Live data from Hacker News

The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

newyorker.com

111–120 of 148 posts

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#111
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Hikaru would be (as of today) 6/8 among the Candidates in classical ELO, as the world #11 in live ratings. If anything, Hikaru is probably underrated ; he gained around 20 ELO points in the two Grand Prix legs. Like the OP, I'll disclaim being a Hikaru apologist; but he is world #1 in blitz and world #2 (briefly #1 this year) in rapid rating, which is why, for example, http://universalrating.com/ratings.php…

Who is he higher than? He's tied for last as of current ratings on the fide website, or does that not yet include results from grand prix round 3? (Which would put him ahead of Teimor and Duda, presumably) > seems his strategy is just to survive the openings and then try to outplay or flag people later on, which is a surprisingly viable strategy. This doesn't work when people are both stronger middlegame players than…

As sibling comment says, he's higher than Duda + Radjabov in live ratings now.

It's just not obvious to me that any of your statements about the other players being so much stronger than Hikaru are true. It's really hard to objectively estimate his classical playing strength because he just didn't play for two years and the rating has been volatile since he started playing again, but (for example) he played 4 classical games with Levon Aronian between the two legs with a +1 -1 =2 score, and +2 -0 =0 in rapid tiebreaks. Aronian is a roughly 2780 player, world #5, likely to be the strongest player who missed candidates. Hikaru also scored 50% in classical Grand Prix matches with Wesley So and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, two other strong top-10 players.

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#112

He's live right now[1] going through this New Yorker article line-by-line. Offering some great clarifications, context, etc. The internet is great. 1- https://www.twitch.tv/gmhikaru

I missed it although I'm curious what he said. Do you mind summarizing a bit?

He literally doesn't even care

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#113
post #102
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty close to my list as well. For me it's GothamChess > Agadmator > Hikaru. I don't care about the Botez sisters. But I watch only on Youtube. 1. GothamChess is the most educational and entertaining. The video format also varies quite a bit which helps. 2. Agadmator is less entertaining than Gotham, but very consistent. 3. Hikaru is of course very strong, but sometimes he doesn't care about explaining what…

I can't handle Agadmator because he skips so many important moves without analysis, and when he does provide analysis it's not very insightful. I think he's just a weaker player than the others. Levy (GothamChess) is a much better player, although it's tedious that a lot of his content is silly stuff like laughing at beginner games. He also tilts really hard which makes me feel really bad because I just want to sit d…

Agadmator shouldn't really be seen as a game analyst, he just reads out the PGN and has the computer going in the background. His content is mostly directed towards casual chess players (or not even chess players at all, just youtube watchers interested in chess) who want to keep up with some more interesting & current high level games.

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#114
post #98
post #35

People suggesting other chess channels misunderstand what Hikaru is about. It's about the memes, chat spam and interaction with other non-chess streamers. He's part of a bigger Twitch community of streamers that has become like its own reality show.

Do they? Not necessarily. That's quite a generalisation. I get the humour, it's just not my cup of tea.

What I mean is that it's wrong to compare Hikaru to other chess channels. I don't watch him to get better at chess and I wouldn't be surprised if most viewers have no actual interest in chess. If they are it definitely makes sense to check out the channels in this thread but for me, as a casual Hikaru viewer, they are something else.

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#115

His chat isn't very active, i checked chess.com, they feature embeds of livestreams, legal viewbotting, that puts things in perspective Similar to Fextralife, and how they use their gaming WIKI website to feature their livestream and inflate the viewership on Twitch This should be against the TOS imo

This is odd to read because his chat moves pretty quick from what I have seen, in line with streams of similar size. Lots of memes and emote spam.

But in general I agree with you, the embeds can be easily abused and distort the popularity of streamers on twitch, giving some an unfair advantage. In an industry where success depends heavily on the number of eyeballs on your content and where twitch itself prioritizes larger streams it is unacceptable in my opinion. Long term it directly undermines the natural growth of developing streams, the process that has given us a rich and dynamic twitch community in the first place. The topic deserves an article if it hasn't been written about already.

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#116
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he's fun. People like him (and Magnus, and the Botez sisters) because they are fun. On Twitch, the most successful players almost never have the most viewership.

Tangential question, but did the Botez sisters ever make a 180 on their seeming apologism regarding Saudi slavery practices?

Is that important?

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#118
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And he's fun. People like him (and Magnus, and the Botez sisters) because they are fun. On Twitch, the most successful players almost never have the most viewership.

Tangential question, but did the Botez sisters ever make a 180 on their seeming apologism regarding Saudi slavery practices?

They did

Re: The most popular chess streamer on Twitch

#120

He's live right now[1] going through this New Yorker article line-by-line. Offering some great clarifications, context, etc. The internet is great. 1- https://www.twitch.tv/gmhikaru

I missed it although I'm curious what he said. Do you mind summarizing a bit?

I wish I could provide a useful summary, but I had it on while I was prepping for a meeting so I wasn't really paying attention. I was more surprised at my timing of seeing it on HN, searching for his twitch profile, and then right then he was going through the article I had open in another tab.

I think if you're a subscriber (I'm not) you can replay his stream from earlier.

I do remember he said somethings like...

> 'the chess stuff that they're talking about isn't 100% accurate, but close enough. No one will know/care about that who's reading the article'

> 'it seems the things they're quoting they've pulled from previous streams'

Post reply on HN