Hands-on Tutorials

Source code: GitHub
Introduction
_The Queen’s Gambit_ Netflix show depicts Beth Harmon, a Chess prodigy who struggles with drug addiction, conquering a male-dominated chess world. It’s no secret that the global success of The Queen’s Gambit has caused a surge in chess interest. I myself am one of the victims, having been re-inspired to pick up online chess. Inevitably, this has snowballed into a bit of an obsession, having played 375 rapid games in the last month and received 4 chess books for my recent birthday. The effect of this chess craze has also spread through my social circle, with conversations regarding chess shifting from monologues to dialogues and several friends opening the door to their first online chess games ever.
This has lead me to wonder how many others have been bitten by The Queen’s Gambit bug and in particular, how this would be reflected in the popularity of online chess. I expected this would be identifiable through the following metrics:
- An increase in the number of new players joining online chess websites.
- An increase in the number of games played by existing users.
Here, I try to test these hypotheses using the data from chess.com, the internet’s largest chess community with over 28 million members.
Number of new players
The Queen’s Gambit was released in the UK on the 23rd of October 2020. In order to see the impact of this on the number of users joining online chess, I’ll use the chess.com API to download players with the UK flag that have joined within a 4 month window before or after October 23rd. To save time here (there’s >200,000 UK players and it takes ~0.5s to query each profile), I’ve randomly selected 5000 UK players. It’s worth noting that this approach is limited by how accurately a user’s flag reflects a user’s country of residence during the period following The Queen’s Gambit release.

After The Queen’s Gambit UK release (marked with a red dashed line) there’s a dramatic and progressive increase in the number of user’s joining chess.com. Further observation is needed to be sure, but it looks like this explosion in users signing up is still growing to this day.

As a consequence, in total there has been ~7x number of people joining chess.com in the 4 month window after The Queen’s Gambit release compared to before!
The release date of shows on Netflix varies by country. This allows us to explore whether the increase in users joining chess.com correlates with The Queen’s Gambit release date in that specific country. Based off the unofficial Netflix online global search, I selected 3 countries with different release dates and 1 where Netflix is unavailable:
- UK: 23rd October 2020
- Italy: 28th November 2020
- Colombia: 12th January 2021
- China: Netflix unavailable

It seems unclear whether the exact release date of The Queen’s Gambit marks the point when the number of users joining starts to increase in each country respectively. That being said, we can observe a shift in the peak of users joining towards later dates in Colombia, the country with the most recent release date. Interestingly, from the 23rd of October 2020 there is an increase in the number of players joining chess.com for all 4 countries. It’s possible that this may be due to the availability of VPNs and other unofficial methods, which can allow people to access Netflix shows outside of their country of residence. The rate of increase in online chess uptake in China is substantially lower and looks to have plateau’d earlier than the other countries, potentially due to the greater online restrictions present there.
Number of games played by existing users
Although The Queen’s Gambit has gained popularity with the general public as an entertaining TV show, it has arguably been an even greater hit amongst existing chess fans. Even the current world champion Magnus Carlsen has endorsed it’s games.
Above, we explored the number of new players joining online chess. Here, we focus instead on how existing users may have had their interest in chess re-kindled by The Queen’s Gambit. To address this, I’ll be continuing to use the 5000 random UK users obtained above. To ensure that this analysis is not confounded by the increased number of new players joining, I’ve only assessed the users that have joined before September 2020 (i.e. they’ve been part of chess.com for at least a month before the The Queen’s Gambit release). Then, for the 5 month window between September 2020 – January 2021, I’ll obtain the number of games played per month for each user.

From October onwards, there has been a steady rise in the average number of games per player. It’s worth mentioning that as this analysis is not split by time control (e.g. bullet, blitz, rapid etc), there’s a chance that this result could be explained by users shifting towards games with faster time controls.

By normalising the number of games to a proportion across the 5 month window for each user, I investigated how individual players have increased their relative number of games played. Players have progressively increased the frequency of their chess games from November to January, suggesting The Queen’s Gambit has motivated existing users to play more online chess.

Even those taking a hiatus from chess have been nudged to return. By looking specifically at players who had not played a single game in September or October, we hone in on the population who were going through a chess dry spell. Over 55% of these players came back to play at least 10 games in November to January! This suggests that the majority of inactive players had been driven back to chess.com for at least a few games after watching The Queen’s Gambit.
Conclusion
The Queen’s Gambit has seen international success as a Netflix TV show, now being broadcasted in over 25 countries. Here, I demonstrate that the show’s release has been followed by a surge in online chess popularity, which consists of both newcomers beginning their chess journey, as well as existing players being inspired to return to online chess or play more frequently.
Despite observing these trends between The Queen’s Gambit release and online chess statistics, it is important to question the causal relationship between the two. It is likely that watching the show alone does not directly account for the entire increase in online chess popularity; many other factors may be at play. The current COVID situation has left many working from home, with some suggesting that online chess has profited as an outlet. Additionally, chess is by nature a multiplayer game and users lead to chess from The Queen’s Gambit may have propagated their newfound interest to others through their own social networks. Finally, other chess events have occurred around the time frame analysed. For example, the first PogChamps tournament involving popular streamers was hosted in May 2020 by chess.com, which is likely to have spread awareness and garnered appeal for online chess.
Regardless of it’s origin, I’m loving this recent rise in chess popularity. As well as being reminded of my enjoyment of playing chess, there’s been a significant decrease in the number of yawns during my chess related rambles. I believe, to some degree, this is attributed to the The Queen’s Gambit triggering a wave of chess enthusiasm which has spread globally, to both new and existing players.