Rozman's appearance in Hamburg was the kick-off and a test run for Rozman's European tour, which begins in May and will make stops in Brussels, London, Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Warsaw.
In London there is room for 1, guests, while in Hamburg, at the St. The audience, which Rozman described as "the best crowd I have ever had", was a mixed bag: young and old, adults, children, women and men - everyone was there.
In the show, moderated by the well-known chess journalist Fiona Steil-Antoni, Rozman did what makes him so successful on the internet: he chatted in a relaxed but energetic, funny, entertaining, self-confident but with a touch of self-irony way about chess and his successes and failures. Rozman invited Georgios Souleidis and Jan Gustafsson as guests. Souleidis, "The Big Greek", is Germany's most successful streamer, and so the two of them talked about the chess city of Hamburg, clickbaiting, their careers as streamers, the positive consequences of the coronavirus pandemic for their YouTube channels and how the internet has changed the chess world.
Internet stars like Rozman and Souleidis didn't exist before. But they and other chess streamers have brought the game to a wider audience and created a much larger community of chess fans and enthusiasts. In the past, if you wanted to play chess, you had to join a club and play in a club. Today, if you want to play chess, you can join a club, but you can also play, train or watch good players analyse their moves on the internet at any time of the day or night.
The numbers show how many chess fans are not currently in a club: Souleidis' YouTube channel has , subscribers, while the German Chess Federation, according to Statista, had "only about 95, members" in The crowd saw "Gotham Chess" as the favourite, but a technical glitch meant that the game had to be abandoned before it could even begin. However, Rozman and Souleidis proved to be professionals here too, playing over the technical mishap with some light-hearted banter.
