Irene Sukandar vs Dadang Subur

Chess is not a popular game in Indonesia and also in the world, I think. Chess is not a mass sport that can stir up the emotions of the masses, so it's no surprise that chess isn't so popular. Chess can only be played by 2 persons, focused on the mind and there are no actions or festive celebrations are the reasons why chess is not a popular sport. Chess ia only for a certain people.

However, recently an online chess match was watched by more than 1 million people. The match was live on a YouTube channel owned by an Indonesian YouTuber named Deddy Corbuzier, he used to be a magician turned an entertainer and a YouTuber, a successful one with million subscribers.

There is a name that has suddenly become famous in Indonesia recently, the name is Dadang Subur who is known as the Dewa_Kipas which means God of Fan. Dadang Subur became famous thanks to his chess match at chess.com with a professional chess player from the United States, Levy Rozman, who uses the name of GothamChess.

Levy Rozman lost the match and accused Dadang Subur of cheating by using bot and reported him to chess.com, which immediately blocked Dadang Subur's Dewa_Kipas account.

Dadang Subur's Dewa_Kipas account on chess.com

Subur's son then started an online protest, he said that his father was treated unfairly by Levy Rozman and chess.com. It didn't take long for the protest to gain traction and ignited bigger sparks, Indonesian netizens then started to attack Levy Rozman on YouTube and other social channels, massively.

In the midst of this noise, Deddy Corbuzier provided a stage for Dadang Subur on his show to clarify the case. This move was criticized by a professional female chess player from Indonesia, Irene Sukandar. Irene said that Deddy has given a stage to a con artist. Deddy then invited Irene and Dadang to fight on the chess board live on his YouTube channel with prizes of $14,000 for the winner and $7,000 for the loser. The money was from brands that put their logo during the match.

This match quickly became a topic of conversation and attracted the attention of many people in Indonesia. Usually people talk about football, or badminton, sports which are popular in Indonesia. But suddenly people talk about a chess match, this never happened before. And when the match took place the event attracted the attention of more than 1 million spectators who watched it live. A spectacular number for a chess match. The numbers of spectators is so spectacular even FIDE themselves felt the urge to tweet about the event.

As expected, Irene sukandar won easily. They played 3 matches and Irene won them all, Dadang refused to play the last match as the result seems already decided. With the total defeat of Dadang Subur, Levy Rozman be like "I knew it". He immediately commented about the game and about how amateur Dadang Subur is.

The result of the match ended the polemic about Dewa_Kipas account blockade by chess.com. Apparently, people are now aware that Dadang subur was indeed cheating.

You can watch the match in the following video.