'Newbie' Chess Player From Indonesia Beats A 'Master', Resulting In Cyberbullying On Both Sides

Chess is one of the oldest recreational board game known to man. Played by two players, chess is also one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people around the world.

As an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information, winning the game requires strategies that can be countless. Because of the game's massive popularity and competitiveness, which creates expert players, there are "Master" titles given for those who have accomplished certain criteria, such as achieving certain rating.

And Levy Rozman, is one of those "Masters."

Known online as 'GothamChess', Rozman is also a YouTuber and a Twitch streamer. Born in 1995 in New York, he is known as a chess commentator, and a user at Chess.com, an online chess platform and community, since 2017.

While Rozman received the titles of "National Master" in 2011, "FIDE Master" in 2016, and "International Master" in 2018, one day, he was defeated by a Chess.com newbie from Indonesia.

The person, Dadang Subur, who goes online on the Chess platform with the name 'Dewa_Kipas', defeated Rozman the GothamChess in under five minutes.

While winning or losing is nothing serious in Chess.com, Rozman's lost to Dadang apparently caused a stir on the internet, particularly on social media networks.

Instead of receiving an honored winning, Dadang's victory was received with a backlash. This resulted in Dadang having his account banned from Chess.com.

As told by Ali Akbar, Dadang's son, it all began one night when his father played chess at Chess.com:

This was no coincidence, since Dadang's ELO ranking was not far off from Rozman's, Chess.com's system put them in a match.

Things was nothing out of the ordinary, until Dadang managed to defeat Rozman.

Quickly, Dadang's victory attracted many bullies from Rozman's fans and followers. Many people accused Dadang for cheating, and allegedly reported the match to Chess.com.

As Ali Akbar explained

Because the match was streamed online, and viewed by many, Dadang was bullied by many others, both on the platform and on social media. However, he also received many supporters from others, mainly from fellow Indonesians.

Sympathizers flocked to Rozman's social media accounts and bullied him there.

The bullying was so intense that Rozman had to even put his social media accounts on private, and took a short hiatus from streaming.

Dadang the Dewa_Kipas (Indonesian: Fan God) was considered a "newbie" in Chess.com. But in real life, the 60-year-old man was a former professional chess player, who attended Indonesia's annual National Sports Week (PON). Dadang was also a member of the Indonesian Chess Championship, organized by PERCASI (Indonesian: Persatuan Catur Seluruh Indonesia)

“My father was a player who used to participate in tournaments. He was also a member of PERCASI and have won many tournaments. One of them was ranked first in the 37th chess championship in Singkawang in 2005,” said Ali.

In other words, Dadang knows a lot more than a thing or two in chess.

But online, Dadang was nothing like Rozman.

For comparison, Rozman has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitch, and tens of thousands of followers on Chess.com. Dadang on the other hand has nothing. His ELO rating however, was exceptionally high, since he was an avid chess player on Chess.com, before the platform banned him.

It was Ali who advised Dadang to play chess on Chess.com.

“As it turned out, [Dadang] was hooked [on Chess.com], particularly on Ranked Matches where he got to play against professionals, including Levy,” said Ali. “The average [Chess.com] user would take a few months to raise their ELO from 800 to 1,200. My father raised his ELO from 800 to 2,300 in three weeks because of intensive game play.”

"The pace and the way he played was like someone with an ELO of more than 2,700 or the equivalent of a grandmaster," said Ali.

For this reason, Ali Akbar considered the ban of his father's account unacceptable, and said that his father is a victim of cyberbullying by a “major Chess.com account with many followers against a minor account.”

Shortly after, Ali Akbar asked social media users to stop attacking Rozman's accounts.

Ali said that he has reached both Chess.com and Rozman regarding the blocking of his father’s account, saying that both have agreed to delete all posts related to the backlash.

Ali, on behalf of his father, also apologized to Rozman, and also to his fans and followers. Ali hopes that people will stop the bullying because the issue between them has ended. He also said this because the backlash is affecting Rozman's online reputation in a bad way. Ali said that based on the fact that GothamChess is a professional chess player who earns a living from playing chess at Chess.com.

While Rozman has been a professional in chess for years, his online personality surged significantly following the 'COVID-19' coronavirus pandemic, where many people are urged to stay at home and conduct activities through the internet. What's more, Rozman's popularity also escalated following the release of The Queen's Gambit. a drama miniseries that tells a story about a chess prodigy.

This is a contrast to his father, Dadang Subur, who plays chess only in his spare time, said Ali in a Facebook post.

This has been confirmed by Rozman through his Twitter account, with him saying that they both agree to find "a positive solution":

As for Chess.com, the platform denied that the blocking of the Dadang’s account Dewa_Kipas was caused by reports from other players.

“We would never ever ever ever close an account based on any number of reports from @GothamChess or any other creator or their community. All closures are made by the fair play team after careful review in accordance with our fair play policy,” Chess.com said on its Twitter account.

Nevertheless, Ali and his father felt no regrets.

“My father can live a calmer life, now that he took a break from online chess. He was so obsessed with raising his ELO that he forgot to eat and sleep,” he said.

“The blocking seemed like a reminder [to Dadang] to stop playing.” said Ali, who added that his father had no plans to reactivate the account, at least at this time.

But for Ali, he personally hopes that Dewa-Kipas' account can be reopened on Chess.com.

“There are no plans for the rematch yet [...] I didn't expect a rematch. Just asking the account to be opened," said Ali.

In late March of 2021, Deddy Corbuzier, an Indonesian actor, television presenter, and YouTuber, who runs the popular #CloseTheDoor podcast on YouTube with more than 13.8 million subscribers, asked Irene Sukandar, an Indonesian chess grandmaster, to play a game with Dadang.

And when Dadang accepted her challenge, Sukandar was all in.

"Deddy kind of cornered me in a way that I couldn't say no," said Sukandar with a smile.

The online stream became one of the most unusual chess matches ever.

Held in Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, the friendly match was live streamed on the internet, and attracted a record-number of more than one million concurrent viewers. This number is about 10 times of the most-watched live-streamed chess events in history, such as the classical world championship and Pogchamps.

The games were played at Corbuzier's studio, with the stream lasting about an hour and an a half.

In the three match games against Irene Sukandar, Dadang lost in all of them.

In other words, Dadang could not perform his high-level play as he had shown online, went he was up against Rozman.

For some moves for example, he showed weaknesses when he left his pieces undefended for his opponent to capture, a very common and classic amateur mistake.

Chess.com that analyzed the games, estimated that Dadang's ELO should be around 1,127, a far cry from his ELO on its platform, which far exceeded 2,000, a rating that is worthy for a master's title.

Read The Most-Watched Streaming Chess Game, Following The Loss Of A Master Against An Amateur