Zachery Saine - From YouTuber to FIDE presenter (opens in new tab)

Zachery’s journey is a remarkable rise from a small content creator to the face behind the YouTube channel thechessnerd, now with over 227,000 subscribers, and a presenter for FIDE, hosting press conferences at the 2026 Candidates Tournament. He began in 2019 at just 18 years old, uploading chess videos, and saw explosive growth during the pandemic as his content reached a global audience. Alongside this, his playing strength climbed from 1680 Elo in 2016 to over 2100 within a decade. So how ...