Alexandra Botez

Alexandra Valeria Botez ( ; born 1995) is an American-born Canadian chess player, poker player, online streamer and YouTuber. She holds the chess title of Woman FIDE Master (WFM) and has a peak FIDE rating of 2092. She is a five-time Canadian girls' national champion and one-time U.S. girls' national champion. Botez has represented Canada at three Women's Chess Olympiads—in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Alexandra and her younger sister Andrea Botez host the BotezLive Twitch and YouTube channels; each has over 1 million followers and is one of the largest chess channels on its respective platform.

Botez began playing chess in Canada at age six and won her first girls' national championship at age eight. She later moved back to the United States where she was born and won U.S. Girls Nationals at age 15. Botez began streaming chess content online in 2016 while she was a student at Stanford University. Her sister Andrea appeared occasionally and later joined full-time to run the channels together in 2020. Already one of the most prominent Twitch chess channels with over 50,000 followers before 2020, the BotezLive channel grew tenfold in size in a span of about a year as part of the 2020 chess boom associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the PogChamps internet celebrity chess tournaments, and Queen's Gambit series on Netflix. The Botez sisters regularly collaborate with other top chess streamers, such as akaNemsko. They also have collaborated with top chess players such as longtime World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen and regularly collaborate with high-profile streamers outside of the chess community, stemming from their involvement in PogChamps. Botez and her sister are former members of Envy Gaming and later, OpTic Gaming after the organizations merged.

Botez is coached by Jon Ludvig Hammer, a former second to Magnus Carlsen. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Susan Polgar Foundation, which aims to promote chess to children in the United States, especially girls. Following her success as a chess streamer, Botez also began playing poker professionally. She has participated in the World Series of Poker as well as celebrity tournaments with other prominent streamers such as xQc and professional poker players such as Phil Hellmuth. Botez became an ambassador for GGPoker in 2024.

Early life and background Botez was born to Romanian immigrant parents. Although she was born in Dallas, Texas, she was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. She eventually became a member of the Romanian Community Centre chess club, Golden Knights, coached by Chess Master Valer Eugen Demian.

Chess career

Botez won her first Canadian girls' national championship in 2004 at age eight. 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 established by Susan Polgar and her foundation. In 2013, Botez earned the Woman FIDE Master (WFM) title by finishing in joint first place at the North American girls' U-16 national championship together with the winner Megan Lee.

While in high school in Oregon, Botez earned a full-ride chess scholarship to the University of Texas at Dallas by winning the 2011 Kasparov Chess Foundation All-Girls National Championship. She ultimately declined the scholarship to attend Stanford University, prioritizing academics over chess. At Stanford, she studied international relations with a focus on China. Botez has represented Canada at three Women's Chess Olympiads, playing on Board 4 in 2012, and Board 3 in 2014 and 2016. Her best performance at the Olympiad came in 2014, and Canada's best result with her on the team was 39th place in 2016. During 2014 and 2016, Botez played on the same team as fellow future prominent chess streamer Qiyu Zhou, also known as Nemo or akaNemsko. Less than two months later in Orosei, Botez won the Sardinia World Chess Festival B-section for players rated under-2000 with a score of 8½/9, one-and-a-half points ahead of the field.

As of January 27, 2025, her rating is 2044 which ranks her 20,297th in the world among all active players.

Playing style and notable games

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

The "Botez Gambit", a tongue-in-cheek term, occurs when a player blunders their queen. It originated with viewers of Botez's streams, but Botez has herself used it self-mockingly.

Content creation

In 2016, Botez started streaming chess content on Twitch during her junior year at Stanford University. 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. She is credited, along with her sister Andrea Botez, Hikaru Nakamura, GothamChess, and more, for popularizing chess on Twitch. Botez's streaming popularity has helped her become one of the most recognizable faces on the Chess.com platform. Botez has served as a chess commentator. 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. They would later move to Los Angeles, California, where they would join other content creators such as JustaMinx and CodeMiko in the Envy Content House.

In January 2021, Botez faced controversy from fellow chess creator and grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, who said that Botez's exclusivity of streaming in the "Just Chatting" section is damaging to the chess community.

In December 2021, Botez came under fire after she appeared to defend Dubai's alleged use of slavery on an AT&T sponsored stream hosted from the 2021 World Chess Championship taking place in the United Arab Emirates. While she later claimed she was being taken out of context, the statement still caused an uproar from her stream chat and folks online who were offended by the comment.

In May 2022, Botez had Terra (Luna) founder Do Kwon on stream to promote Luna 5 days before its -99.6% plunge. This was later covered by Comedian John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight on his show.

On July 20, 2022, the Botez sisters signed with Creative Artists Agency. The agency will work with them on the development of original content, new IP ventures, and "strategic growth across platforms and talent". In August 2022, it was announced that the Botez sisters had joined OpTic Gaming after Envy Gaming announced the retirement of their Envy brand.

In 2023, the Botez sisters were named to Forbes ' 30 Under 30 list in the games category. Later in April 2023, they appeared on Rolling Stone 's list of the 20 Most Influential Creators in 2023. On July 13, 2024, she competed in a MrBeast video titled "50 YouTubers Fight for $1,000,000" and managed to place second in the competition.

Botez abroad In November 2021, the Botez sisters announced a show on their Twitch channel called Botez Abroad, a Twitch original travel show where they travel to cities around the world and stream their in-person chess matches at various venues. The show has generated more than 20 million views and reached peak livestream viewership of 36,000 people.

Poker career Botez started playing poker professionally in 2021, after having already established herself as a prominent chess streamer, and began playing regularly in 2022. She has participated in the World Series of Poker. She has also played in celebrity tournaments, featuring fellow streamers such as xQc, fellow chess players such as Magnus Carlsen, and professional poker players such as Phil Hellmuth. 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.

In June 2023, Botez started a new YouTube channel called "Alexandra Botez", which focuses on poker content and her poker career. Botez became an ambassador for GGPoker in March 2024.

Other ventures In 2017, Botez co-founded CrowdAmp, a social media company. As of May 2019, that company has ceased operations.

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. Regarding her stream, Botez has stated that until she brought in moderators, she was disturbed by the fact that "60% of it was just people trying to flirt with me and chat, or people just commenting on my appearance the entire time... They didn't care about the game play at all." Competitive chess has always been dominated by men, with male grandmasters outnumbering female grandmasters 50-to-one. Nevertheless, Botez was complimentary of protagonist Beth Harmon as a nuanced and inspirational figure for upcoming women in chess.

Personal life In 2020, Botez and her sister Andrea lived in New York. 2022

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