Levy Rozman began his Chess business journey with the launch of his YouTube channel, GothamChess in August of 2018, but his chess story began long before that. Levy was born on Dec. 5 in 1995 in Brooklyn, New York. As a kid, he describes himself as the nerdy chess kid, unpopular and obsessed with chess, first playing at the age of 6, and competing in his first tournament at the age of 7. He continued playing for the remainder of his childhood and obtained the title of National Master in 2011, FIDE master (The world wide chess regulating body officially known as the International Chess Federation) master, and ultimately International Master in 2018, a designation second only to Grandmaster. In fact, Rozman is ranked 6,689th in the world, which while it sounds low, is put into context when considering there are over 605 million chess players in the world – putting Rozman in the top .001% of players. During his rise as a chess player, Levy began teaching chess as a part time job at a private school while in school himself at Baruch college. With this, Levy launched a ten-year journey as a chess teacher in New York. In 2018, Levy launched his content creator career, beginning with streaming chess on the popular platform Twitch on a group stream with fellow chess playing friends. These streams caught the attention of Danny Rensch, the Chief Chess Officer of Chess.com, the leading virtual chess platform. Aftering talking with Rensch, Rozman launched his solo channel, GothamChess 2 months laters, debuting to an astounding average of 134 viewers – an insane amount for a startup creator, much less in the chess world. When Covid hit, Levy transitioned to focusing on his Youtube channel of the same name, and with the world stuck inside in quarantine, his channel exploded. Today, the channel has a following of nearly 5.5 million subscribers, and Levy is known throughout the chess world for his entertaining videos and analysis. Using this base as a launch pad, Levy launched his company Chessly, an online chess tutoring and lessons system along with a book. Both of these have been received very well by the chess community, and Chessly is known for its excellence. Today Rozman has millions of viewers online, tens of thousands of “students” through Chessly, and is known as one of the most influential competitors in expanding chess’s reach to new players.
Levy Rozman – Chess Entrepreneur
This is such a cool example of how someone’s life-long passion could become not only a side-hustle, but an actually means for living. I love seeing the contrast between being different for loving the chess and becoming successful through it. This Levy Rozman is a prime inspiration for not giving up on something you love even if other’s don’t always see your vision. It reminded me that I too am original in my interests, experiences, and visions, and can bring to the table something unlike everyone else.