Trigger Happy
One of the curious consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the enormous explosion in popularity of an esport that is also one of history’s most venerable games: chess.
In March, the royal game started becoming hip on Twitch, thanks to the sterling efforts of elite grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. As quarantine took hold around the world, Nakamura streamed for hours, performing party tricks such as playing blindfold (calling out moves without ever seeing the board), guru xQc hooked on the game too. Quite bizarrely for fans of this normally sedate sport, on May 18 Nakamura was the top English-language streamer on the whole of Twitch. What had just happened?
