Andrea Botez

Botez's Romanian parents moved from Romania to Canada after Alexandra Botez, Andrea's older sister, was born in Dallas, Texas. The Botez family relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, before moving to Oregon when Alexandra was in high school.^[5][6] Andrea has ADHD.^[7]

Chess

Botez began playing chess at the age of six. She started playing in the USChess tournaments at the age of seven. In 2010, she won the U8 Girls Canadian Youth Chess Championship.

In 2015, at the age of thirteen, she became the Women British Columbia Chess Champion.^[8] In the same year, Botez also won the Susan Polgar National Open.^[9][10]

In 2016, at the SPFNO 2016: U14 Girls, Botez placed fourth in the tournament^[11][12] and 13th in the 2016 Susan Polgar Foundation Girls' Invitational.^[13]

Botez attained her highest FIDE classical rating of 1825 in 2024 and her highest USChess rating of 1933 in 2019.^[14] As of March 2024, her ranking among active players in the world is 65175, based on her rating.^[15]

Chess Boxing

In December 2022, Botez competed against WGM (Woman Grandmaster) Dina Belenkaya in the Mogul Chessboxing Championship; hosted by Ludwig Ahgren.^[16] Initially, Belenkaya was deemed the winner, but after a post-fight review, the organizer announced an updated result: "...[Botez] should have been awarded a TKO after the referee initiated the fourth standing count of the fight".^[17] The update resulted in both Belenkaya and Botez being winners.^[18]

Boxing

In April 2023, Botez lost a boxing match against fellow YouTuber Michelle Khare in Creator Clash 2.^[19]

Content creation

Alongside her sister, Botez runs the Twitch channel BotezLive, which, as of May 2022, has 1.1 million followers with more than 18.3 million views.^[20] She began assisting her sister in 2020^[21] by playing chess and in other variety streams and the YouTube channel BotezLive, which, as of May 2022, has over 800k subscribers and 140 million views.^[22]

Because of their popularity on various content platforms, the Botez sisters became some of the most-known figures on the Chess.com platform, alongside GM Hikaru Nakamura and WGM Qiyu Zhou.

On December 21, 2020, Andrea and Alexandra signed a contract with Envy Gaming as content creators at the launch of the organization's creator network and ambassador program. They would later move to Los Angeles, CA, where they would join other content creators such as JustaMinx and CodeMiko in the Envy Content House.^{[23][24][25][26]}

On her personal TikTok account where she posts highlights from her Twitch streams, TikTok trends, and short videos from her daily life, Botez has garnered over 310K followers and 5.9M likes.

Aside from their regular chess streams and other activities, the two sisters host a show on their Twitch channel called "Botez Abroad",^[27] where they travel to cities around the world and stream their in-person chess matches at various venues.

In the second iteration of the online amateur chess tournament Pogchamps, Botez was part of the commentator team.^[28]In 2021, Botez took part again in the Pogchamps 3 tournament, doubling as a coach for CodeMiko^[29] and as a commentator,^[30][31] and, once again, she joined the commentator team for Pogchamps 4.^[32]

In 2020, Botez participated in the Zoomers Play Chess team match to help raise funds for children in need affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.^[33][34]

Exhibition

Chessboxing

• Andrea Botez on TikTok