Cleveland Guardians Step Up To The Plate For SlugChamps—The First Baseball Stars Chess Tournament

Chess.com is ready to knock it outta the park again with the launch of a new tournament featuring stars from the Cleveland Guardians Major League Baseball team.

SlugChamps: Guardians Chess Club will pit eight teammates from one of America’s top MLB outfits against each other in a ballgame-themed blitz battle to find out who is the best slugger on the chessboard.

The event will be live and in-person on February 20 in Goodyear, Arizona, and broadcast online. It will use a similar format to Chess.com’s hugely-exciting BlitzChamps tournaments, which featured NFL stars.

Playing chess is no curveball to the Guardians—teammates regularly take each other on during their downtime and have even set up their own chess club, which has recently taken on some tougher competition in John Marshall High School's nationally-ranked chess team.

On the roster for SlugChamps, eight Guardians will take the field. They are:

• Steven Kwan. The 26-year-old outfielder is the highest-rated player on 1007 and founder of the Guardians Chess Club.
• Bo Naylor. The catcher from Ontario is rated 681 blitz.
• Triston McKenzie. The starting pitcher has a blitz rating of 500.
• Tanner Bibee. The starting pitcher is rated 424.
• Will Brennan. The outfielder is rated 300.
• Austin Hedges. The catcher is rated 673 blitz.
• Daniel Schneemann. Rated 694 blitz, Schneemann also has a rapid rating of 1034.
• David Fry. The utility player is a late addition replacing Scott Barlow and we don’t know how strong he is!

Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan said: "Chess has been a great team-builder in our locker room and has allowed us to build camaraderie, fuel competitiveness and work on our mental strength off the field.

I'm looking forward to crowning the best chess player in the Guardians locker room with our very own Chess.com tournament during Spring Training.

—Steven Kwan

At stake is a $10,000 charitable prize fund to be distributed by the top three finishers—plus the all important bragging rights of being the Guardians' best chess player.

The format for SlugChamps will be a double round-robin and all games will be 5+0 blitz hosted on Chess.com.

Chess.com will provide its usual high-octane commentary from GMs Robert Hess and Aman Hambleton.

You can watch the live broadcast of the event on Chess.com/TV or on Chess.com's Twitch and YouTube channels.

Play will start at 2:00 p.m. MT / 16:00 ET on Tuesday, February 20.

Let’s play ball!