Andrea Botez
Bio
Andrea Botez is a Canadian chess player, content creator, entertainer, and superstar streamer. She hosts the incredibly popular Twitch channel BotezLive with her sister, WFM Alexandra Botez.
Chess Career
Andrea learned chess from her father and sister when she was six. She started playing in USChess tournaments at the age of seven. Botez won the U8 Girls Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2010 and was the 2015 Women British Columbia Chess Champion. Andrea also won the Girls U14 category of the Susan Polgar National Open in 2015.
Botez reached her peak FIDE classical rating of 1773 in 2018 and her peak USChess rating of 1933 in 2019. Her Chess.com blitz rating topped at 2065 in May 2020, while her Chess.com bullet rating peaked at 2164 in November 2020—it is safe to say that her abilities are improving.
Andrea describes her playing style as aggressive. Here is an example of Andrea playing her beloved London system versus a strong IM. The game enters an opposite-colored bishop and heavy piece ending, and after her opponent's mistake with 32...Bc2? Andrea takes full control.
She starts eating up pawns left and right and wins the game convincingly while under immense time trouble.
In the next game example, we see Andrea defeating GM Daniel Naroditsky in a 25-second game. She takes down the powerful GM with a 3100+ bullet rating with ease—she uses her favorite opening in this game as well:
Chess Channels
Andrea is one of the hosts of one of the most popular chess channels on Twitch and YouTube. She has become a star content creator and chess personality.
On Twitch, the BotezLive channel has almost 700,000 followers as of March 2021 with more than 6.8 million hours watched throughout 2020. Andrea regularly appears on streams to play chess, solve puzzles, chat, and play other games. Here is a clip of Andrea playing bullet while her sister distracts her:
On YouTube, the BotezLive channel has 292,000 subscribers with close to 46 million views as of March 2021. On their channel, the sisters share selected content from their Twitch stream.
Andrea's success as a streamer attracted the attention of esports organization Envy Gaming. In December 2020, Andrea and Alexandra signed a deal with the Texas-based esports giant to inaugurate the organization's creator network and ambassador program.
Chess.com Content
Andrea has also created content for Chess.com, most notably working as a commentator and coach for PogChamps. Here is a video of Andrea coaching Cizzorz for PogChamps 2:
Andrea has also helped raise funds for COVID-19 relief by participating in the 2020 Zoomers Play Chess team match.
