Nakamura Headlines PRO Chess League Round 2

As the Professional Rapid Online (PRO) Chess League heads to its second week of matchups, we have already seen some of the top players in the world put up monster performances.

This Thursday, Hikaru Nakamura will be making his debut for his new team, the Seattle Sluggers, and he is looking to have a big result of his own.

Hikaru Nakamura.

The Sluggers are 1-0 on the season and will be facing an extremely strong Las Vegas team. Nakamura will be playing four well-known stars in the chess community: the 2016 U.S. Women's Champion Nazi Paikidze, the super streamer Andrey Ostrovskiy, the famed coach and Chess.com contributor Melik Khachiyan, and the 2700+ super-grandmaster Leinier Dominguez.

IM Nazi Paikidze of the Las Vegas Desert Rats.

Last week Magnus Carlsen used his Tata Steel rest day to play in the PRO Chess League. Since the Tata Steel tournament is nearing its conclusion and he's in the running for first place, he decided to take some much-needed rest this week. 

Perhaps Gawain Jones was inspired by Magnus last week, as he will be playing for the London Towers during his day off. His Towers lost in round one and could really use him in a matchup against the dangerous Reykjavik Puffins.

Gawain Jones of the London Towers.

One of the most loaded matches of the week is a battle for St. Louis as the Saint Louis Arch Bishops face off against the Webster Windmills. One hint that this is a heavyweight matchup is that Ray Robson, a member of the 2016 U.S. gold-medal olympiad team, is playing on board three! Three players from the 2018 U.S. Championship are involved in this match: Varuzhan Akobian, Yaroslav Zherebukh and Robson. The headliner is the talented 22 year old Vladimir Fedoseev, who will be representing the Arch Bishops and is rated 2730 FIDE. 

Vladimir Fedoseev of the Saint Louis Arch Bishops.

Other stars playing this week:

• GM Jon Ludvig Hammer: Norway Gnomes
• GM Georg Meier: Stockholm Snowballs
• GM Robin Van Kampen: Montreal Chessbrahs
• GM Rauf Mamedov: San Jose Hackers
• GM Yu Yangyi: Chengdu Pandas

Don't forget to enter our new fantasy contest. Every week there are Diamond memberships up for grabs! 

Go to www.ProChessLeague.com for more information on this week's matches. The round two pairings can be found here.