Stars & Streamers in Spain (Sunway Sitges Day 1)
The Chessable Sunway Sitges 2023 in the lovely Mediterranean town of Sitges, Spain kicked off today with tons of action. I did not know it when we planned the trip but this event is especially notable this year… GM Leinier Dominguez-Perez is playing in order to try and qualify for the 2024 Candidates tournament. On the FIDE live list he is only 0.4 rating points behind Wesley So! I saw him eating earlier but I am no paparazzi so I promise to try to get some quotes from him later in the event! I spent the last five days with my wife in Barcelona “preparing” (really just eating and drinking). If you enjoy this article, head over to my substack and subscribe for all of the inside chess action which I will be building up over the next year!
As for my round, well that was terrible. Not worth sharing but the dinner time was much more exciting. I found my good friend IM Kostya Kavutskiy aka HelloKostya, one of the three main pillars of the Chess Dojo. He was sitting at a table with a few other notable streamers. IM David Pruess, streamer, sensei and another Chess Dojo founder, Alexandra_Chess, streamer and fashion model and Jules Gambit, streamer and ballerina.
I made them all give me a quote for, you, the people:
Alexandra - “You can practice Spanish with me” A very kind offer from a native speaker! She is from Bolivia and speaks very good English.
Kostya - “It’s all bravas” - Apparently he really likes the patatas bravas (spicy potatoes)
David - “I had 3 mate in 1s and somewhere around 8 mate in twos… my opponent was still sort of playing like the game was still going…” Never give up, never surrender! Unless you well have to turn the clock off because it is mate…
Jules - “Why am I playing chess?” Now, this is fully out of context as the sunset was so absolutely gorgeous that everyone was distracted for a few minutes during their games.
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I absolutely love this community of chess streamers bringing the fun that we all experience during tournaments to you at home! I met one of the festival organizers, Oskar Stober, and he had this to say about the streamers:
Oskar - “It is exposure for the tournament. Streamers have followers, subscribers so your reach is much wider than just players… It’s good for the tournament. Also, they are doing a good job for chess. Chess is a big game and there are many people playing but compared to other sports it’s not that big. So if you get people talking about it and building big communities reaching other kinds of players…”
Sunway is doing it right! Oskar knows where the beating heart of chess is and it’s the average player. Yes, we love our big brained superheroes but chess will not break out and continue this meteoric rise in worldwide popularity without building up the entire ecosystem. Streamers and media in general have their work cut out!
Since my game was so bad I’ll leave you a minute of IM Kavustkiy showing his winning opening and Alexandra moving the Black pieces. I call it "Hands moving Pieces" Ain't it beautiful!
GO HERE as I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO EMBED HAHA
Make sure to follow for more action to come over the next 10 days including a potential screening of my film King Chess!
