With the emergence of chess content creators like Gotham Chess and Samay Raina, it is very much clear that you don’t need to be a Super GM to create quality chess content. People love these creators for the entertainment they bring into their lives.
But if you are good at chess and you know how to entertain and help people in getting better at chess, the perks are even higher, and for that reason Gotham Chess today is the #1 chess channel on Youtube.
Check out a video below Illustrating top chess content creators on Youtube from May 2007 till July 2023:
Top 10 Chess Content Creators on Youtube in January 2024:
- Gotham Chess (4.49 Million Subscribers)
- GMHikaru (2.21 Million Subscribers)
- ChessTalk (1.62 Million Subscribers)
- Chess.com (1.61 Million Subscribers)
- ChessBase India (1.44 Million Subscribers)
- BotezLive (1.42 Million Subscribers)
- Agadmator (1.31 Million Subscribers)
- Samay Raina (1.24 Million Subscribers)
- Magnus Carlsen (1.12 Million Subscribers)
- Thechesswebsite (631 Thousand Subscribers)
Best Chess Youtube Channels By Category:
1. For Game Reviews
Agadmator is clearly the undisputed champion in the area of game reviews among chess content creators.
Anyone who is in any chess community online knows Agadmator very well. His real name is Antonio Radić, and he is a Youtuber from Croatia, having more than 1.31 million subscribers.
Currently, his chess videos are watched over 727,546,365 times on Youtube.
He is creating Youtube chess content since times people still believed that chess can only be learned from books.
And not being a GM or a strong IM, Agad like many other chess content creators is a victim of chess elitism.
His current rating is 1961 in standard chess. But who cares when people are watching and supporting his great chess content online. 🙂
2. Content On Learning Chess
Saint Louis Chess Club is one of the top chess educational channels on Youtube. They have a broadcast studio where many top chess players are invited to share their knowledge of chess.
The city of Saint Luis is known as the Chess capital of the United States of America and the Saint Luis Chess Club there has a playing hall where many top chess tournaments are organized every year.
Rex Sinquefield is the founder of the club and he chose the promotion of chess in his hometown as a retirement project after making a fortune pioneering stock market index funds.
Saint Louis Chess club joined Youtube on Sep 14, 2011, and they currently have more than 131,336,191 views on their channel.
Tournaments At Saint Louis Chess Club:
Among many top chess tournaments played at the Saint Luis Chess Club, the most elite of them is the Sinquefield cup.
Grand Chess Tour is a circuit of Chess tournaments to attract top chess players through the highest media attention and grandest prizes in Chess. It was started in 2015 and big tournaments like Norway Chess, the Sinquefield Cup, and the London Chess Classic are a part of it.
The best thing about the Grand Chess tour is that all the elite players play there and rarely a player from the top 10 ranked players in the world is missing there.
This circuit of chess tournaments has an overall prize fund and the top three players who collect the most tour points across all the grand chess tour events receive extra prize money, taken from the Grand Chess Tour prize fund.
And among all the chess events that take place in the Grand Chess Tour, the Saint Luis Classical, Blitz and Bullets are the tournaments that generate the most amount of prize money.
Below is a list of Grand Chess Tour winners since the inauguration of the circuit in 2015:
| # | Year | Winner |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2015 |  Magnus Carlsen (Norway) |
| 2 | 2016 |  Wesley So (United States) |
| 3 | 2017 | Magnus Carlsen (Norway) |
| 4 | 2018 | Hikaru Nakamura (United States) |
| 5 | 2019 |  Ding Liren (China) |
| 6 | 2021 | Wesley So (United States) |
| 7 | 2022 |  Alireza Firouzja (France) |
3. Content On Chess Strategy
When it comes to Strategy, the top 2 chess content creators are Gotham Chess and Daniel Naroditsky.
Do go through the playlist of Gotham Chess and you will find videos that are really helpful in learning chess.
Personally speaking, his videos helped me go above the 1500-1600 mark on chess.com and get to 1850, where I couldn’t stabilize for longer but my rating is still fluctuating in a +1700 range.
The thing that attracted me the most to Daniel Naroditsky’s channel is the speed run he played.
Unlike the usual speed runs other players play, his one was more of an educative speed run where he played the games and also explained them move by move during and after the games.
With every benchmark of rating achievement, Dani explained the good and bad chess openings for each level of play.
And watching him play was both entertaining and helpful in learning chess strategy and overall chess.
Some Other Chess Content Creators To Follow:
If you are looking for entertainment from the highest of levels, Anish Giri and Vidit Gujrati are also regular streamers of Chess.
Anish’s humor is 2nd to none and Vidit is an example of a nice guy who respects everyone but not on the chessboard 😀
That’s all in top chess content creators on Youtube.
