Mar 08 2025 19 mins 3
Hello everyone, this week we are looking at the youngest Alberta champion, at one point the highest rated bullet player on Chess.com, the highest rated active Canadian player, and a founder of the Youtube and Twitch channel the “Chessbrahs” - Eric Hansen.
A couple of years after he started playing chess, in 2003, he participated in the Alberta Provincial Under 12 Championship where he scored 1st with a score of 5 out of 6 and established his provisional Canadian rating at 1316.
Quickly, his Canadian rating started to skyrocket. By the end of that year, his rating was 1400. By the end of 2004, it was 1800. In 2005, he reached 2050.
In 2006, he played in the Under 14 Alberta Championship and the Alberta Junior Championship - going undefeated and winning both tournaments.
Two years later with his Canadian rating above 2300, Eric won the Under 16 Alberta Championship, he finished 1st at the Alberta Championship, and he finished in a tie for 1st at the Alberta Open to become the youngest Alberta Champion in history at the age of 15.
Once that tournament concluded, Hansen attended the University of Texas on a chess scholarship. It was also around this time that he started to use the name ‘Chessbrah’ as one of his usernames on various chess websites like the Internet Chess Club or ChessCube. He also started to do live broadcasts of him playing on a website called livestream which was shutdown in January 2025.
Toward the end of the year, he played in the American Continental Championship in Argentina. More than 200 players participated with the top 4 qualifying for the 2013 FIDE World Cup. Hansen finished in a 5-way tie for first. Since there were only 4 spots available, the 5 winners had to play rapid tie-breaks to determine who advanced. Hansen finished in 4th to grab the final World Cup spot.
To cap off the year, he also won the Canadian Chess Player of the Year.
The next year, he found himself tying for first with Nigel Short at the Canadian Open. He also found himself back at the FIDE World Cup - this time, seeded 98th out of 128. Again, he was eliminated in the 1st round, this time to Vladimir Malakhov who was the 31st seed with a score of ½ to 1 ½ .
In 2014, he returned to the Olympiad - this time on board 2 scoring 5 out of 9.
2015, saw Eric back at the top of the Canadian Closed - this time in a 3 way tie for first.
As of writing this, Eric is still an active player. He is sitting atop the Canadian rating list of active players by over 100 points and he is rated 150th in the world. The Chessbrah Youtube channel has almost 350,000 subscribers, they’ve amassed 170,000,000 channel views, and their Twitch account has 330,000 followers.
For today’s game, we are going back just a couple of years to the World Blitz Championship of 2019 in Moscow. Eric Hansen versus Alexey Kim.
Now, if we’re ready… let’s begin.
1. e4 e6 2. d4 b6 3. Bd3 Bb7 4. Nf3 g6 5. O-O Bg7 6. Re1 Ne7 7. a4 a6 8. Nbd2 O-O 9. c3 f5 10. b3 Qc8 11. Ba3 Re8 12. exf5 Nxf5 13. h4 Nc6 14. h5 Qd8 15. hxg6 hxg6 16. Ne4 Nce7 17. Qd2 Nd5 18. Ne5 Bxe5 19. dxe5 Qh4 20. g3 Qh3 21. Bf1 Qg4 22. Qxd5 Bxd5 23. Nf6+ Kf7 24. Nxg4 Rh8 25. Bg2 1-0
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1987346
Eric Hansen | Chess Celebrities - Chess.com
