Arturs Neiksans, FIDE Grasp Nemo Zhou, Epic Chess, and Chess Dojo.
All of those numbers might nicely shoot by the roof if Gukesh turns into the youngest-ever world champion later this week. It is going to be a coming-of-age second for this golden technology of Indian chess gamers.
“However we’re already experiencing the golden technology for chess viewership in India!” Shah notes.
The Indian revolution on the chessboard isn’t being televised like different sports activities. But it surely’s being live-streamed and dissected in nice element, every pawn push at a time.