This week I'm joined by FM Anna-Maja Kazarian. FM Kazarian, as of recording this episode, has over 23,000 Twitch followers, and is signed to the e-sports organization Alliance as a content creator and competitive chess player. She won the Dutch Online Women's Chess Championship in 2021, and has played in several OTB tournaments, trying to bring her rating back to 2300+. She started streaming a little under two years ago and has cultivated a positive, welcoming community on her one-of-a-kind Twitch stream.

Anna-Maja recently played in the World Rapid and Blitz in Warsaw, Poland at the end of 2021, so I asked her a bunch of questions about what it was like to be back OTB around some of the greatest chess players of our time. We then dove into the highs and lows of streaming chess. I also asked Anna-Maja about her thoughts on FIDE declaring 2 ...