♟️ Chess suddenly became genuinely cool again thanks to online streaming

Noticed chess coming up in genuinely mainstream conversations lately in a way that honestly did not happen much at all just a few years back, colleagues discussing specific recent tournaments, a cousin's teenage kid actually watching chess streams online for entertainment the exact same way people used to watch gaming streams more broadly previously. Got curious myself and watched a couple of streamed matches recently, expecting something fairly dry and honestly difficult to follow as a genuine casual viewer, but found the actual specific commentary genuinely engaging, breaking down complex moves in a way that made the underlying strategy considerably more accessible than I originally expected going in myself. What strikes me most is how streaming platforms have apparently made the sport considerably more accessible to a genuinely broader casual audience, real time commentary explaining specific strategic thinking behind each move, personality driven content around specific well known players, all of it makes the whole experience genuinely more approachable than simply watching two people silently stare at a static board for hours the way it might have felt previously without that context. A friend who has genuinely played chess seriously and competitively for years said this current surge in popularity has actually brought a whole new wave of younger players into local chess clubs here, something he genuinely never expected to actually witness happening himself after years of the sport feeling relatively niche and fairly overlooked by comparison to more mainstream sports generally. My own nephew has actually started learning chess properly now specifically because of watching these streams himself, which genuinely would not have happened without this particular kind of accessible, engaging online content actually existing and reaching him this specific way in the first place. Has anyone else gotten properly into chess recently through this exact same specific streaming route, and did the actual online commentary genuinely make the underlying strategy meaningfully more accessible for you too as a fairly casual viewer initially?

There is something oddly calming about watching two people quietly think for several minutes before making one single move, in a world where nearly everything else demands an immediate reaction from you constantly all day long without pause. This felt like a completely different pace worth getting used to slowly over a few quiet evenings of just watching it play out.

Watched a full length match online recently purely out of curiosity and the commentary pulled me in far more than I ever expected going in, explaining each individual decision in a way that made the whole thing feel considerably less intimidating than it always seemed from a distance before I ever gave it a proper chance one quiet weekend at home.