Largely thanks to Netflix's The Queen's Gambit, Chess is experiencing something of a resurgence these days. Celebrities like Logic and Rainn Wilson are participating in online Chess streams, and the Chess.com app has seen its player count explode. Still, for those that don't know the rules of the game, Chess can be at best hard to follow, and at worst be a bore to watch.
It's an experience Chess Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk is starting to become familiar with. Grischuk is ranked number six in the world for his Chess-playing prowess, and during some recent downtime he decided to watch a Dota livestream. Despite Valve's best efforts, Dota can still be a confusing experience for newcomers, and that confusion is exactly what Grischuk experienced.
In an interview with Chess24 the Grandmaster said, "I specially downloaded a coaching video. I talked for half an hour with Nepomniachtchi, because at one time he played Dota semi-professionally … For the three hours that the final lasted I still didn’t understand a thing." Ian Nepomniachtchi, another Chess Grandmaster and former Dota player, seems like they'd be the perfect instructor for Grischuk. However, Grischuk goes on to compare the experience of watching experts play a difficult game like Dota to what non-Chess players must feel when watching the classic board game.
"I got an idea of how it is for people to watch chess," he said. "Of course, the computer can tell you who has a winning position, but it’s only really interesting for a few thousand people who have a certain level of knowledge and skills." In a move that might have helped Grischuk, some Dota players have spent time and money making a Dota tutorial for newcomers in an effort to make the competitive strategy game more accessible. Now with Chess exploding in popularity, both games might just start drawing larger crowds who know exactly what's going on.
Source: Chess24