Chess is having a moment. There are more people at home learning and playing online, and more people loving The Queen’s Gambit on TV — and that means we’re talking about it on Hustle and Pro. Frisco resident Suad Bejtovic enlightens us on the calculated, intriguing global chess scene, from Twitch streamers to tournament shutdown and showdowns.

Enjoy this episode and other episodes of Hustle and Pro in our archives.

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Show Notes

[02:09 ] Popularity Surge of Chess

[04:47 ] Candidates Tournament

[09:14 ] Content Creators & Characters

[18:37 ] Local Chess Clubs

[20:39 ] Cheating

[27:23 ] Tournaments

Resources within this episode: 

• Suad Bejtovic: Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn


• US Chess Federation: Website


• World Chess Championship: Website


• Frisco Chess Club Website | 64 Squares USA


• Kelly Walker: Bio | Instagram @kelly_walkertexas |  Twitter: @kelly_walker_TX

Connect with Lifestyle Frisco: 

• Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn 

Transcript: (machine-generated)

Welcome to Hustle & Pro, Season 2, talking sports and Frisco from youth to pro. Now here’s your host, Kelly Walker.

Welcome to this episode of Hustle & Pro. I’m your host Kelly Walker. And we have our friend, Suad Bejtovic with us. He’s going to school us on all things going on in the world of chess right now. So there’s actually a lot to talk about. I’m really excited. Suad, you have all the info for today. You’re going to, you’re going to kind of, you know, kind of drive this bus because you know all the good stuff all I’ve done is watch a documentary or two and played a few games of chess on my phone. You’re way ahead of me obviously. And so I want to hear about that. I want to hear your, your life in chess. And then, let’s talk about a couple of the pop culture things happening and why everybody else seems to be talking about chess lately too.

Absolutely. I mean it’s kind of interesting to mention that, you know, your podcast is related to sports. So some might ask, you know, “Why are we talking about chess?” Is chess a sport?” And that’s like a question that we’re not going to touch these days, because it’s a very contentious one out there in the world. Even some of the best players out there say that chess is not really a sport because there’s not an athletic component. But then there’s research that says, you know, players lose five pounds you know, in the course of one game because of all the brain activity and calories that they burn just by thinking. So, you know, there are aspects of, of all of that. And definitely there’s a competition aspect which we’ll talk about quite a lot today

I mean I do think it’s a sport. I don’t think all sports have to be physical. Right. There’s a lot of things that we do that we compete. I see it more of the competition side of it. Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t think, I, I’m not saying chess players are athletes, but I do think chess is a, is a sport.

Yes. And it, it’s interesting, you mentioned that because in their preparation for the grueling schedule that they usually have, a lot of chess players actually watch what they eat. They exercise. I mean, they, they have to keep in shape simply because it actually, it requires so much effort mentally to, to play chess.

All right so start us off with- I don’t know, like what, what’s the phenomenon lately that people like me who are- I wouldn’t even say I’m a casual chess player. Like I’m not even that, but you know, and this last year it’s on my radar. – So why is that?

Well unfortunately one of the main reasons is because of the pandemic and a lot of people are just kind of stuck in their homes with not much to do. Right. however, before I get to that, I want to kind of rewind a few more years because over the last we’ll even say 5 to 10 years chess has been growing in popularity, especially on online streaming platforms, YouTube and Twitch in particular because it lends itself so good to online presentation. You have websites where you can play chess: chess.com and lichess.org are the most popular. And then all the best players in the world play on those chess sites. There are millions of other people all across the world who are members of those sites. So it’s actually relatively easy to just go online, pick up a game of chess and and play.

In addition to all of that there’s been a surge of content creators which are usually really strong chess players in our last international masters or gen- grandmasters. And they put out videos where they talk about, I don’t know, a certain opening, or they maybe analyze a certain game, or they may be talk about a current event that might be going on in the world of chess. So chess has been kind of gaining steam especially last year. Chess.com in particular, the website, that’s probably the biggest one. They got a lot of chess personalities to kind of come on board and help them promote chess as a game. And it just exploded in popularity just because there were so many more people that, that were playing it.

I see the irony there. This is a game that is played on a board, right? Traditionally, yes.

For the last couple of thousand years, right?

Yeah. So you go from this traditionally in-person, you know, one person, one person game on a board to what I’m hearing you say is now they’ve made it accessible because of making, making it digital and accessible. And they’ve just jumped on board with like getting in engagement from people online. So it’s, it’s made the leap

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s kind of, again, unfortunate that you know, the regular chess that we are used to, which which most people would call OTB or over-the-board when, you know, two players are, you know, looking over the board at their pieces is almost non-existent. But before I go any further, I have to mention that last year in 2020 in March the last event that got canceled – actually they started the event and then they canceled it halfway through – was the, the tournament to determine the challenger to the world champion. It’s called the Candidates Tournament because all of those guys are candidates for to be the challenger.

So, so that tournament determines who gets to challenge the reigning champion,

Correct. Yeah. That’s kind of the system that that the world of chess has and when the pandemic started, the tournament was in in Russia and they kind of decided to kind of stick around as long as they can and play as many games as they can. But once the flights started shutting down and everything else the players kind of had to, had to bolt and that tournament was interrupted literally halfway through – exactly halfway through. And there was an interesting tidbit of information because one of the players decided that he was not comfortable playing in the tournament because they, they were seeing the, the virus kind of starting to spread and he decided to withdraw. So they replaced him with another guy. So the, the first guy, his name is Radjabov and they replaced him with a French player Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

And so halfway through the tournament, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave is leading the tournament. I think he’s the co-leader with a couple of others. And meanwhile, they stopped a tournament and Radjabov is like, “Hey, you know, if you’r