[sanderjd]

I'm extremely skeptical of the claim that engines killed mainstream interest in chess. The trend seems to only go back to 2004, which is not long enough.

My sense growing up in the 90s was that chess was a niche thing for nerds. I think it seems somewhat more mainstream now than it was then, while remaining fundamentally a niche thing for nerds :) But it seems very clear to me that it never underwent the broad collapse that I remember being broadly predicted after Kasparov vs Deep Blue.

[brightlancer]

My anecdotal recollection is that Deep Blue is a big part of what put chess into everyone's mind and rejuvenated the mainstream interest in playing what had previously been a nerd niche.

[sanderjd]

Yep, that's how I remember it too.