Chess has always been considered a game for old people or nerds, but over the past year, it has taken over. It is close to impossible to walk into a class and not see at least one person playing online chess and many people attend the school chess club. The question stands: When did chess become cool?

The most glaring answer is the thing that has changed so many other things in our lives: the COVID-19 Pandemic. When people were confined to their homes with nothing to do, we all spent time doing things we normally wouldn’t do. One thing we did a lot of was watching TV and getting our money’s worth for all of our streaming services. While Tiger King is the show most people think of when they think of pandemic entertainment, this is also when 62 million households watched The Queen’s Gambit premiere, which features a young woman trying to build herself up in the world of chess. This made many people break out their old chess boards, or learn online.

From here the popularity of the centuries-old board game grew with celebrities endorsing the game and sharing their love for it. Many higher-quality online games were being made and YouTubers were making polished videos about the game. With all of these new materials, more people were able to learn how to play the rapidly growing game.

We all know how fast trends can take off and chess was definitely one of these trends. I don’t think this chess takeover is a particularly bad thing, for there are far worse things teenagers could be doing with their time.

Do I think this trend will last? I don’t know. Chess already has stood the test of time and it will always be around and popular within certain groups of people, but I don’t know if people playing chess all the time and talking about chess all the time will be a thing that will stick around in high schools for the long run.