Antonio Radić is a Croatian YouTuber and chess player who hosts a chess channel under the name Agadmator. As of June 2020, his channel is the most popular chess channel on YouTube, with more than 700,000 subscribers. On his channel, Radić reviews both recent and historical chess games, often focusing on recent games during big tournaments such as Grand Chess Tour events and focusing on historical games at other times. His channel has been credited with helping spark a boom in interest in chess among young players. Radić has a peak FIDE rating over 2000. Although he doesn't participate in many international chess tournaments, he is active on various online chess platforms, including Lichess and chess.com. The videos on Radić's channel have over 275 million views in total.
Background
Radić was introduced to chess at the age of four by his grandfather Anto Krnjić, a FIDE Master; however, he later stopped playing and did not return to chess until he was 16 years old. He resides in Križevci, Croatia.
Radić originally began his YouTube channel in 2017, while he was working with his father who had a job as a wedding videographer. He posted wedding videos to promote their business. He later began posting chess videos. When his YouTube channel became popular enough for his YouTube income to exceed his regular income in 2017, Radić quit his regular job as an assistant to his father's wedding photography business to focus on the channel full-time. Colonel David A. Hater, a writer for US Chess, has called him "one of YouTube’s leading chess streamers". Almost all of Radić's videos follow the same format. Each video is a review of one chess game. The majority of the screen is taken up by a chess board to show the moves from the game. To the left of the board, there are the names of the two players accompanied by photos. Above the board, there is a quote related to chess and often to the game being reviewed. Radić appears to the right of the board, discussing the game typically while sitting in a chair in his house. Above Radić on screen, there is a list of donations to the channel, highlighting the recent ones and the largest ones separately. To the right of the donations is a photo of Mikhail Tal. He typically posts new videos on a daily basis, and consistently reviews games from big tournaments within 24 hours. Many of his reviews of historical games are organized into series, such as the World Chess Championship 1921 match. In his most popular video, which is titled "The Greatest Queen Sacrifice in History" and has 4.5 million views as of July 2020, he analyzes a game between Rashid Nezhmetdinov and Oleg Chernikov from 1962. Aside from his chess reviewing, Radić is known for various quips that are common in his videos. If a player executes a brilliantcombination, he may award that player a 'Morphy head', and overlay their onscreen portrait with a picture of 19th century American chess master Paul Morphy. He has a running joke that, whenever the position permits, White is about to play the Evans Gambit, a well-known aggressive but risky idea rarely seen in modern high-level chess. In videos at Radić's house, there is typically a couch in the background, often with emoji pillows and with a dog named Medo.
Podcast
Radić started a podcast called the agadmator Podcast on May 17, 2020, with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as the guest for the first episode. In his second episode, which premiered on June 27, 2020, Hikaru Nakamura was his guest. The podcast is hosted on his YouTube channel. Controversy arose when YouTube unexpectedly removed the video of his second podcast. The video was later restored.
