Guess what they do for a living

by Frederic Friedel
1/31/2023 – On TikTok these two young ladies asked strangers on the street to guess what they did for a living. Model? Artist? Dancers? Cheerleaders? Gymnasts? Architect? TikTok twins? All wrong! We ask you to guess, just looking at this picture. The answer is provided in a video of their street side quiz, one that has been watched 8½ million times.
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So what do you think these ladies do? Watch this video to find out.

Alexandra Valeria Botez, 27 is an American-Canadian chess player and commentator, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber. She was a five-time Canadian National Girls Champion and, at 15, won the U.S. Girls Nationals. She is a Woman FIDE Master and her highest rating was 2092.

Her sister, Andrea Cecilia Cristina Botez, seven years her junior,  won the U8 Girls Canadian Youth Chess Championship in 2010. In 2015, at the age of thirteen, she became the Women British Columbia Chess Champion.

Alexandra began streaming online chess in 2016. She was joined by Andrea, and the two sisters now operate the BotezLive Twitch (1.2 million followers) and YouTube (1.06 million) channels, which have a combined total of more than 2,200,000 followers. Cynics claim that a majority of viewers are not interested in chess, but in the girls.

 

Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.

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GreenKlaser GreenKlaser 2/1/2023 09:40
The answers might be different if the costumes varied.
jenyes jenyes 2/1/2023 09:34
I don't find any of the videos from the top streamers to be informative but that's probably because they're made for the average, non-tournament player. I've seen the Botez stream once or twice. I wouldn't have guessed that either of them was over 20 from the content presentation but I'm over 35 and there's sure to be some generational bias. The ladies have an audience and they promote the game. If 10% of the followers get inspiration to play the game then they've done more than my country's federation! Not all fans of basketball were fans of Jordan but it's hard to deny the results. Good job!
Eori Eori 1/31/2023 10:24
I think Botez sisters are doing a great work promoting chess in both, the offline & online world. They are, in fact, very pretty ladies and I´m not surprised people think they somehow are engaged in modeling. If I hadn't known about them before, I'd definitely think the same.
Glad to read an article about them here on chessbase. Thanks Frederic.
(Btw, the URL video provided is not from Tik Tok but Youtube Shorts)
Mamack1 Mamack1 1/31/2023 05:32
Sorry, what?

Most actual "chess players" are some way below that strength.
AgainAgain AgainAgain 1/31/2023 03:44
2100 rating doesn't exactly scream chess player to me...
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