FM Anna-Maja Kazarian On How Streaming Revived Her Love Of Chess

By the age of sixteen, FM Anna-Maja Kazarian had won 25 separate national championships in various age categories. In 2015, she was crowned the U16 Girls' European Youth Champion.

In 2020, she claimed the Dutch Women's Internet Chess Championship and started streaming after discovering the world of Twitch through the Streamers tab on Chess.com, starting with WFM Alexandra Botez. Flash-forward to 2024, and Anna-Maja has over 35,000 followers on her Twitch channel supporting her journey, as well as a partnership with e-sports organization The Alliance.

We spoke to Anna-Maja about how important streaming has been to continuing her successful over-the-board chess career, representing the game of chess on a reality TV show, and how a Dutch foundation is helping to bring chess to a new generation of girls in the Netherlands.

Also, a lost interview with GM Ding Liren and a potential chessboxing bout against another titled player...

Have you gotten a thank you from the Burberry marketing department? Their shoes have been getting a lot of publicity lately.

I actually haven't heard a single word from them, unfortunately, but who knows? It's still early; it was also around the holiday time, so you never know, right? [GM] Anish [Giri] also posted a tweet about the Burberry sneakers being sold out.

The sneakers are out of stock. pic.twitter.com/mU3d5qrWbZ

— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) December 31, 2023

You once said: “Without streaming I would've quit chess, 100%.” What does streaming mean to you, and how has it benefited or complemented your chess career?

Streaming chess has benefited me in so many ways. First and foremost, financially! Chess tournaments are just really expensive; it's really difficult to afford them. If you have to start working to earn money to travel to tournaments, then you just don't have the time to play, so it becomes really difficult. By streaming chess, I'm still involved in chess, and playing chess every single day, pretty much.

This way I'm earning money and also able to afford tournaments. So it's really nice financially as streaming helps to fund my tournaments, basically. 

Before this, I traveled to a bunch of tournaments in my younger years, but I was mostly going to European and World Youth Championships, and I never really went to open tournaments as much. Now I am traveling to so many countries in a year and going to many different tournaments and also being able to showcase them.

Some of my tournaments are being live-streamed and there is a whole community behind me that is supporting me. That helps so much, because previously I was on my own, maybe with family, or maybe with a coach, but seeing the amount of support I get through my streams is just so helpful. It means a lot to me. 

Because of all of this, I'm able to continue playing chess. I'm able to afford it and to have fun with it. Previously, I would be really devastated after a loss! I still am, but I'm able to handle my feelings much better now, and I'm enjoying chess much more. Because of streaming, I found that chess is really fun; it's not all about winning, it's also about having fun. And when having fun, you also perform better. 

What are your current chess goals?

So just before 2023 ended, I crossed a 2200 rating over-the-board, which was a goal for a while now. I already reached 2300 years back, but I dropped quite a bit, just below 2100. And that's when I started streaming, basically. So it's really nice to be back to 2200, but I'm hungry for more. I want to get back up there and reach WGM. For this year, the plan is to get back to 2300, and let's see how far I can get!

There's a great picture of you interviewing Ding Liren at Tata Steel last year. Will you try to get another interview with him this time?

I'm not sure, actually! I will be working at Tata Steel, but behind the scenes, working with social media. It was a big honor to be there last year, being able to stream and have interviews. Sadly, the interview with Ding was really inconvenient, because my stream just died! It went out five minutes before the interview and we had no idea because there was a 15-minute delay.

We didn't realize until afterward that all the footage was gone forever. But it was definitely one of my most fun and best interviews ever because Ding is just such a kind person.

He was really sweet, sharing so many nice insights. It was also Chinese New Year, so he was proudly telling us about that and he was just such a nice and humble person. So yeah, that was really, really fun and inspiring. At least we have some pictures of it left!

You were recently on a TV show called The Genius. What was it like to be part of a reality show as a chess player? Did your chess skills end up being useful?

It was pretty intimidating actually! A lot of expectations are set for you, because you're "the chess player", and you should be doing well in those games. I went there with the idea that I'm just going to have fun and we'll see what happens.

I was the youngest there by far compared to all the other participants, and it was tough. The games were very complicated too. I still have no idea what happened during some of the games in hindsight!

At some point, I was picked for an elimination round. So I was like, okay, bring it on. It was a game with black and white tiles, eight or nine per person; a one-on-one battle where you have to secretly put one tile down, and whoever's tile has the highest number wins a point. At the end of the game, the one with the highest amount of points goes through.

This way you know who got the point, but you don't know what tile has been placed down, only yours of course. So you have to guess, and there's a lot of memorization involved; chess really helped me in this game because I was able to outplay my opponent. My opponent was just randomly dropping down the tiles and I knew based on calculation that my opponent had this and this tile left and that came really in handy, and that way I won.

Last year's Mogul Chessboxing lineups were leaked, and you were set to compete against WGM Nemo Zhou! Is chessboxing still something that you're thinking about? 

Yeah, I was! It was actually pretty last-minute. I was not 100% sure it was happening, because it was more like “We want to have you here” and I was still waiting for confirmation. But then all of a sudden it was canceled. But yeah, generally, I was super hyped about this for the past few years, ever since Ludwig's event.

At first, I thought chessboxing was not for me because I'm not physically in shape. A few years ago I couldn't even do one push-up! I just played chess and that's fine. But when I was asked to participate in chessboxing, I thought, you know what? Let's give it a shot.

It felt like heaven calling me to start doing sports, get in shape, and become more active because I admittedly did not go to the gym, ever! So I needed to get started somewhere.

I was actually participating in a study where they were trying to see if there was a link between physical exercise and improvement in mind games; they only let you into this study if you're in very bad shape! It helped me a lot. I had a personal trainer for a few months and they told me that I could be doing just fine, and I just needed to get started with something and continue.

But yeah, I really hope it comes back. In the meantime, I've been very motivated to go to the gym. I made a goal for myself that in 2024 I'm going to the gym at least a hundred times. I'm really happy that this was even brought up, because it made me motivated to get going. And even if it doesn't happen, I'll just be really happy to be in shape. So there's that.

Last but not least… what can you tell the world about the ChessQueens Foundation?

So in the Netherlands, we have the ChessQueens Foundation, which is a foundation that supports women's chess in the Netherlands, but also all around the world. We're focusing mostly on the Netherlands because, you know, it's easier to figure things out locally and help the girls over here. Every single year we organize a chess tournament with girls from all over the country. Last year, we also had a ChessQueens Festival inviting girls from Belgium.

We try to support women's chess because there is very little support for it in the Netherlands; we want to support those who compete, but also have more girls play chess in general. With the ratio of boys and girls playing chess, the girls are in a big minority, so we need to change that. We hope to get a lot of girls playing chess this way and we try to organize training sessions, and all sorts of activities. It's a lot of fun.

We have had this foundation for ten years now. I recently joined it a few years back, so I didn't catch all of it. The Dutch women's team has been doing a lot for girls in the Netherlands; they want to play chess and it's just truly amazing to see.

We have IM Eline [Roebers], who's been doing really well. She's our board one now, and she is currently an international master, but definitely on her way to becoming a grandmaster. We have [FM] Machteld van Foreest, the sister of both GMs Lucas and Jorden; she's also really strong, 2300+ as well. So we have a really strong team, but we need to have more girls get into chess to achieve an even better team.

You can follow Anna-Maja's chess journey on Twitch, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Instagram. She also has an official Chess.com club: Anna-Maja's Stroopwafels Club!

(Stroopwafels are a Dutch delicacy, in case you were wondering what those giant floating waffles in the image at the top were...)