Levy Rozman

Rozman was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 5, 1995, and lived in both New York and New Jersey growing up.[4][5] He began playing chess at the age of 6 as an extracurricular activity and entered his first tournament at the age of 7.[6][7] Rozman attained the titles of National Master in 2011 through the US Chess Federation, FIDE Master in 2016, and International Master in 2018.[8][3] Rozman started as a scholastic chess coach in 2014.[9]

Rozman attended Baruch College where he completed a Bachelor's degree in statistics and quantitative modeling in 2017. Before focusing on chess as a full-time career, he worked as a client service associate for UBS Wealth Management.[10]

Rozman is a Twitch streamer and YouTuber. As of December 23, 2022, he has the most-subscribed chess channel on YouTube, with 2 million subscribers; however, ChessBase India and Antonio Radić (aka agadmator) have the highest total view counts for a chess-themed channel, with 642 million views and 671 million views, respectively.[11][12][13][14] Rozman works closely with Chess.com and has been part of their streaming partnership since 2017.[15] Rozman is a regular commentator for the platform, analyzing tournaments like PogChamps and the 2020 Candidates Tournament.[4]

Like many online chess personalities, Rozman experienced a viewership surge during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly following the release of The Queen's Gambit.[7][16] As of November 2022, Rozman's YouTube channel has a total view count of more than half a billion views, including 98 videos with a million views or more.[17] Examples include an instructional opening overview where he discusses how to play the Queen's Gambit and a video where he plays against the Beth Harmon bot on Chess.com.[7] He has done in-depth explanations of games played in the series.[18] Rozman's YouTube channel reached 1 million subscribers on June 1, 2021.[19]

Rozman entered international news in March 2021 when he was defeated by an Indonesian chess player nicknamed Dewa_Kipas or "Fan God".[20][21] Rozman suspected that his opponent was cheating, and he reported his opponent's account to the Chess.com Fair Play Team. Dewa_Kipas' account was later closed for cheating (and Dewa_Kipas later was unable to play at a high level in a series of live matches),[22] which drew backlash from Indonesian netizens and resulted in Rozman being harassed on social media. Rozman later went private on his social media accounts and took a short hiatus from streaming.[20][21]

On July 11, 2022, Rozman announced his retirement from "competitive chess events" due to physical and mental stress. 

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