This boom, including Pogchamps, has been great. First of all, chess has been unapproachable for a long time. You see grandmasters making this move instead of t

This boom, including Pogchamps, has been great. First of all, chess has been unapproachable for a long time. You see grandmasters making this move instead of that and for a beginner there's absolutely zero chance you're going to understand why. Or you see something that looks good, a fork that you think wins material but the GM doesn't play it; you don't understand why it was bad. Sure, you could go into analysis in Lichess but are you going to do that for every single game? Is that fun? Nakamura, Hess and Botez have been doing a great job making it more approachable - at a level anyone can follow. The coaching videos are great to watch, even if you're a slight bit stronger (I'm ~2000 blitz on Lichess). And some of the players - Voyboy in particular - have been getting significantly better over the course of the tournament. You can follow along, get better yourself, and discover the deeper and deeper levels of the game at a tractable pace, and that I think is the key to getting into a new hobby. There's also always been a sense of elitism in chess. The opinion against Pogchamps here[1] shows that: > "If Chess.com wanted to do a show with gamers and streamers, instead of presenting them as fools they should have been respected as the learners they are at chess." Bull. A beginner is NOT a fool, and the only prerequisite to playing chess is knowing the rules. [1] https://www.chesstech.org/2020/is-pogchamps-a-good-way-to-promote/ https://www.chesstech.org/2020/is-pogchamps-a-good-way-to-pr...