Samay Raina

Samay Raina is an Indian chess streamer, YouTuber, stand-up comedian and printing engineer. He was the joint winner of the second season of the stand-up comedy contest Comicstaan.[1] During the COVID-19 pandemic, he began streaming games of chess along with his friend IM Sagar Shah, GM Vidit Gujrathi, GM Abish Mathew and fellow comedians, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Vaibhav Sethia and others. Through his YouTube channel, he has raised substantial amounts of money for various causes including help for waste pickers' community,[2] and relief for West Bengal and Assam flood victims.[3][4]

Samay Raina
Samay Raina
Born
Jammu, India
NationalityIndian
Occupation
Years active2017–present
Known forCo-Winner of Comicstaan season 2
YouTube information
Also known as
  • Sagar Shah Proud Student
  • Blunder Master
Channel
Years active2017–present
Genre
  • Comedy
  • game play
Subscribers575 thousand
Total views95.81 million
100,000 subscribers 2020
Updated: 5 February 2021

Early Life and Education

Raina was born in a Kashmiri Pandit family[5] in Jammu and lived in Srinagar for a short while before his parents decided that the place was not safe due to the attacks against Hindus. They then moved to New Delhi and after a few years to Hyderabad, which is where he finished his schooling. He then obtained a Bachelor's degree in printing engineering from Pune Vidhyarthi Griha's College of Engineering and Technology. During his time at college, he began performing stand-up acts, at first for his peers and then eventually outside his college.

Career

Stand-up

After performing at multiple open mics since August 27, 2017, Samay began opening act for well known comedians like Anirban Dasgupta and Abhishek Upmanyu in Pune. As he gained recognition, he moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in stand-up comedy and gave several successful shows in Mumbai and in several cities across the nation.

Comicstaan 2

Eventually he joined Comicstaan 2 from a suggestion from his co-winner Aakash Gupta and later he became the joint winner of Comicstaan 2 with Aakash Gupta which was aired on Amazon Prime Video.

YouTube

During the COVID-19 pandemic, all outdoor events were cancelled and thus, Raina could no longer perform stand-up comedy. He then began streaming games of chess on his YouTube channel at fellow comedian, Tanmay Bhat's suggestion. His viewership got a boost when he invited YouTuber, Antonio Radić, popularly known as Agadmator, to his channel. In response to this, Indian GM, Vidit Gujrathi tweeted that he too would like to join Raina on his channel. Eventually, Gujrathi made an appearance on Raina's channel, giving another boost to Raina's viewership. Since then, the two have fostered a strong friendship, and frequently feature on each other's channels. Gujrathi attributes his moving from Twitch to YouTube to Raina's suggestion.

According to many proponents of chess, including GMs Anand Viswanathan, Vidit Gujrathi, Anish Giri, Teimour Radjabov, Baskaran Adhiban, Emil Sutovsky and IMs Tania Sachdev & Sagar Shah, Raina has been instrumental in popularising chess in India through his channel.

Raina tries to make the game of chess more appealing to the masses through his humour which according to many have helped him reach a larger audience.[6]

In addition to the chess players mentioned above, several well known chess personalities like Pentala Harikrishna; former world chess champions Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand; and the current world chess champion, Magnus Carlsen have featured on Raina's channel. He also organised many chess tournaments for popular Indian celebraties. He also called GM Magnus Carlsen and GM Viswanathan Anand in the same stream. He also plays games other than chess like Fall Guys, Human Flat Fall and Among Us with his fellow other youtube creators like Gamer fleet, Karan Singh,Tanmay Bhat, Suhani Shah.

Comedians on Board (COB)

To attract online audience to chess, he started organizing Online Chess Tournaments on his channel, called Comedians on Board (COB).[7]

Comedians on Board Tournament
Season Dates Winner Runner-up 1 Runner-up 2
Comedians on Board (COB) #1 Aakash Mehta
Comedians on Board (COB) #2 1-3 July 2020 Anirban DasGupta Samay Raina Biswa Kalyan Rath
Comedians on Board (COB) #3 19-21 Nov 2020 Joel Dsouza Vaibhav Sethia Samay Raina

Comedian on Board Season 3 is held on 19 to 21 November 2020.[8]

Songs
Year Track Artist Notes
2020 ENDGAME (Sagar Shah Diss) Video on YouTube Samay Raina Disstrack

References
  1. "Aakash Gupta and Samay Raina win Comicstaan 2". The Indian Express. 16 August 2019. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  2. "Charity begins with chess?". Hindustan Times. 30 May 2020. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  3. "Mover & shaker: How stand-up comic Samay Raina is redefining chess for a cause". ESPN. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  4. Kulkarni (Rakesh), Rakesh. "Chess For Charity: Chess for West Bengal, India". Chess.com.
  5. "'Standing up' for Kashmir". The New Indian Express. 23 January 2020. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  6. Sep 5, Prasad RS / TNN /. "We have made chess more consumable for the masses: Samay Raina | Chess News – Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 29 September 2020.
  7. "32 well-known comedians of India will fight it out in Comedians on Board 3 - ChessBase India". www.chessbase.in. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  8. "32 well-known comedians of India will fight it out in Comedians on Board 3 - ChessBase India". www.chessbase.in. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
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