Becoming The Next Great "Internet's Chess Teacher"

WGM Dina Belenkaya recently reached the major milestone of 250,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel! It was a natural occasion to finally honor her as the Chess.com Creator of the Month. Dina's content is always a hit, whether she is playing and bantering with other chess masters, delivering educational content, or anything else.

Dina recently spoke with Chess.com in a wide-ranging conversation on why she started content creation, the inside story on some of her most successful videos, and much more, including her goals for the future—which could include taking on IM Levy Rozman in the field of educational content.

Editor’s note: Dina is our Creator of the Month for November. Check in later for our December Creator of the Month!

Q: How long have you been creating chess content, and what made you decide to start?

A: It started with the lockdown. I had been curious about content creation earlier, but I was a full-time professional chess player. As COVID hit and all the tournaments got canceled, then I started getting more interested in content creation.

WFM Alexandra Botez, who was already a very established streamer, hosted an event called "Isolated Queens." It was a tournament exclusively for women, with prizes for streamers. It was eye-opening for me, with even more money available than in the professional blitz circuit! That's when I finally bought my first laptop that could handle streaming software and installed cable-optic fiber in my home. I was spending the lockdown with my parents in the Russian countryside, so it was a challenge to install the internet cables out there!

I kept grinding every single day after that, throughout the lockdown and after life came back to normal. In September of 2020, I became a Twitch partner, but in the summer of 2021, I realized that I really needed to invest into YouTube. Long-term, there is more opportunity to grow a channel on YouTube than on Twitch.

Q: Your most popular YouTube video is the one when you played GM Alex Banzea in Romania. Why do you think that one took off in particular, and in general what do you notice about certain types of content that do better than others?

A: YouTube has its own rules, which a creator has to play into to succeed, and those rules favor clickbait. This is very apparent for female creators, who will often show the flirting side of a relationship, expose elements of their private lives, and so on.

For some reason, people also always find it entertaining when a skilled player pretends to be an amateur. All my videos titled "Undercover Grandmaster" usually work well! The one with Alex was my most successful—it got over six million views!

The video was extracted from the Botez Live travel show, and I legitimately did not know Alex at the time. He played his impression of an amateur so masterfully, and I truly believed he was a 1500! I think the authenticity of the moment is why this video is still my most popular ever.

Now, when I play people, I'm constantly thinking about what will and what won't end up on YouTube. If someone comes up to me and I don't know them, but I can see that they're good, I'm already playing into it. Maybe I don't ask their rating at the beginning of the game, but try to guess it in the end, or pretend that I am not really taking them seriously.

Levy, of course, is the most impressive creator in terms of figuring out the best way to do clickbait. And for me, it's always inspiring; I mean it as a compliment if someone knows how to do clickbait content. YouTube is definitely a science and learning to understand the YouTube algorithm is very rewarding.

I mean it as a compliment if someone knows how to do clickbait content. YouTube is definitely a science and learning to understand the YouTube algorithm is very rewarding.

Q: If there's anyone that you haven't collaborated with that you really want to, who would that be? And independent of performance, what's been your favorite collaboration so far?

A: I'd love to face off with Hikaru or Magnus! I think that would be awesome. They are easily the two biggest names I've never played against. It would be also be fun to challenge Levy IRL! Unlike Hikaru and Magnus, I have played Levy before, but it was a Titled Tuesday game—which I won! That led to a very successful recap video.

In terms of my favorite collaborators, everything that I do with Andrea Botez goes so well, and same with WFM Anna Cramling. Anna and Andrea are, for me, like Magnus is for Levy. The latest Botez Camp was a really amazing opportunity to face all these ladies and make so much content together, and I hope we can have that again at some point soon.

Q: You also played GM Hans Niemann a few months before that whole thing exploded. I wonder what that was like at the time and then how your idea of it changed after everything that started to happen with him later.

A: That was also very interesting. It happened early in 2022, so I had only started with YouTube. I was invited to the Grand Prix series to take interviews of the players, and Hans was there as a second to one of the tournament participants.

At the time, Hans was just a retired streamer. We randomly met and I felt like we immediately connected. We had a great chat, bantering and trash talking off camera, and I convinced him to play. We sat down and I recorded two games on my phone, both of which made it into the video. I might even re-upload that video with commentary at some point in the future. 

Hans seemed very nice to me, but I only met him once, which is probably not enough to judge a person. But he was so much fun. I'm curious how things would go if I met him now, after he's become "the bad boy of chess."

Q: You've also come in contact with both of the 2024 FIDE World Championship participants, interviewing GM Ding Liren at the 2022 Candidates, then you played GM Gukesh Dommaraju on camera in 2023. So, I wonder about your creation experiences with them, and if that leads to any thoughts you have about the match.

A: I met Gukesh only a year ago. It was after an armageddon event, and he was just sitting there playing anyone who would come up. Naturally, everybody wanted to play him! I asked his father if I could not only play, but record for a video. He said yes, of course I could—so I played this one game, and that went pretty smoothly!

What I totally did not expect is that later that night, while I was streaming my own games against raffle winners from a club contest, Gukesh showed up completely unexpectedly for another game just to prank me! And so, that night I got not one, but two games with Gukesh.

That goes to show you how humble and personable he was, and I believe he still is. It was awesome meeting him, and knowing now that he might be the next world champion is crazy. 

Ding was also very humble, and maybe just a little bit shy. In general it's always easier for me as an interviewer if the player has certain personality traits like humility or kindness.

Q: Who do you think is going to win that match? [Editor note: This interview was conducted before the match started.]

A: I think Gukesh, but also maybe I hope it’s Gukesh—it's hard to be objective in this case. But the reasons why I would prefer it to be Gukesh, I just think it would be better for chess, and where I stand as a chess content creator, I'm rooting for who would be the best ambassador.

Q: Who are some of your favorite chess content creators, and why?

A: Coming up as a chess content creator, my main inspiration has always been Alex Botez.

This year, I started transforming into more of an edutainer—both education and entertainment. My content used to focus on the entertainment side of things, but my audience also really enjoyed my analysis and advice on viewers' games. That's when the idea of creating my online learning community and training method, the Russian Chess School, was born. Since the pandemic, chess content and streaming is no longer just for entertainment. The bar is now higher as the demand for quality content has risen.

This shift means that I look more after someone like Levy now, and trying to learn from him. He's definitely earned his moniker of "the internet's chess teacher" and has done a whole educational arc that I would like to emulate.

Along these lines, I recently published a video titled "LEARN CHESS THE RIGHT WAY!" which was the longest I've ever worked on a video.

It's a sample of the educational material in my program, condensed into a 13-minute video, but maximizing the amount of information in it. I'm also working on another video for complete beginners. 

I also see similarities between me and Anna, who does a lot of tournament content and over-the-board streams. I stream a lot of tournaments as well, such as at the chess center here in Charlotte every Tuesday, or the recent U.S. Masters.

When creating my educational content I also look at what English teachers or tennis coaches are doing. I've learned that we should absolutely look outside of the chess category to see what's successful in other industries. 

When you're only starting you take after certain role models, but as you become your own person, I think it's important also to evolve into thinking outside of the category.

As you become your own person, I think it's important also to evolve.

Q: I've talked to some other people as part of the series who also mentioned that need to look outside of chess content to help create good chess content. In fact one of those was Phoebe Witte and for the question about who's inspired you were actually one of her people she looks up to for that. And she had also mentioned that she likes to take ideas from other fields of content and then bring it into chess. It definitely seems like a good strategy. [Editor note: WFM Lile Koridze also mentioned this concept in her Creator of the Month article.]

A: Phoebe is amazing. She hosts some of my games when I play IRL, which is super nice. I like that there are people out there who want to collaborate and learn from one another. I think that's why the English-speaking steaming community grew so much: there is a culture of everyone supporting and collaborating with each other.

Q: Is there's anything else that you want to get out there?

A: I'd like to say little bit more about my school. It's an online learning community for adult improvers, anyone from people who don't know how to play chess up to about 2000 Elo on Chess.com. It's a place with all the necessary materials to improve, as well as given people being part of an online community with other people that have busy lives but also want to get better. We host weekly tournaments, do group sessions, Q-and-A's, blitz raffles and more! I have combined everything I learned from a decade of personal experience in teaching and creating chess content into one complete method that can fit anyone!

This path is still new to me, but I'm very excited for it. I can already see how many new people have joined me, just because they are willing to learn. I'm on the road to challenge Levy for his title of the internet's chess teacher!

I'm on the road to challenge Levy to his title of the internet's chess teacher!

Last but not least, I should add that I am still competing and continuing my professional path on the ROAD TO IM! I hope that not only will my audience follow my journey, but also that I can motivate and inspire anyone out there who has their own goals in competitive chess!