Akbar said he was sorry that his post sparked harassment, and he offered to explain all of the abnormalities with his father’s account. “Hope we can discuss things peacefully,” he wrote. It’s an insane situation.”Īt 7 am Eastern time on March 3, Rozman messaged Akbar to reconcile. “I knew I was in the right, but sometimes you just take the L. “I didn’t know if I should double down or just apologize to reel it in,” says Rozman. Rozman tried to explain on Twitter that wouldn’t ban somebody just because he or his fans had reported them, that there was a whole process involved to weed out alleged cheaters, but it was no use. Rozman was receiving several messages, comments, and tweets every minute in Indonesian. (The thread was locked, moderators wrote underneath, because it was being “heavily brigaded by outside groups” and “unsubstantiated.”) Indonesian news media covered the controversy too, painting Rozman as an entitled celebrity. A post accusing Rozman’s fans of mass-reporting Subur, a “retired professional chess player,” rocketed to the top of the Chess subreddit with thousands of upvotes. Memes flooded Rozman’s private inboxes, some demanding a rematch. His allegation-that the word of a celebrity chess master is weighed more heavily than an average player’s- resonated with thousands of people, including both lesser-known chess enthusiasts and very online Indonesians fed up with Western internet celebrity culture. “We’re acting with no emotion and no investment other than to protect the integrity of the game.”Īkbar’s post went viral. An average of 895 people watched chess streamers on Twitch on Maa year later that cumulative audience expanded to 21,491. High-level chess has experienced an unprecedented online boom due to the pandemic. Now 25, he’s known not only on the chess circuit like other top players, he has developed a large following on Twitch, on YouTube, and on Twitter. In 2011, he attained National Master status, and in 2018, International Master. Rozman has been playing in chess tournaments since he was seven. In fact, Rozman would later discover, Dewa_Kipas, or “fan god,” was a bird-feed seller in Indonesia.Ĭhat echoed back: “LMAOOOO,” “CHEATER.” “Let’s see if we can get some content here,” said Rozman. And his profile didn’t include the sort of title-“FIDE master,” “national master”-that the ranking implied. His opponent had climbed nearly a thousand points in the span of a month, ranking 2,300 to Rozman’s 2,431. Rozman, an international chess master, scrolled through the profile, disbelieving. “All right, this looks like a cheater,” he said without pause, as he clicked on the pigeon icon of his opponent, Dewa_Kipas.

On March 2, Levy Rozman, in a pink sweater and round glasses, was streaming his matches to 12,000 viewers over Twitch.

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