Alexandra Botez

Alexandra Valeria Botez (born 24 September 1995) is an American-Canadian chess player and commentator, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber.

As a player, she became a five-time Canadian National Girls Champion and won the U.S. Girls Nationals at age 15.

She achieved her highest FIDE Elo rating of 2092 in March 2016, and she currently holds the International Chess Federation title of Woman FIDE Master.

In 2004, Botez won her first Canadian children's national championship at age eight.

She eventually played for the National Canadian Team in 2010 and won four more Canadian youth national titles.

After moving back to the United States, Botez won the U.S. Girls Nationals at age fifteen and twice represented the state of Oregon in the SPF Girls' Invitational.

In 2013, Botez achieved the Woman FIDE Master title norm.

After attending high school in Oregon, Botez earned a full-ride chess scholarship to the University of Texas at Dallas.

However, deciding to prioritize academics, she chose to study International Relations with a focus on China at Stanford University.

During her sophomore year in 2014, Botez became the second female president of the Stanford University Chess Club after Cindy Tsai in 2005.

Botez began streaming online chess content in 2016 while she was a student at Stanford University, stating that in her first stream a majority of viewers were not interested in chess, but in her appearance.

Paired with her younger sister Andrea Botez, she now manages the BotezLive Twitch and YouTube channels, which both have over 1 million followers.

Botez has publicly detailed her encounters with sexism and misogyny in tournament chess and has advocated for greater gender diversity.

As a prominent female chess figure, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the Susan Polgar Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit aiming to promote chess, with all its educational, social, and competitive benefits throughout the United States, for young people of all ages, especially girls.

Botez was born to Romanian immigrant parents.

Although she was born in Dallas, Texas, she was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Botez's father introduced her to chess and started training her when she was six.

She eventually became a member of the Romanian Community Centre chess club, Golden Knights, coached by Chess Master Valer Eugen Demian.

In 2016, Botez started streaming chess content on Twitch during her junior year at Stanford University.

In the 2016 Chess Olympiad held in Norway, she showcased her attacking style against opponent Anzel Solomons.

During this match, Botez, playing as White, offers to exchange her rook for Solomons' knight on move 20.

She graduated in 2017.

In addition to her chess career, Botez served a brief stint as a chess commentator.

In 2017, Botez co-founded CrowdAmp, a social media company.

She covered the 2018 and 2019 PRO Chess League Finals, the most popular team chess championship, along with IM Daniel Rensch, IM Anna Rudolf, and GM Robert Hess.

As of May 2019, that company has ceased operations.

Botez has a FIDE Elo rating of 2020 in standard chess and 2059 in blitz, placing her in the top 10 of Canadian female players.

Her channel quickly gained traction, and in 2020 she was joined by her younger sister Andrea Botez.

Together, they host the BotezLive Twitch and YouTube channels, which have garnered more than 2,700,000 followers combined.

The sisters frequently collaborate with other chess streamers on the platform, such as GM Hikaru Nakamura and WGM Qiyu Zhou.

While they mainly stream chess content on their Twitch channel, they are almost exclusively streaming in the "Just Chatting" category, refusing to use the "Chess" category of the platform.

This is also something, GM Hikaru Nakamura has talked about as being "damaging to the chess community" in the past.

Botez's streaming popularity has helped her become one of the most recognizable faces on the Chess.com platform.

In response to her prominence as a female chess player, the mainstream media often compares Botez to the fictional Beth Harmon, protagonist of The Queen's Gambit.

In April 2020, Botez was elected to the board of directors of the Susan Polgar Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization that advocates for breaking gender barriers in chess.

Within the past eighteen years, the Susan Polgar Foundation has assisted in offering more than $6 million in chess scholarships and prizes to students.

In December 2020, the Botez sisters signed with the Texas-based esports organization Envy Gaming.

By partnering with the Botez sisters, Envy hopes to expand its ambassador network with diverse gaming content creators.

Botez made $456,900 on a poker live stream on May 1, 2022, presented by the Hustler Live Casino which featured fellow streamers along with poker pros.

Botez often plays chess with an aggressive, adaptive style of play.