User:Hoya38/Alexandra Botez

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Alexandra Botez (born September 24, 1995) is an American-born Canadian chess player and commentator, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber. As a player, she became a six-time Canadian National Girls Champion and won the U.S. Girls Nationals at age 15 (Hadden). She achieved  her highest FIDE rating of 2092 in March 2016, and she currently holds the International Chess Federation title of Woman FIDE Maste r (Chess.com).

Botez began streaming online chess content in 2016 while she was a student at Stanford University (Leibowitz). She now manages the BoetzLive Twitch and YouTube channels with her younger sister Andrea, and they have amassed more than 700,000 followers (Chess.com).

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 aiming to break down gender barriers in the game through scholarships and prizes.

Early Life and Background
Botez was born on September 24th, 1995, to Romanian parents who fled the Socialist Republic of Romania (Chess.com). Though born in Dallas, Texas, she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia where she was raised (Hadden). Botez’s father introduced her to chess and trained her during her early years (Hadden). She eventually became a member of the the Romanian Community Centre chess club, Golden Knights, with Chess Master Valer Eugen Demian as her coach.

Chess
In 2004, Botez won her first Canadian national championship at age eight (Hadden). She eventually played for the National Canadian Team in 2010 and became a six-time Canadian National Girls Champion (Hadden). 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 (Hadden). 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 Dallas. However, deciding to prioritize academics, she chose to study International Relations with a focus on China at Stanford (Kramon). During her sophomore year in 2014, Botez became the second female president of the Stanford University Chess Club after Cindy Tsai in 2005 (Kramon). She graduated in 2017.

In addition to her chess career, Botez served a brief stint 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 (Chess.com).

As of April 2021, Botez has a FIDE Elo rating of 2020 in standard chess and 2059 in blitz, placing her in the Top 10 of Canadian Women players (Chess.com).

Playing Style and Notable Games
Botez often plays chess with an aggressive, adaptive style of play (Chess.com). In the 2016 Chess Olympiad held in Norway, she showcased her attacking style against opponent Anzel Solomons (Chess.com). During this match, Botez, playing as White, offers to exchange her castle for Solomon’s knight on move 20 (chess.com. Solomon agrees to this exchange (Chess.com). However, this proves to be a tactical error which turns the game in Botez’s favor (Chess.com). Seizing the opportunity, Botez sacrifices her bishop on move 21, ultimately allowing her to check with her queen on move 22 and check with her knight on move 23 (Chess.com). Solomons is forced to sacrifice her queen in order to be released from Botez’s check on move 23. Having built a solid advantage, Botez advances her kingside pawns until Solomons resigns the game (Chess.com).

1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 e6 5. e3 Nbd7 6. Bd3 Bd6 7. O-O O-O 8. b3 e5 9. cxd5 cxd5 10. Nb5 Bb8 11. dxe5 Nxe5 12. h3 Ne4 13. Bb2 Qf6 14. Nxe5 Bxe5 15. Bxe5 Qxe5 16. Rc1 Bd7 17. f4 Qe7 18. Nc7 Nc5 19. Nxd5 Qd6 20. Rxc5 $1 Qxc5 21. Bxh7+ Kxh7 22. Qh5+ Kg8 23. Nf6+ gxf6 24. Qxc5 Bc6 25. Qf5 Kg7 26. Qg4+ Kh7 27. Qf5+ Kg7 28. e4 Rad8 29. Rf3 Rd1+ 30. Kh2 Rfd8 31. Rg3+ Kf8 32. Qc5+ Ke8 33. Rg8+ Kd7 34. Rxd8+ Kxd8 35. h4 Kc7 36. h5 Rd8 37. Qe7+ Rd7 38. Qxf6 Kc8 39. Qf5

Botez’s most played opening by far is the King’s Indian Defense, in which Black allows White to advance their pawns to the center of the board in the first two moves (Chess.com). In her streams, Botez has jokingly used the self-mocking expression "Botez Gambit" when she accidentally loses a queen.

Streaming
In 2016, Botez started streaming chess content on Twitch during her junior year at Stanford (Leibowitz). Her channel quickly gained traction, and in 2020 she was joined by her younger sister Andrea (born April 6th, 2002) (Leibowitz). Together, they host the BotezLive Twitch and Youtube channels, which have garnered more than 700,000 followers (Chess.com). The sisters frequently collaborate with other chess streamers on the platform, such as GM Hikaru Nakamura and WGM Qiyu Zhou.

Botez’s streaming popularity has helped her become one of the most recognizable faces on the Chess.com platform (Chess.com). 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 (Hadden).

Other Professional work
In 2017, Botez co-founded CrowdAmp, a social media company that, according to its literature, used machine learning to reach online followers in a personalized manner. As of May 2019, the 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 (Polgar).Within the past eighteen years, the Susan Polgar Foundation has assisted in offering more than $6 million in chess scholarships and prizes to students (Polgar).

In December 2020, the Botez sisters signed with the Texas-based Esports organization Envy Gaming in December 2020.By partnering with the Botez sisters, Envy hopes to expand its ambassador network with diverse gaming content creators (Murray).

Sexism
Botez confides in various media interviews that she has encountered multiple instances of sexism throughout her chess career (Hadden, Leibowitz). Competitive chess has historically been dominated by males, with male grandmasters outnumbering female grandmasters fifty-to-one (Leibowitz). Botez says, “It has taken very long to get to the point where we’re starting to change the stereotype [to show] that women are not genetically inferior to men at playing chess” (Leibowitz).

Though Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit depicts a female protagonist’s similar struggle as a chess player competing in the 1960s, Botez claims that the show understates the misogyny one may find in tournament chess (Hadden). She states that the show glosses over many realities, especially considering the decade it is set in: “If the show had been historically accurate, Beth wouldn’t have been able to compete in any world championship events” (Hadden). Botez points out that as late as 1986, the first female grandmaster Susan Polgar was rejected from competing in the Chess World Championship on the basis of her gender (Hadden).