How to win chess, according to International Master Levy Rozman

Known to his fans as GothamChess, Levy Rozman has been bringing chess to people through YouTube videos and Twitch streaming. He has amassed 4.3 million subscribers and 1.8 billion views in a career that has involved winning the International Master title and the Best Chess Streamer 2023 award.

Now, he has compiled his chess wisdom into an engaging and accessible book, aptly titled How to Win At Chess. He chats to us about how he got into the game, and why you should too.

Levy Rozman: When I was five, my parents had to sign me up for extracurricular activities at school. I was too hyper! They signed me up to art class and chess class, but I hated art, I was really bad at it. Chess really stuck! I used to hide on the playground from the art teacher, but I would go to the chess class and I’ve been playing ever since.

When I was young I would play against my grandpa, my mom, my dad, I would make the whole family play against me. A lot of people are exposed to chess in some way when they’re young. But there is often no real reason to keep playing it like a sport or other activities. But I ended up sticking with it, playing tournaments and teaching it and now the online stuff.

I think the fact that every game from start to finish is kind of like finishing a puzzle. It felt like a mental challenge, which I really enjoyed. And I liked the fact that you could be small and scrawny, and you can beat like a 40-year-old adult.

There’s this clash of physical size and life experience, and chess kind of completely levelled the playing field. That’s what made it really interesting for me. It probably helped that I was pretty good too—I image if I had lost most of my games, I would not have continued!

In 2020 we saw chess get a little bit more popular when Covid started. I think more people were just locked inside and they needed entertainment, so they would go to YouTube and to Twitch for livestreams and on-demand content. So around that time chess was gaining traction. Then there was a major spike with The Queen’s Gambit. Hundreds of millions of people watched it, so that sparked an interest in chess, and then they would get videos recommended on their sidebar and one was called, “How to play the queen’s gambit” which was a video I had made months before the show was out. So that was the start of the algorithm recommending people chess content. 

In September 2022 there was another big spike when this big cheating scandal started. Hans Niemann was accused of cheating in his match against reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen. There was this meme going round about how a chess player could even cheat, which Elon Musk retweeted and then deleted, and that went completely viral. So that was publicity for chess.

Then in January of this year there was a major spike in short form content, TikTok, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels. In the month of January this year my content was viewed 300 million times. That was like two to three times the size of the Queen’s Gambit spike. 

The Queen’s Gambit was probably the best piece of content that came out with chess as the focus. It wasn’t 100 per cent a carbon copy of a person’s chess career, right? They didn’t show too many losses, as well as the struggles that women actually face in chess. They didn’t show quite as many as they actually do. But it was very well done, and it captivated the average person by the millions. I was gripped by it, for sure.

I think a lot of people are intimidated by chess. A lot of people are like, It’s not for me. The learning curve for chess is steep. I always say just give it a try. Put your ego aside, be prepared to lose. I think if, say, a 40-year-old professional tries to learn chess, you know they’ve had a lot of success in life, they know how to do their job, they’ve raised kids, all this stuff—experiencing something like chess where you lose 70 per cent of the time is not a nice feeling. But if you can get past that it’s great. 

And there’s never been a better time to learn chess. All the learning material, including my book, make it super easy to learn. There’s never been a better time, but people stop themselves because they have preconceived notions that chess is a hermit activity, that you have to lock yourself in a room somewhere and study by candlelight. But it’s not.

If two people were having a conversation and one said, “I’ve been getting into chess recently,” and the other one said, “Do you have a book you’d recommend for a total beginner?” there was sort of no answer. I went through this myself while streaming and making YouTube videos, people would ask about chess books and there just wasn’t really anything out there. A lot of chess books have a really steep learning curve, even for beginners they expect you to know things like chess notation already. 

I thought, Why not take everything I’ve done on YouTube and put it into written form? I wrote this book to be picked up for 15 minutes before bed. You finish a chapter and learn something. And each chapter has QR codes for extra practice, so there’s a digital component to it. 

My biggest accomplishment as a chess player was getting the International Master title, which is the second highest title after Grand Master. It’s pretty rare to get that title in your twenties. If you’re going to get titles in chess, it’s usually when you’re a teenager. Chess is a hard thing to dedicate a lot of time. I never thought I would get the International Master title, I was about 20 and I had quit chess multiple times by then. I set out to get that title completely prepared to fail. One day maybe I’m hoping to become Grand Master but at the moment I’m focusing on other things, like streaming and the book. 

I’ve also just been part of some really cool stuff, like chess boxing last December. I think that was popularised in England actually. It’s where two people play a round of chess, pause the clock, then box for a minute. We did a bit North American event and it was great. Imagine 7,000 screaming fans of boxing ring chess, it’s crazy. You just never imagine that so many people care so much, it’s amazing. 

My number one piece of advice is to put your ego aside and be prepared to lose. You’re going to lose a lot more than you win in the beginning. You have to try and learn one or two things from every game that you play, and that is actually how you will get better. You just have to embrace that you’ll make mistakes and that’s fine. Chess is a lifelong learning journey. 

Also, you could learn some traps that can win you the game in thirty seconds. But that’s a short-term solution!

How to Win At Chess by Levy Rozman (Penguin, £20). Published 24th October.