Chess crazy: TV shows, schools, clubs and fashion all grab a piece of the game
Share:
As a new BBC show with Sue Perkins brings the game back to the small screen, it’s also winning legions of young fans. Castling. The Berlin defence. En passant. If you haven’t heard these terms, chances are you soon will. School chess clubs are booming, new apps are capturing a gen-Z audience and stone chess boards have been installed in parks across the country.
![[Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, left, and Anya Taylor-Joy from The Queen’s Gambit.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4adf0947fcd401b4f5af4fb9bd664e8ac6bea580/0_120_3600_2160/master/3600.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
This year, a chess competition show comes to the BBC: Sue Perkins and The Traitors star Anthony Mathurin will present Chess Masters, in which 12 players battle it out. Chess is already a big spectator sport on other platforms, such as Twitch. World No 1 Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian grandmaster, recently co-founded the chess-viewing platform Take Take Take, which aims to get casual players engaged in tournament broadcasts and is hugely popular with gen Z. Carlsen has 1.7 million followers on Instagram and his social media channels are making the game more accessible. There are now live streams on YouTube with expert commentators using the gap between moves to explain the process and options of the players.
“It’s remarkable,” said Malcolm Pein, chief executive of Chess in Schools and Communities, which aims to increase the number of children playing the game in state schools. “TV is a huge factor. In the way that darts and snooker were immensely popular but never that big until they were on the telly, the same is happening with chess.”.
The 2020 Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, was widely credited with a boom in the game. Pein said: “People are starting to look at the game and all the interesting stories like cheating – which quite honestly is completely exaggerated – but it has given the game a colossal publicity boost.”.
