Who Will Win PRO Chess League Week 2?
The PRO Chess League's panel of pundits is back for week two. The second week of action is rivalry week (amongst the teams, not the panel, we think)!
For more on who the quintet comprising the illustrious panel, click back to week one's predictions.
How did they fare in the opener? Four of the five panelists predicted more than half right, with the early leader sitting on 75 percent.
Tarjei Svensen got 16 of the 24 match outcomes correct. He also got two exactly right, which we will track for posterity.
NM Alex King got three scores exactly right and is only two games behind Svensen on 14/24. Tied for third are IM Robert Ris and Shaun McCoy, who both sit on 13. NM Pete Karagianis will look to get back over .500 this week, but in his defense, he coached 300 kids at yesterday's Martin Luther King Jr. Day Chess Tournament, so the community still loves him.
In every non-tied match at least one pundit predicted the outcome correctly. However, only in one match did one panelist go against the grain and be proven right. King's gumption paid off with his 8.5-7.5 pick of Riga over Norway. The Magicians won by even more than that, but credit King with going his own way.
On to week two! Here are the picks from the panel, and below you'll find links to their individual blogs. Love the picks? Hate them? Have a reasoned argument for why the panelist is insane? Comment away below or in the panelist's blog!
Ris's blog, where the IM invokes theory and decides that the Budapest Gambit is more sound than the Belgrade Gambit.
King's blog, where he throws the odds out the window in wanting to pick an 8-8 tie, and also for guessing that GM Keith Arkell will go into four rook endings.
Karagianis's blog, where he declares "The Curry Bowl" no contest and manages an Antonio Banderas reference. Masterful!
Svensen's blog, where we shouldn't be too critical on his thinking the Gnomes will invade South Africa (last week's whipping post Carolina has changed to Johannesburg this week by many pundits).
McCoy's blog, complete with movie, t.v. show, and music themes. Although he picks his hometown Cobras, his "Deliverance" reference forgets that the cringe-worthy movie was filmed and took place in Georgia.
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Mike Klein began playing chess at the age of four in Charlotte, NC. In 1986, he lost to Josh Waitzkin at the National Championship featured in the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer." A year later, Mike became the youngest member of the very first All-America Chess Team, and was on the team a total of eight times. In 1988, he won the K-3 National Championship, and eventually became North Carolina's youngest-ever master. In 1996, he won clear first for under-2250 players in the top section of the World Open. Mike has taught chess full-time for a dozen years in New York City and Charlotte, with his students and teams winning many national championships. He now works at Chess.com as a Senior Journalist and at ChessKid.com as the Chief Chess Officer. In 2012, 2015, and 2018, he was awarded Chess Journalist of the Year by the Chess Journalists of America. He has also previously won other awards from the CJA such as Best Tournament Report, and also several writing awards for mainstream newspapers. His chess writing and personal travels have now brought him to more than 85 countries.
