Andrea Botez

Andrea Botez (born April 6, 2002) is a Canadian chess player, commentator, and internet personality. She is mostly known as part of the BotezLive Twitch channel with her sister Alexandra Botez. She is also credited as one of the creators who popularized chess on Twitch.

Early life and background
Botez's Romanian parents moved from Romania to Canada after Alexandra Botez, Andrea's older sister, was born in Dallas, Texas. The family relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, before moving to Oregon when Alexandra was in high school.

Chess career
Botez began playing chess at the age of six. She started playing in the USChess tournaments at the age of seven. In 2010, she won the U8 Girls Canadian Youth Chess Championship.

In 2015, at the age of thirteen, she became the Women British Columbia Chess Champion. In the same year, Botez also won the Susan Polgar National Open. In 2016, at the SPFNO 2016: U14 Girls, Botez placed fourth in the tournament and 13th in the 2016 Susan Polgar Foundation Girls' Invitational.

Botez attained her highest FIDE classical rating of 1825 in 2024 and her highest USChess rating of 1933 in 2019. As of March 2024, her ranking among active players in the world is 65175, based on her rating.

Content creation
Alongside her sister, Botez runs the Twitch channel BotezLive, which, as of May 2022, has 1.1 million followers with more than 18.3 million views. She began assisting her sister in 2020 by playing chess and in other variety streams and the YouTube channel BotezLive, which, as of May 2022, has over 800k subscribers and 140 million views. She took a gap year to focus on streaming, before becoming a full-time streamer.

She is credited, along with her older sister Alexandra Botez, Hikaru Nakamura, GothamChess, and more, for popularizing chess on Twitch.

On December 21, 2020, Andrea and Alexandra signed a contract with Envy Gaming as content creators at the launch of the organization's creator network and ambassador program. They would later move to Los Angeles, CA, where they would join other content creators such as JustaMinx and CodeMiko in the Envy Content House.

On July 20, 2022, Andrea and Alexandra 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 Andrea and Alexandra had joined OpTic Gaming after Envy Gaming announced the retirement of their Envy brand.

In 2023, Andrea and Alexandra 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.

Botez Abroad
Aside from their regular chess streams and other activities, the two sisters host 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.

PogChamps
In the second iteration of the online amateur chess tournament Pogchamps, Botez was part of the commentator team. In 2021, Botez took part again in the Pogchamps 3 tournament, doubling as a coach for CodeMiko and as a commentator, and, once again, she joined the commentator team for Pogchamps 4.

Creator Clash 2
In April 2023, Botez lost a boxing match against fellow YouTuber Michelle Khare in Creator Clash 2, a charity boxing event held by YouTuber iDubbbz.

Mogul Chessboxing Championship
In December 2022, Botez competed against WGM (Woman Grandmaster) Dina Belenkaya in the Mogul Chessboxing Championship; hosted by Ludwig Ahgren. Initially, Belenkaya was deemed the winner, but after a post-fight review, the organizer announced an updated result: "...[Botez] should have been awarded a TKO after the referee initiated the fourth standing count of the fight". The update resulted in both Belenkaya and Botez being winners.

Philanthropy
In 2020, Botez participated in the Zoomers Play Chess team match to help raise funds for children in need affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Personal life
In 2020, Botez and her sister Alexandra Botez lived in New York. In 2022, they moved and now reside in Los Angeles, California.

In December 2023, Botez revealed during a livestream that she has been diagnosed with ADHD.

Chessboxing

 * - style="background:#c5d2ea;"
 * 2022-12-11 || Draw ||align=left|Dina Belenkaya||Mogul Chessboxing Championship|| Galen Center, Los Angeles, California, U.S. || Win || 7 ||
 * colspan=9 | Legend:
 * }
 * }