Making money with chess

I admit it: I am obsessed with the game of chess. And I am sure I am not alone. First of all, it is something that started recently. Of course I played chess when I was a child. The very basic way, just to learn the rules.

Then I took a very long 30 years break, and towards the end of last year — maybe because the various travel restrictions — I bought a chess set. I did not want to play at home so I planned to bring it to my usual café and hope that someone would have asked me to play.

I didn’t have to wait long. To my surprise I played three different players on the same first day. By now we have a little chess club with some 15 regular players. It was amazing to see how everyone joining our little group would say the same sentence: “oh, chess! I haven’t played since I was a child...”. And they were hooked again into this fascinating game.

So, given that I am quite competitive in anything that I do, I thought of upping my game by watching tons of video tutorials online. I now master the London System opening for white and learning now the Sicilian Defense as well as the King’s Indian Defense for black.

Chess theory sucked me in. It is a bottomless well of knowledge. I love it. And despite the fact that I play mostly for fun (and to win of course) I realised that some Chess Grandmasters made really good money. It came as a shock to me.

While I was watching a Twitch live streaming conducted by one of my favourite teachers I started noticing that some viewers were offering tips to the Grandmaster. Then all of a sudden a $200 tip made my jaw drop.

Until that moment I was too focused on the lesson to care about the tips panel. But when the Grandmaster interrupted the lesson to thank the generous tipper I looked at the tips piling up to over a thousand dollars in less than one hour.

So as business driven as I am, I also offered a tip and then started playing with numbers in my mind to calculate how much could a chess teacher make. Let us start by saying that there might be quite a bit of competition out there, and it might not be a business opportunity easy to take. Also, the amount of knowledge needed is massive.

If you have not started learning chess theory when you were a child and you are in your 40s or 50s, then it might be too late to start now. On top of that, if you like to play, but you get easily bored when watching others play, then probably this is not for you.

But if you can’t wait to watch the next Grandmaster game and memorise the moves that led to a spectacular checkmate, then you could have the great opportunity to make money while playing and teaching your favourite game.

A Grandmaster charges on average $40 per hour teaching chess, but the biggest opportunity comes from online streams in my opinion. If you are great at communicating you could build up your audience quickly and monetise greatly.

[The writer is a Member of the International Press Association]

STEFANO VIRGILLI

stefano@virgilli.com