After teasing the event earlier in July, Chess.com has now locked in both the schedule and planned participants for PogChamps 5. The event will be bringing its full star-studded cast to bear to showcase the trials and tribulations of content creators-turned-amateur chess competitors from July 26 to Aug. 18, with a live finals set to close out the spectacle.
PogChamps 5 is set to be a two-week tournament billed as “the most exciting amateur event in chess” and will feature popular streamers in a battle of wits on the sixty-four squares “where insane blunders and on-screen agony are part of the fun.”
This time, Ludwig will be joining the event as a co-host and co-producer.
The first two PogChamps events, which took place in 2020, were won by Voyboy and Hafu. Sardoche and Fundy then won the 2021 editions.
After a gap year, the competition now returns with a World Cup-style format. There will be four groups of four, each with a round-robin bracket, and the top two players will then qualify for the knockout stage.
The following content creators will participate in the fifth edition of the event, with a $100,000 prize pool on the line:
- CDawgVA
- Daily Dose of Internet
- Distortion2
- Franks-is-heres
- Fuslie
- Ghastly
- I did a thing
- Jarvis
- Jinnytty
- Papaplatte
- QTCinderella
- Squeex
- Sykkuno
- Tyler1
- Wirtual
- xQc
XQc, of course, is one of the returning participants in the competition, and while he’s clearly been grinding over the past week, his current rapid Elo of 928 is a far cry from his peak at 1,282 at the end of Jan. 2021, near PogChamps 3’s run.
The former Overwatch competitor is widely credited as playing a big part in the first, pre-Queen’s Gambit chess boom, joining forces with Hikaru Nakamura on his quest to learn the royal game.
Many of Chess.com’s commentary team from their high-level in-house events will partake in the commentary, with GMs Robert Hess, Daniel Naroditsky, and chessbrah’s Aman Hambleton confirmed behind the mic alongside the Botez sisters, IMs Danny Rensch and Levy Rozman, plus FM James Canty III, a previous winner of chess.com’s IM not a GM competition that pitted international masters against one another.
For the first time in the competition’s history, PogChamps 5 will conclude with a live final in Los Angeles on Aug. 18, produced by Offbrand and Mogul Moves, with more details to be announced at a later time.
While it’s tough to predict which content creator is the favorite to win the event, Chess.com’s curated competitors and their level of play essentially ensure a highlight-slash-blooper reel is right around the corner for this one.
Update Jul. 26 10:30pm CT: The player list has been updated to fix CDawgVA’s accidental omission. We regret the error.
