Good morning.
Today is a little different from my usual routine of getting out of bed, showering and putting on makeup and getting ready for stream. Today, I'm going to be playing some chess over at Downtown LA Chess Club.
A large part of my day revolves.
Around making chess content, and one of the key parts to making good chess content is finding interesting people to play against it. Downtown LA has a lot of interesting people to play against, so I'm very excited about this.
Usually I will live.
Stream it on my Twitch channel, but I think I'm just going to record on my camera.
All right, let's head out.
This is finally a show about a chess grandmaster, online gamer, and poker player.
Hi, my name is Neimo.
I am a woman grandmaster in chess, and today we are here to play some.
Of the members of this chess club.
We're in downtown LA and this is a little coffee shop right on Broadway, and it is my second time here. So the first time I got here, it was really fun and I thought this would be a This is a really nice atmosphere to play chess in La. Hello, Joe, how's it going good? So Joe and I have known each other for actually not that long, right, Like we've known each other but not actually known each other.
The first time we met probably is somewhere like in Vegas probably, like we.
Never really got to like actually hang out and stuff. And then recently we both well, he is the actual commissioner for the Collegiate Chess League, so he does a big deal for the chess community in college. And I was his co host for the Collegiate Chess League, which is how we actually got to know each other. And yeah, now we hang out sometimes since play chess.
Did you want to play with the clock or no?
I'm down to play with the clock here.
Sometimes people play at these clubs with no time control, which I'm personally not a fan of because a big advantage of mine.
Joe is flagging you, so he knows this.
I've played Nimo before. It's always an honor. She's definitely the better player. So if I could get an upset win, that'd be great.
Yeah, I mean I think Joe honestly understells himself. Sometimes he's actually really solid on the board.
So go let Joe you ready.
So I was born in jing Jo, a town very close to Wuhan in central China, and I lived with my grandparents and my parents. My parents took me to Beijing around like two, and then they actually ended up leaving China for Europe for France when I was pretty young. I don't exactly remember like when, but around the age of three, my parents took me over to France with them, So it ended up being like my start of not living in China, I guess.
But yeah, before then, I was like speaking.
Mandarin, I was learning Mandarin, and then at three my parents took me to France. My parents were moving around a bunch because they were both academics in the university, and in the early two thousands, China was like starting to become a bit more open to well open to the Russell the world, I guess, and they were also sending out students to study abroad and to do research abroad. So at that time, my parents were one of the first that actually left China to go work in universities
in Europe. And that's why my dad ended up at Sofia Antipolice in Antivue in southern France. I believe that research center is actually still there, and we've gone back to antiv a few times, not specifically to that place, but he was working there, so he brought me, he brought my mom over, and my parents ended up staying in France for a year, and that's kind of where I actually started learning French. So my mom was going for her I think at that time she had a
master's in I can't remember what. I only know what her PhD is, but I think my mom has a master's in like political science or something similar. Anyway, she was really really good at English. Like at a time when large parts of China didn't really speak English, went really familiar with like Western culture and stuff like that, my mom was really good at English. Was doing broadcasts on TV in English and stuff like that, so her level of English was much higher relative to like, you know,
your average Chinese. And she insisted that I learned English from a really young age because of that, and because we were you know, moving away from China and we didn't know when we were going to go back to China.
So I learned ended up learning Mandarin from obviously my parents, that's what I still speak with them, but my mom also in such that that I learned English, and then in like kindergarten and stuff, I would learn French, so I ended up speaking like all three languages, like pretty young. And that's actually where I started playing chess, was in Antibe when I was around three, In like ten months, we were walking by to the beach like it's just beautiful,
like southern France is beautiful, and I loved it. But we would go down to the beach every day and there was a chess club opposite this little bakery, so we would. I one day I was like, oh, I want some cookies, and then I went over to the chess club saw the pieces and I was like, oh, I love the shape of the horsey, like I want to play with this. So some gentlemen at the club taught me the rules of the game. I believe his
name was Jill. We still like roughly keep like he still keeps in contact with my parents every now and then and stuff like that.
It's very wholesome.
But yeah, it's like, you know, the chess road isn't very big and the club was pretty small. I was in southern France and I was like pretty quickly beating like ten year old kids and stuff like that, like yeah, I'm really scared that I'm actually gonna lose my first game. Joe is so focused right now, Joe is trying so hard a chance.
To play you last time you were here, so trying to make the most of it.
You know, it's really fun and chess when you like have multiple people that you see regularly, and like you can have these matches that can go on forever. Like you know, how you can have like you can sit down, set a time for a day and then like play
against them that day, like five games or something. Or you can have like I wouldn't call it a rival rivalry between me and Joe, but like you can basically just have an ongoing sequence, like you're keeping track, Like I think right now, I've probably won two games against Joe and maybe we've drawn one.
Would you say that's accurate?
I actually haven't been keeping as much track.
Okay, sorry, I always keep track of my wins and losses against my friends.
Remembers. You're definitely losing at twitch Con and then I threw so that I.
Definitely remember, and I can't remember if we drew that game or if I won that game. Oh okay, so then I probably don't have any losses currently against Joe.
How do you feel about that?
So Another really fun part about playing in a little coffee shop is being able to trash talk. You don't rarely get to do that in a tournament. Well, first of all, you're not allowed to talk in a tournament. You're also not allowed to have a video, Like you're not really allowed to have a phone or anything in
a tournament at all. Which is why I've always found playing and streaming at a little chess club a lot more like, I don't know, engaging for me personally, not that when I play a chess tournament, it's not like my brain isn't on, But here I'm able to like distract him. He's currently thinking about what moved. Yeah, Joe is thinking about what to do. And sometimes it's great because you can use multiple strategies. You can think like, oh, I could distract my opponent right now, and I actually
need to do that. He's got a minute fifty one on the clock and I have two minutes forty five.
But my position looks terrible right around.
For my mom would like just take me to the beach every day, and she would come with me, and she didn't really know how to play chess at all, Like I played little Chinese chess with my dad. But my mom would just take me to the club and I would sit there and learn, and like I would learn all the rules and then I would start, you know, playing against other kids and stuff like that.
And then at home, my dad.
Learned how to play chess because you know, he was like, oh, my daughter's getting into the game, so we should play against each other. And I remember I used to get really really mad at him when like he would beat me. So I think like my competitive streak came out really young, but as kind of like a result of me beating a lot of the kids, like much older kids on my club. The people at the club insisted that I start playing in regional tournaments.
And in France, they have this.
Age group called petit poisson, so you are, like, I think it's for under eight. I can't even remember exactly what age group, but it's like the youngest age group still.
Obviously I was like four, everybody's like twice my.
Age, you know, But I was playing in those and I like, I think the very first tournament I played in, I came second or third in the regional tournament, and that actually led me to play in the national championship.
For France.
So I played national championship for France when I was like four years old or something. Flagging in chess means that your opponent runs out of time, whether they are too slow, like like Joe in this case.
Sorry, I'm just trash talking him for just for fun.
Yes, yes, but if he runs out of time, if his clock goes down to zero, he's going to just lose the game.
So that's what he's trying to avoid.
What I'm trying to do is play faster than him, so therefore it makes him use more time. So this is a big strategy for me, at least personally playing chess. It's much less of a strategy for Joe. As you can tell he is. He's a tats lower. He's currently got thirty seconds and I've got sixty three.
Sixty three seconds. Oh, you're coming from my pond. No, I don't trust you at all. Okay, I'm going to move my night back here.
To age seven because I absolutely don't want to risk losing this pawn, and then I'll take with the rook on east seven.
All right, I'll move my king here.
Because I I don't want to deal with this long diagonal.
I don't think there was any specific reason. There wasn't like any No, my parents weren't really gaming or they didn't really play chess. Like obviously, my parents are very smart and very you know, they study very hard and stuff like that, so maybe I got some of those traits from them. And they were both academics, so maybe
that like really helped with the learning process. I would say, like I think from a very young age they were like pretty aware of how to become good at something, even if it wasn't their thing, just because you know, becoming professors and stuff like that, it's pretty difficult. So the story continues actually because we moved to Finland when I was five, like maybe like right around four four
or five. But they were well, I think my dad got a new pause as a researcher in Finland, and then my mom started doing a PhD in English in this university in Finland. It's called the University of Olu. It's pretty far up north. So we moved there sometime either late two thousand and four or early two thousand
and five. And I really only remember this because I started playing chess in Finland, and the very first year I started playing chess in Finland, I won the national championships for like under ten boys because they were like no female players in Finland at that time, and they only had open sections. Because in Scandinavia, like the gender equality issue is much less of an issue and like they don't really think.
Twice about it.
It's not like in I would say, in North America, it's like much more commonly acknowledged that you have like the women's section and then you have the open section. So in chess, women are always allowed to play in the open section, but there's also a women's section to encourage females from playing chess because historically we've just had a ton of issues, Like you.
Know, it's just it's there to encourage women to play. I'm going to.
Joe's looking for checkmate, which is very rude. If he checkmates me, I lose the game.
It is part of the game, but it's still very rude.
I thought we were friends, Joe.
I thought you were trying to do the same thing to me.
Yeah, it's true, I mean I am, but like I feel like I'm a lot further from that than you are. Oh man, okay, this is my warm up game. If I lose it's always a warm up game.
That's how it goes in chess. Yeah. So at the same time.
I was the only female player, but I was also so young. I don't think I even like recognized, Like I didn't care what my gender was at five years old. So they didn't have an under eight section, So I was playing against kids that were like nine or ten years old. And when you're like five years old playing against people that are like nine or ten, it makes a big difference.
All Right, he's picking up the pace. He got tired of the trash talking.
He's also probably tired of all the times I flagged him, so it goes both ways.
Well, I'm going to really make sure that Oh.
Oh, you know what, that's a good move. Yeah, he just took one of my pawns. And I don't like that very much because now I am down upon Yeah, being down material and chess is the worst. Oh man, all right, Joe, I am coming to flag you. And that's oh oh oh, I missed this. Oh my gosh, I super missed this. My game is looking pretty over. Unfortunately, I am in a big pickle. But Joe only has five seconds left on the clock and he's making some
pretty suspicious some pretty suspicious moves. I lost some time, so as you can tell, I was not winning that game, right. But because this is like a club game, because this is like a friendly game, I'm able to play for the flag. And I would play for the flag in a tournament anyhow, I would do it anyways. But it works better in this kind of setting because usually for
chess tournaments, time controls are significantly longer. So usually chess tournaments have like ninety minutes plus thirty seconds after your move, and it's like, yeah, I play pretty fast in chess this time, Joe, you should try to not flag. I think your chess is really good. I think the only issue you might have is time for sure. Right around twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, I think is when COVID really hit. Everything's at school moved online, so I just have so
much time. And one of my friends had already been live streaming for a little bit on twitch before then. She's a Stanford graduates and is one of the pioneers of like chess on twitch, so live streaming chess and that was never really something I'd even thought about at that time because I was like done with chess. For the most part. I played a couple of tournaments here and there. We actually won like a Canadian University championships.
While I was in Universe, like I was just doing chess like on a very chill level, like not on the world club stage, just like Canadian school.
It was fun.
And then she started like getting me into this live streaming thing with chess.
So we played a match on stream and I beat.
Her ten zero, and people were like really impressed by that, and she was like, well, you should come back, we should do you should stream.
On my channel, live stream on my channel.
And she paid me like basically hourly, and it was better than the part time job at that time, which was going all the way to like northern Toronto to like teach little kids chess. I was getting paid like maybe sixty dollars an hour, like sixty Canadian an hour, So yeah, I was really good. It was basically the equivalent of taking a TA job like at university.
So I was like really happy with that.
And then with streaming, it was like very convenient because I could.
Do it from home.
And obviously all the clubs shut down and stuff because of COVID, so nothing in person at that time, I wasn't really on the best terms with my parents still because of chess, and I just got home and streamed at their place for like maybe two months. Like my mom still had this mindset that I should be winning in chess all the time. And it was really weird, like I'm doing this because people want to see it, not because like people really care that much from winning
or not, like sure, it's better. And I got really upset, and I moved out of the house with my best friend and we just got a place in downtown Toronto, and I would say that's where things really kicked off.
Mikey.
Nice to meet you, Mikey.
I'm Nemo. Nemo.
Yes, yes, like the captain.
Yeah, your pieces are set up.
I have to set up mine on death correct, and I will be talking to Yeah, totally fine.
Okay, sorry, not easy to distract. Not easy to distract. Okay, that's amazing, it is.
Yeah, all right, good luck, Mikey.
Do you come to the club off of Mikey I do a.
Regular So currently Mikey is playing the Spanish This is my favorite opening. I play as both black and white, so I hope you're ready Castle.
This is very standard so far, and how long have you been playing.
Chess for fifty years?
Oh my gosh, well we definitely found someone who's been playing chess for longer.
Than I have. Does mean I'm so strong?
Okay, so we're going into the chigorin line.
A gentleman knows this theory, you're correct, but now what now? What is the big question?
So fury in chess is this thing where like you just kind of have to know the openings, and theory is just the term we use for openings that have been previously discovered, for openings that everybody is like well aware of. Okay, yeah, I'm going to just take your pond back over here.
So your bishop is has wasted a move.
Yeah, you don't really ever want to lose tempo in chess because you just sort of like it's basically losing a move. You lose time, and you don't have that much time in life, and you don't have that much time in chess.
You don't get that much time.
It's true, I'm actually gonna move my knight back. So with tempo, he didn't technically lose a move, but he made a move and then brought the piece back to where it initially started, so it's kind of like losing a move. It's what he wanted to do, so I wouldn't call it exactly losing a move, but it's close.
Yes.
I signed with an esports organization called Countlogic Gaming. Unfortunately they are disbanded now, but back then they were one of the biggest esport organizations for Legal Legends. So I was really happy signing with them because I was a huge Legal Legends fan and they had me on as like a chess creator, but also like I could play, like play other things on stream, so that's what I was mostly just live streaming, and it went really really well.
And that's sort of like what led me to move to LA because they were based here originally, and then I had a lot of friends that I moved here because of doing content, like whether it was YouTube or twitch or you know, just like regular influencer stuff. I should say, they all came here, so I decided to
move to LA. So a lot of the time when I'm playing chess, I have the position already in my head, and if he makes a move, he could tell me what move he made and I would still be able to make my next move just because like I don't need to look at the board to be able to do Yeah.
It just comes from having played so much chess. That's where the skill being able.
To play blindfolded chess actually comes from.
Once you've played so much chess.
Like right now, if I close my eyes and he said I know, he said played B three, but if he just told me the next move, I would still be able.
To be like, oh, I can go rook a to D eight.
Every single square and chess has coordinates. People think that playing blindfolded chess is really really difficult, and sure it is, but once you have enough knowledge of the board and I'm familiar with how pieces move, it's actually easier than people think. A lot of the time I would be live streaming, and when you live stream, people tune in, and I was averaging like probably around one thousand viewers like right off the get go, and that was like
a really big deal on Twitch. Like one of those viewers on Twitch is like pretty pretty massive already. So the Esports organization literally signed me on a salary, so like I basically am signed to them as a creator. If they want to use me for publicity or if they want to use me like.
To do ads or anything like that.
So I could do whatever I wanted on stream and then a sponsored would pay me to play games for them. I would get paid to, for example, have like logos and stuff on stream. I would get paid for public appearances or like to do ads. I did a couple
of like commercial ads during the pandemic. So I think at the start, I was making about one hundred and fifty thousand a year, and I was like huge, as like just a content creator that like had basically never done content creation before, like never light stream before.
It was really really cool. I got to do a whole bunch of different media. I got to do like my own shoots.
Mikey's playing really well here. It's very solid, right, very solid.
I don't play very solid against you. It will be my last move.
Making a mistake in higher level chess is usually very fatal exactly, not just for Mikey. But if I make a really bad move right now in this position where Mikey's trying to check Mame, I see what you're trying to do over there on the king side.
With the knife. So here I have to be very careful.
I'm not going to let you do what you want to do, which I think was Queen two age five. Yes, you're correct, I see you're getting rid of my knight on the outpost.
I have to not let you win the pond, though.
I can't get rid of the Yeah, I can't get rid of the nine, I think.
But I don't know what Mike's rating is. But I think.
Mikey's really good because he sees pieces that I have that are really good and he's like, I don't want this piece here, and he's getting rid of them, and that's a sign of a really strong chess player. I started playing poke fairly recently. If you can win in poker, it's very beneficial. It makes a lot more money than winning in chess. So I would definitely say I've grown over the last couple of years from that, like just doing a whole wide variety of like different stuff, like
not just from live streaming. So poker is really awesome because it's very similar to chess in a way. The game is hard, but I also think that it's easier to play than chess because of the luck aspect to it. So you can have less experience in poker and do well, and that's kind of what I experienced for my first few months of playing poker, Like before this sponsored event, I obviously like dabbled a little bit, played a couple
of like sponsored stuff on stream. I was like making a few thousand dollars here and there through sponsorships, and I thought that, like, because I basically had quit competitive chess at that time, I was like, oh, this is really cool. Like I'm never going to become a professional League of Life players, so I might as well as try becoming, you know, better.
At this game.
Thirty five seconds, when your clock runs under one minute, that's usually when the game gets really dicey. So I still have one minute, I have double double your time. Okay, I'll bring my bishop out and then play this, just trading off Queen's I have a pair of bishops. Then I'll play this. Oh and Mikey has flagged unfortunately.
Thank you, Thank you very much.
Long on time.
But of course you're facing.
Yourself and you can thank you very much Mikey for playing.
That was fun, good game, good game.
Sure to you.
So right now I'm probably looking at, you know, continuing my streaming career. I'm going to keep live streaming for a little bit I'm looking to grow, not just necessarily in this chess and gaming space, but also in lifestyle. I've been working on like fashion projects and stuff for a little bit now, but this year, on the competitive side of things, I'm going to be playing a lot more poker. So that's what I'm most looking forward to is you know, I've done a lot of competitive chests
in my life. I've played a little bit of competitive poker. But I also really want to see, like, oh, if I really put some time into a game that I really enjoy, how far can I take it? And I'm really excited for that because there was definitely times when I really like playing chess and it felt good and it felt good to be winning. So I kind of want to, like, you know, see where I can maybe go with that with poker.
Okay, thank you, exchange. So this is no, no, don't lose your queen. Okay, So Joe almost blunder is queen.
Oh I almost wondered my wing too, Oh my god.
This is okay wait wait wait wait wait, but I have this move.
Yeah. So blunder and chess is when you make a really big mistake, like if you lose your quinn in one move that's a huge mistake.
There's a lot of things that can be a huge mistake. Yeah, Joe is going.
To lose in this game because I'm gonna get check me soon.
All right, good game, Joe, Thank you for playing. Today has been a lot of fun.
I got to go out and got to play chess against some of the lovely members of the LA Chess Club. After workdays or after streaming and stuff, I usually try to cook myself some food, settle down. I've been recently binge watching Alone, which is my favorite show at the moment, and just kind of like relax and try to wind down for the night because I'm pretty tired typically at the end of such long days. So I'm wrapping up for bed. To you. Out to God, Rom