Let’s be upfront about what this page is. Alexandra Botez is a Woman FIDE Master and content creator, not a world-championship contender — so her “best games” aren’t going to be the immortal classics you’d find on a Kasparov or Carlsen page. What she does have is a genuine competitive résumé from her junior and Olympiad years, a career-best upset that’s fresh and real, and a body of content that has entertained millions. We’ll walk through the highlights honestly, in prose — because we’d rather point you to verified moments than risk misquoting a game score move-by-move.
Her career-best win: the 2024 Reykjavik Open
The single result that stands out on Alexandra’s competitive record is recent. At the 2024 Reykjavik Open in Iceland, she defeated an International Master rated 2323 — the best win of her career by rating. For a player whose peak was around 2092, taking down a titled opponent more than 200 points higher is a genuine achievement, and it came years after she’d largely stepped back from serious competitive play to focus on content.
It’s the kind of result that reminds you the chess underneath the streaming is real. You don’t beat an IM by accident; it takes calculation, nerve, and knowing what to do when the position sharpens — exactly the attacking style she’s built her game on.
A strong 2024 open tournament
The Reykjavik upset wasn’t a one-off return to the board. Also in 2024, at the Sardinia World Chess Festival, Alexandra won the B-section with a score of 8½/9 — a dominant run that shows she can still string together wins over a full tournament when she chooses to compete. It’s a nice bookend to her junior success: the competitive instinct never fully switched off.
The open-game style behind her wins
Alexandra is at her best in open, tactical positions — the sort of game that arises from a classical opening like the Italian Game, where pieces come out fast, the center opens, and the sharper attacker gets rewarded. The position below is a textbook example: symmetrical development, bishops eyeing each other’s kingsides, and a fight brewing. It’s the natural habitat for a player who likes to make things happen rather than sit and maneuver.
Playing for Canada: three Olympiads
Some of Alexandra’s most meaningful competitive chess came wearing national colors. She represented Canada at three Women’s Chess Olympiads — 2012, 2014, and 2016 — the sport’s biggest team event. Olympiad chess is a different kind of pressure: you’re playing for your country and your teammates, not just yourself, and every board matters to the team score. Suiting up for Canada three times, in her late teens and early twenties, is a real line on her chess résumé that pre-dates her fame entirely.
The “games” that made her famous: content
Here’s the honest part. The moments that made Alexandra a household name in chess aren’t tournament games at all — they’re content. On BotezLive, she and her sister Andrea turned chess into must-watch entertainment: celebrity and creator matches, over-the-board challenges, “guess the elo” formats, travel series to famous chess locations, and endless good-natured banter.
And yes — some of her most-watched moments are the ones where things went wrong. The “Botez Gambit” (blundering your queen with zero compensation) became a running joke precisely because Alexandra dropped her queen on stream more than once and laughed about it instead of hiding it. That willingness to be human on camera — to make a mistake, own it, and keep the energy positive — is a big part of why her content resonates. It made high-level chess feel approachable to millions of people who’d never touched a clock.
Why we describe rather than replay
You’ll notice we’re not embedding move-by-move replays of specific games here. That’s deliberate and it’s the Chess Lab Academy house rule: game scores get garbled all over the internet, and a single wrong move can turn a real game into fiction. Rather than risk that, we point you to the verified events, opponents, and results — the Reykjavik IM win, the Sardinia score, the Olympiad appearances — and you can look up the authentic game scores on the chess databases linked below. Accuracy first, always.
The bigger picture
If you’re measuring Alexandra Botez purely by classical tournament trophies, you’re using the wrong ruler. Her impact on chess is enormous, but it runs through broadcasting, teaching, and entertainment far more than through her own results. She’s a strong club-level competitor with a legitimate title and a career-best IM scalp — and one of the people most responsible for making chess fun to watch in the 2020s. Both things are true, and together they make her one of the most influential figures in the modern game.
Want to study her style?
The thread through Alexandra’s competitive wins is her love of open, attacking positions. See how that shapes her whole approach in her playing style, or explore the openings she plays and teaches on her openings page.
Keep exploring
Back to the Alexandra Botez profile · dig into her playing style · her openings · fun facts & the Botez Gambit · or browse all chess players.
Written and fact-checked by the Chess Lab Academy Editorial Team · Facts verified against Wikipedia, her FIDE profile, and Chess.com, as of July 2026 · Last verified 2026-07-10 · How we verify content.