New York Post features chess influencer of Romanian origins
The New York Post has profiled American-Canadian chess player and influencer Alexandra Botez, who is “taking the chess world by storm.”
Botez, who is 25, was born in Dallas. She is the daughter of Romanian immigrants who fled the country during communism. Her father started teaching her to play chess when she was six years old.
She won the US Girls Nationals of chess at the age of 15, and she is a Women’s FIDE Master of the International Chess Federation.
Botez studied international relations at Stanford, where she was the first female president of the university’s chess club.
She also co-founded social media company CrowdAmp, which in the meantime ceased operations.
She streams chess matches on the gaming platform Twitch, where she has 450,000 followers. Besides livestreaming games, she shares there personal content with her sister, Andrea, who is 18. She also has more than 250,000 followers on Instagram, while her Youtube channel, BotezLive, has more than 25 million views.
At the end of November, Botez and her sister were interviewed by BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat on what the online chess community is like and how realistic Netflix’s drama The Queen’s Gambit is.
The New York Post feature can be read here. A segment of the BBC interview is available here.
(Photo: Pixabay)
editor@romania-insider.com
