‘TSA gambit declined’: Chess Streamer of the Year stopped by airport security because of his award

Levy “GothamChess” Rozman, the winner of Streamer Awards 2023 in the chess category, tweeted a picture of TSA agents handling his trophy, which triggered airport security. It wasn’t the only bit of turbulence on his trip home: the world’s most-viewed chess youtuber also had an interesting interaction with one of his fans on the flight.

Yesterday, the Streamer Awards 2023, QTCinderella’s awards ceremony, returned with over 200,000 concurrent viewers watching the live celebration of the best and brightest in the community. GothamChess, who recently crossed the 3 million subscriber mark on YouTube, scored the award over the Botez sisters, Hikaru Nakamura, and Anna Cramling.

The popular content creator’s journey home was made a bit more complicated by his victory, however: the next day, he tweeted out a picture featuring an airport security agent carefully checking his trophy.

Commenters were quick to pick up on the fun story, with Twitter user @the_dfama replying with “It’s the TSA gambit declined,” a reference to popular chess openings like the Queen’s Gambit Declined (1. d4 d5 2. c4 and anything but cxd4 to follow up.)

Related: Streamer Awards 2023: All results and winners for every category

Later, Levy followed up with another story with his “favorite fan interaction ever,” as he signed an enthusiastic young fan’s barf bag on the plane ride back home.

After a short hiatus, Levy brought back his Guess the Elo series on March 9: the latest episode in the series has already crossed the million-view mark.