Alexandra Botez
Alexandra Botez is an American-Canadian professional Chess player and Twitch streamer best known as one of the best female chess players in Canada. She started playing chess at just six years old and later went on to play for the National Canadian Team and became the Canadian National Girls Champion five times. At just 15 years old, Alexandra won the U.S. Girls Nationals.
However, Alexandra had such a grueling chess experience growing up that she opted not to go pro. In college, she started streaming chess games online and has since become one of the most prominent and entertaining chess streamers on Twitch, where Chess has exploded in popularity.
Alexandra Botez was born on September 24, 1995 in Dallas, Texas to a Romanian family that later moved to Vancouver, Canada. Alexandra was raised in Vancouver and spent most of her life in Canada.
As of August 2021, Alexandra Botez has more than 461,000 followers on Instagram, 349,300 followers on Twitter, 554,000 subscribers on YouTube, 280,000 followers on Facebook, and 932,300 followers on Twitch.
Alexandra first started playing chess at the young age of six at her local Romanian Community Center, with the chess club Golden Knights. CM Valer Eugen Demian was the coach at the time.
She later went on to play for the National Canadian Team and became the Canadian National Girls Champion five times. At just 15 years old, Alexandra won the U.S. Girls Nationals.
In addition, Alexandra has played in multiple Chess Olympiad tournaments. She has worked alongside International Master (IM) Daniel Rensch, IM Anna Rudolf, and GM Robert Hess to cover the 2018 and 2019 PRO Chess League Finals. As of September 2020, Alexandra has a FIDE Elo rating of 2020 in standard chess and 2059 in blitz chess.
In Chess, Alexandra uses the satirical phrase “Botez Gambit” when she loses her queen by accident.
Alexandra attended Stanford University, where she was the first female captain of the Chess team. She had such a grueling chess experience growing up that Alexandra opted not to go pro. “It wasn’t fun anymore,” she told NBC News.
At Stanford, she co-founded CrowdAmp, a social media company that uses machine learning to reach many followers in a more personal manner. In 2019, she announced on Twitch that the company had closed down.
Alexandra runs her Twitch channel with her sister Andrea, and it is titled BotezLive. Alexandra started the channel in college. The channel has chess content and live streams as well as more variety content.