It's a great time to be a chess fan which, let's face it, is the ultimate retro game!

The Chess community is thriving on Twitch in recent years with a huge uptaken viewership with over 8,000,000 views in May of this year.

5-time US Chess Champion Hikaru Nakamura has been instrumental in the surge, streaming Chess matches on his channel with over 400,000 followers. He also coaches other streamers such as xQc, Nate Hill, and BoxBox who were all a part of the Chess.com's Pogchamps Tournament Series that took place in June.

StreamElements CEO Doron Nir made a statement saying "Twitch has a long history of chess players dating back to its earliest days, but it wasn’t until 2017 when they partnered with Chess.com that they most prominently embraced the game of kings,", “Since then the game has enjoyed moderate growth, yet nothing compares with the rise it experienced in recent months when some of the top streamers, such as xQc, Reckful, and LIRIK, streamed it. While the chess community has achieved a lot of success on its own, this latest move illustrates the power of influencers to broaden the appeal of a brand.”

Other streamers like Moistcr1tikal brought huge numbers of the game, but it's not just all chess tournaments. Streamer IMHansNiemman not only stream chess matches online, but he also streams live chess matches in the park with one of his clips surpassing 300,000 views.

So if you're a chess fan and you haven't discovered the mass of community on Twitch, go check it out with the link below:

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Chess

What are some of your favorite games to watch on Twitch?