Twitch streamer Tyler Steinkamp or "Tyler1" has managed to raise some eyebrows through his incredible chess journey and growth. Tyler, who has been a League of Legends streamer for the entirety of his online career, has been obsessed with another game - chess. So much so, that the streamer has managed to reach a whopping 1,900 ELO (Rapid) on Chess.com.
To put it into perspective, Tyler's online rating puts him in the top 0.5% of players on the website. In fact, according to his profile, he is nearly in the top 50K players (active) on Chess.com. Here's how his profile looks right now (May 7):
Tyler1, a dedicated League of Legends player for years, has recently emerged as a dominant creator in the chess community. His Chess.com account, under the moniker "BIG_TONKA_T," was only created in July 2023. In the same month, he hit his lowest rating of 199 in Rapid.
This was when he was participating in Twitch's amateur chess tournament, Pogchamps 5. Tyler1, still inexperienced at the time, struggled and lost in the quarter-finals against Australian creator Alex "I Did A Thing."
Since then, he has become immensely dedicated to the game, spending hours each day (which he still does) and consistently improving. He achieved the 1000 rating mark in September 2023, followed by 1500 in October 2023, and most recently, on May 6, he reached 1900.
During this period, between July 2023 and May 2024, the streamer has remarkably played over 8,500 games (out of which almost 6,000 games are in Rapid) and attempted over 12,100 puzzles:
One of the most intriguing aspects of his games is his consistent use of a single starting technique, commonly referred to as the "Cow Opening." Although not recognized as an official opening, it is listed as the
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