This boom, including Pogchamps, has been great.<p>First of all, chess has been unapproachable for a long time. You see grandmasters making this move instead of that and for a beginner there's absolutely zero chance you're going to understand why. Or you see something that looks good, a fork that you think wins material but the GM doesn't play it; you don't understand why it was bad.<p>Sure, you could go into analysis in Lichess but are you going to do that for every single game? Is that fun?<p>Nakamura, Hess and Botez have been doing a great job making it more approachable - at a level <i>anyone</i> can follow.<p>The coaching videos are great to watch, even if you're a slight bit stronger (I'm ~2000 blitz on Lichess). And some of the players - Voyboy in particular - have been getting <i>significantly</i> better over the course of the tournament. You can follow along, get better yourself, and discover the deeper and deeper levels of the game at a tractable pace, and that I think is the key to getting into a new hobby.<p>There's also always been a sense of elitism in chess. The opinion against Pogchamps here[1] shows that:<p>> "If Chess.com wanted to do a show with gamers and streamers, instead of presenting them as fools they should have been respected as the learners they are at chess."<p>Bull. A beginner is NOT a fool, and the only prerequisite to playing chess is knowing the rules.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.chesstech.org/2020/is-pogchamps-a-good-way-to-promote/" rel="nofollow">https://www.chesstech.org/2020/is-pogchamps-a-good-way-to-pr...</a>