With a birthday tomorrow, this week we will be focusing on Alexandra Botez, the Canadian- American chess player and content creator who has made a significant impact on the online chess community. She was born on September 24, 1995, in Dallas, Texas to Romanian immigrant parents, then grew up in Vancouver, Canada.
Botez started playing chess at the age of six and quickly became one of Canada's top junior players. At the age of 8, she won her first Canadian Children’s National Championship. At the age of 12, she played for the National Canadian Team, and she later won 4 more Canadian Youth National Titles.
Around the age of 15, she moved back to the United States and won the US Girls Nationals Championship. Later, she represented the state of Oregon at the SPF Girls’ Invitational. The SPF is the Susan Polgar Foundation Invitational Tournament.
In 2013, at the age of 18, she earned the WFM title - Women’s FIDE Master. All in all, she won 5 national titles as a teenager.
Toward the later part of her college career, she began streaming chess. Due in partial part to the chess boom that occurred during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Alexandra’s channel exploded. She had her sister, Andrea, join her. Together, she has amassed a following of 1.2 million followers on Twitch and 1.3 million on Youtube.
The success of the channel has allowed them to collaborate with various other streamers like Hikaru Nakamura or Qiyu Zhou as well as expand beyond playing chess, by participating in poker tournaments, being elected to the Susan Polgar Foundation board of directors, and being a commentator for the PRO Chess League.
In over the board play, Botez has achieved a peak FIDE rating of 2092. While she has not competed in many traditional over-the-board tournaments in recent years, Botez has had a major impact on the chess community. Her followers helped coin the term ‘The Botez Gambit’ referring to when she would accidentally lose her queen. The phrase is now used across the chess streaming community.
She has also collected several awards as a streamer and commentator including the 2021 Twitch Streamer Award for ‘Best Chess Streamer’ beating out Hikaru Nakamura and GothamChess. As well as winning The Streamer Awards in 2022 and being nominated in 2023.
Overall, Alexandra Botez has made a significant impact on the chess world as both a player and content creator. Her entertaining and educational streams have helped make chess more accessible and popular among a wider audience.
In today’s game we are traveling to the Istanbul Olympiad of 2012 where Alexandra Botez faced Maria Paula De Mey.
Now, if we’re ready… Let’s begin.
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bf4 a6 6. e3 Nc6
7. a3 h6 8. c5 Bd7 9. Bd3 b6 10. b4 g6 11. Qc2 g5 12. Bg3 a5
13. b5 Na7 14. c6 Bc8 15. Ne5 Bd6 16. a4 Bb4 17. O-O Bxc3
18. Qxc3 Ne4 19. Bxe4 dxe4 20. f3 exf3 21. Rxf3 f6 22. Qd3
fxe5 23. Qg6+ Ke7 24. Rf7+ Kd6 25. Qe4 1-0
PGN:
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1684972
Botez Live:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAn8NrZ-J4CRfwodajqFYoQ
https://www.twitch.tv/botezlive
Links: