It's satisfying to watch and the expert commentary is really good.
But it's a sport that fucked up gender so bad that it's got an open league and a league for cis women only.
Like I know why to have a women's league in a competition with a sexist history. Pinball does it. But competitive pinball, while fighting the long fight against sexist trends, manages to be normal about including trans people. FIDE won't do that in chess.
No out trans woman has ever become a grandmaster, yet FIDE still decided they needed to ban trans women from international women's competitions. See, that would lead to a small chance that a trans woman would win. Like, the one of them who is out and plays at that level. She might win something. If she played really well. That would be bad, according to FIDE. Trans people aren't allowed to win things.
(I say out trans woman because there's like a thousand grandmasters. It is statistically inevitable that at least one is trans and closeted, and knows that FIDE would destroy their career if they came out.)
It's not like they've created a good environment for cis women either. The twitch chat is toxic, for one thing.
I want to share the excitement of the intense matches between top chess players, but then I decide not to, because there's all that shit.