Celebrity Chess: Hutch vs Urschel
UPDATE: The event has been moved to Wednesday, July 5 at 3 p.m. Pacific (6 p.m. Eastern.)
The fast-growing world of eSports streaming meets professional football as the popular Twitch streamer "Hutch" will face the Baltimore Ravens guard John Urschel in a celebrity chess match for charity on Chess.com.
Kick off your summer with this exciting event, three hours of blitz chess. Full coverage will be available on Chess.com/TV on Wednesday, July 5 at 3 p.m. Pacific.
The two celebrity players will battle for $1,000 in charity prizes donated by Chess.com, with $750 going to the winner and $250 to the loser of the match.
Both celebrity players are intermediate at chess, but based on his higher Chess.com blitz rating (1577 vs 1474), Urschel has to be the slight favorite on the chessboard. But will Hutch's experience streaming games for a big audience help him during the high-pressure match?
Urschel via Wikipedia: His jersey number 64 is appropriate for a chess player.
John Urschel, 25, is entering his fourth season for the Ravens. He holds multiple degrees in mathematics and won the "academic Heisman" at Penn State. Urschel's charity is MathCounts.
Hutch makes his home in front of the webcam.
Shaun Hutchinson has been streaming games as Hutch for eight years. He lists his current age as "beard" on his Twitch profile. Hutch will be playing for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and will share his thoughts on the match live on his own Twitch channel.
Hutch regularly streams his Chess.com games for his gigantic gaming audience on Twitch.
Watch live video from hutch on www.twitch.tv
IM Danny Rensch and GM Robert Hess will be streaming educational commentary on Chess.com/TV and Twitch.tv/Chess, with specific chess lessons for amateurs interwoven into the game coverage.
Both Hutch and Urschel will be on camera for the duration of the match, much like world's best grandmasters in the 2017 Chess.com Speed Chess Championship.
The match will begin with four games of 10-minute blitz with a 5-second increment. The battle will then speed up with one hour of 5-minute blitz with a 5-second increment.
A half-hour of 3-minute chess with a 2-second increment will likely decide the match in thrilling fashion as the clock counts down to zero.
Both players will be interviewed by Rensch after the match, so stick around till the end of this educational event.
Urschel previously starred in a Chess.com event last summer when Urschel and IM Danny Rensch beat "the world" in one of the most popular vote chess games ever played.
"I learned to play chess in NFL training camp, but I never thought my love for the game would take me this far," Urschel told Chess.com in the lead-up to the vote chess game. "I love chess; I use Chess.com every day."
Hutch was a popular participant in the Chess.com Streamers Challenge two years ago, which was won by GM Jon Ludvig Hammer and GM Georg Meier.
