FM Anna-Maja Kazarian

This week I'm joined by FM Anna-Maja Kazarian. FM Kazarian, as of recording this episode, has over 23,000 Twitch followers, and is signed to the e-sports organization Alliance as a content creator and competitive chess player. She won the Dutch Online Women's Chess Championship in 2021, and has played in several OTB tournaments, trying to bring her rating back to 2300+. She started streaming a little under two years ago and has cultivated a positive, welcoming community on her one-of-a-kind Twitch stream.

Anna-Maja recently played in the World Rapid and Blitz in Warsaw, Poland at the end of 2021, so I asked her a bunch of questions about what it was like to be back OTB around some of the greatest chess players of our time. We then dove into the highs and lows of streaming chess. I also asked Anna-Maja about her thoughts on FIDE declaring 2022 as the "Year of the Woman" in chess, and more broadly talked with her about what the chess world can do to be more welcoming to female players, and to narrow the gender gap in chess. As someone who has watched Anna-Maja's streams for a few months, it was really cool to interview her on my podcast! I hope we do it again and I thank her for coming on the show this weekend.

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PS: If you haven't yet, make sure to check out Anna-Maja's amazing Twitch stream and give her a follow & subscribe!