The women bringing chess into the 21st Century - with 'bullet' matches and viral videos

During Covid, Nemo Zhou was "losing [her] mind" locked down at home and thought it would be nice to make some money.

So she started streaming chess - and now it's turned into a career.

A woman grandmaster - the highest female-only chess title - Zhou was pursuing a degree in economics and mathematics at the University of Toronto at the time.

She launched her own stream in 2020, after first making guest appearances on a friend's channel, and the timing was impeccable.

A few months later, the Netflix show The Queen's Gambit was released. Along with the pandemic, it led to a chess boom.

Zhou's channel quickly took off. Sensing the boom was here to stay, she dropped out of university to focus on her new career.

'You have to really put yourself out there'

Five years on, Zhou, now 26, has more than two million followers across Twitch, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

She streams for five to six hours a day, at least five days a week, drawing her biggest audiences at weekends.

Her videos feature a mix of her playing online and in person, including against New York's famed Washington Square Park hustlers.

Zhou also has commercial sponsorships, works with other collaborators, and frequently travels the world.

On YouTube, she makes money through views, advertising and brand deals - and on Instagram her income comes from sponsored posts.

On Twitch, she earns money from subscriptions, which start at about $5 (£3.70) per month in the United States, and from donations called "bits", the platform's in‑app currency.

Dr Nina Willment, an associate researcher at the University of York, estimates that a content creator with Zhou's following could comfortably earn a six-figure salary combined from all platforms.

But she points out this is only a broad, ball-park estimate because few streamers disclose their income.

Zhou would not comment on how much she earns.

Willment also notes that Zhou's following of more than two million followers across all platforms puts her in the top 1-2% of content creators globally.

'We needed a bit of a make-over'

Chess content creators like Zhou are among those helping to bring the ancient game into the 21st Century.

Elite chess was once almost exclusively played in silent halls with games lasting for hours and little effort made to engage casual viewers, but that's now changing.

Increasingly, top tournaments have "rapid" and "blitz" time limits, with as little as three minutes per player per game, while heart rate monitors are attached to players to show the stress they're under during critical moments.

Last year, chess made its debut at the Esports World Cup - one of the world's largest competitive gaming events, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This year, chess is returning with even more participants.

All of this is helping chess shake its image as an "old man's game", says woman international master Fiona Steil-Antoni, who works as a commentator and interviewer at international tournaments.

"I think we needed a bit of a makeover," she says, "and we're very much getting that."

You can watch our video report on the women changing the image of chess on YouTube

'I've never stopped thinking about content creation'

One of those following in the footsteps of streamers like Zhou is Sarah El Barbry.

The 24-year-old, who has Egyptian and Moroccan parents but grew up in Paris, has been creating chess content on TikTok since 2023 but became a streamer last year when she saw a lack of women streaming in French.

Her output features a mix of her playing online chess, educational content and in-person challenges such as playing blindfolded, where players visualise the board in their head.

In November last year, a video El Barbry made of her starting a game of chess with just a King and Queen and delivering checkmate went viral, gaining 28 million views and netting her 10,000 additional followers.

Now, she has more than 75,000 followers across all platforms.

"Since I started, I've never stopped thinking about content creation. I work sometimes during the night from midnight to 3am."

But while chess content creation can be lucrative for those who make it big, there are no guarantees of success.

At first, El Barbry made just $117 (£87) a month from streaming, before expanding into YouTube.

Now she earns around $1,700 (£1,300) a month, but this is still below France's minimum wage.

While El Barbry's income is growing, Willment explains the success of streamers who have built audiences "overshadows" the fact that "thousands, if not millions of people" are earning nothing, trying to break through.

'I know I have more viewers because I'm a girl'

As of January 2026, female-led channels accounted for about half of the top 20 most‑watched chess streams on Twitch, excluding large corporate channels, according to Twitchmetrics, an online platform tracking viewer engagement on Twitch.

But most chess content creators, and their audience, are male.

El Barbry estimates her audience across platforms was 95% male when she started and is now about 85%.

She believes she gets more viewers than some male streamers because she is a woman. "I'm OK with that because, you know, it's a part of the game."

Zhou says her YouTube audience is about 80% male but her chess page on Instagram is a 50-50 split, "which is pretty crazy and pretty cool".

Women at the top of the game

There is evidence the chess boom is leading more women and girls to play competitively.

The proportion of female players registered with the world chess federation Fide for the "standard" time control - which most competitive games are played under - has risen from 10% in 2020 to 16.5% in 2026.

Still, the elite remains as dominated by men as ever.

There are currently no women in the top 100 players and only three women have achieved this feat in history.

Studies suggest the performance gap between men and women can be explained by a number of factors, including lower participation rates, a lack of women coaches and playing environments that girls and women often find hostile.

Participation gaps are much smaller in countries where chess is taught in primary school, such as Mongolia, where nearly 40% of players registered with Fide are female, 35% in Sri Lanka and 30% in Uganda.

Steil-Antoni believes things are changing for the better, adding she's "cautiously optimistic" the game will move closer to "some kind of equality in my lifetime".

'It's going to be everything or nothing'

Zhou now has ambitions beyond chess.

She's branched out into lifestyle, travel and fashion content, and in October she took part in Paris Fashion Week.

She now hopes to sign for a modelling agency and hit one million followers on her Instagram chess page.

El Barbry, meanwhile, is determined to give herself six months to break through as a streamer.

If not, her back-up plan is a career in the corporate world, having gained a civil engineering degree and a masters in business management.

In January, she made her first appearance as a commentator at a major esports event.

She says the last few months have been an "adventure".

"I feel that this year is going to be crazy. It's going to be everything or nothing."

This is part of the Global Women series from the BBC World Service, sharing untold and important stories from around the globe