Alexandra Botez is an American-born Canadian chess prodigy, Twitch streamer and YouTuber who holds the title of Women’s Chess Grandmaster.
Wiki/Biography
Alexandra Botez was born on Sunday, September 24, 1995 (25 years old in 2020) and is from Dallas, Texas, United States. When she was very young, her family fled from Bucharest, Romania to Vancouver, Canada. Alexandra’s father, an engineer, began teaching her to play chess when she was six years old. While sharing her childhood memories, Alexandra revealed that her father once claimed that he could train Alexandra to play chess in two weeks, after which she would be able to beat her mother. She said,
“My mom knew a little bit of chess. So he made a bet that he could teach me chess, and in just two weeks, I would be able to beat her.”
Amazingly, Alexandra managed to beat her mother, which made her father realize that she had some special skills in chess. Eventually, her father began taking Alexandra to local parks to challenge veteran players. Later, her family moved to Oregon, USA, and she attended Clackamas High School. At school, she was a member of the CHS chess team, which was named the overall champion of the varsity division of the Oregon High School Chess Association (OSAA) Championship. After that, she pursued a Bachelor of Arts degree at Stanford University in California, where she studied International Relations with a focus on China. At Stanford, Alexandra was the first female president of the school’s chess club. In 2017, after graduating from Stanford, she began her journey as a chess anchor.
appearance
Height (approximate): 5′ 4″
Hair color: dark brown
Eye color: Black
Family and Race
Her parents are from Romania, having fled the communist country and sought political asylum in Canada. Her father, Andre Botez, was a coach and international referee, a title given by the International Chess Federation to individuals who can referee at major chess tournaments. Her sister, Andrea Botez, and Alexandra live stream their games and personal content on the gaming platform “Twitch”.
Alexandra Botez and her family
Profession
As a chess player
She is the champion of the Canadian Youth Chess Championship in the girls 10 and under category.
Alexandra Botez holds the Canadian Junior Chess Championship trophy
At the age of ten, she began participating in Susan Polgar Foundation (SPF) events and represented Oregon twice at the prestigious SPF Women’s Invitational. Alexandra has represented Canada in three Chess Olympiads. At the age of fifteen, she won the U.S. Women’s National Championship. In 2013, she won the Women’s Chess Federation Championship after qualifying in the North American Women’s Under-18 Championship. She has played for the Canadian National Team and has been a five-time Canadian Women’s National Champion.
Enterprise field
In June 2015, she joined Samsung Electronics in Beijing, China as an analyst intern. After three months of internship at Samsung, she worked at ZhenFund in Beijing for four months. During her internship in China, she created several portals, which are now defunct. During her summer fellowship, she joined Lightspeed Venture Partners in California. In January 2016, she co-founded CrowdAmp, a social media platform that uses artificial intelligence to enable more personalized communication between social media stars and their fans. At the same time, she also created her own YouTube channel “BotezLive”. After three years of running the startup, Alexandra disbanded CrowdAmp and moved to Manhattan’s East Village to pursue chess live streaming as a full-time career.
As a live chess broadcaster
In 2017, Alexandra created her own YouTube channel “BotezLive” and a show on Twitch of the same name, dedicated to broadcasting chess content. After her startup CrowdAmp failed to succeed, she began live streaming chess games on Twitch. In September 2019, she moved to the East Village in New York City and dedicated herself to live streaming and producing content for chess.com. In 2020, Alexandra and her sister Andrea began live streaming. They often collaborate with other popular chess streamers on BotezLive, such as GM Hikaru Nakamura and WGM Qiyu Zhou.
With people being forced to stay home due to the coronavirus outbreak, there isn’t much competitive sports to watch. As a result, chess has become a popular show on Twitch. The pandemic has worked in Alexandra’s favor, and she has become one of the most popular chess streamers on Twitch. She has over 300,000 followers on Instagram, and her YouTube channel, BotezLive, has been viewed over 25 million times.
Salary and Net Worth
She makes a six-figure salary every year playing chess on Twitch.
Facts/Trivia
- Although Botez received a full chess scholarship to the University of Texas at Dallas, she decided to study international relations with a focus on China at Stanford.
- As of September 2020, Botez is one of the top ten female chess players in Canada, with a FIDE Elo rating of “2020” and a FIDE Elo rating of “2059” for rapid chess.
- In April 2020, she became the 11th member of the SPF board of directors. In December 2020, she signed with Team Envy, an American esports franchise based in Dallas, Texas, owned by Envy Gaming.
- Because Botez is a popular chess influencer, she is often compared to Beth Harmon, the fictional chess prodigy from the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit.
- She speaks five different languages, English, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and German.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education