11 Chess Influencers Sharing Their Moves, Strategies

While chess has been around since the 16th century, “The Queen’s Gambit” took Netflix by storm in October 2020 when it became Netflix’s biggest scripted limited series with 62 million views. Chess has quite the following on social media as well, with chess influencers all over TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. On TikTok alone, #chess has 2.3 billion views.

11 of the best chess influencers showing their next moves

Anna Rudolf

Anna is a chess influencer on Twitter who is also a chess broadcaster and variety streamer. She’s accrued almost 90K followers on Twitter by sharing her commentary on playing chess online. She also has a Twitch where you can also find her playing chess games.

Andrea and Alexandra Boetz

The Boetz sisters, Andrea and Alexandra, are a chess duo you don’t want to miss. They are most active on YouTube, where they have gained 809K subscribers. They have hundreds of videos of them playing other top chess players and even challenging each other.

Anish Giri

Anish is a Chess Grandmaster who posts on both Instagram and YouTube. Anish’s YouTube channel is filled with videos of him playing chess (both in-person and virtually) with other players around the world. He has also been named Dutch No. 1 chess player and in the top 10 in the world.

Ilyina Lada

Ilyina is an 18-year-old Russian chess player who gives many strong chess players a run for their money. She shares her chess journey, both good and not-so-good, with her 242K TikTok followers.

Levy Rozman

Levy makes videos for his channel, Gotham Chess. He’s an International Master from New York City, making different playlists including openings, strategy, rating climb, tactics guides, and recaps of big tournaments. He has 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.

Alexandra Prado

Alexandra is another chess player who loves sharing her fun chess videos on TikTok. Her videos include different chess plays, videos challenging other players, and other chess-related content.

Magnus Carlsen

World Chess Champion Magus Carlsen shares his chess videos with 722K subscribers on YouTube. He is also the highest-ranked chess player in the world and a former (live) No. 1 Fantasy Premier League player. This expert’s videos are about chess tournaments, personal updates, and chess tutorials. Fun fact: Magnus was introduced to chess at 5 years old!

Hikaru Nakamura

Grandmaster Hikaru takes to TikTok to share his chess-pertise and his virtual chess competitions with his 33K followers. He’s a five-time U.S. Chess Champion and often shares games and commentary on Twitch, too.

James Weber

James Weber is one of the most popular TikTok chess players and had one of the first chess videos to go viral. In his video, he pretended to be playing chess with his girlfriend and references chess master Eric Rose. He has almost 200K followers and continues to put up fun chess content on TikTok.

Sam Shankland

Sam is a chess influencer on Twitter with just over 20K followers. Sam is an American Chess Grandmaster and 2018 U.S. Chess Champion. You can expect tweets about his personal life as well as plenty of chess content for those who want to keep learning from one of the best.

Viswanathan Anand

With almost 630K followers on Twitter, Viswanathan is one of the most popular Twitter chess influencers. He is an Indian chess grandmaster and five-time world chess champion. He became the first Grandmaster from India in 1988!