Cloud9 Signs Chess Player PenguingM1
Andrew “PenguingM1” Tang has signed for esports moguls Cloud9 as their very first GrandMaster Chess player.
PenguinM1 joins Cloud9 as one of the best "Hyperbullet" and "Ultrabulle" chess players in the world, at just 20 years old. Cloud9 stated in a blog post that Penguinm1 is a "three-time national champion, penguingm1 is also a Top 5 bullet player, having won hundreds of games against Magnus Carlsen, the current World Chess Champion.
"By the age of 18, penguingm1 had already achieved the rank of grandmaster, as recognized by the International Chess Federation. If that wasn’t enough, penguingm1 also earned the #1 ultrabullet rank on lichess while playing blindfolded".
The American player often streams his games on his Twitch channel, preferring to play GrandMaster Chess at a fast pace. The bullet chess games that he prefers to play - in either 15, 30, or 60-second formats with no increment - offer exciting and engaging play, synonyms that aren't often linked to the methodically masterful craft. Currently a student at Princeton University, he often injects personality into his game, attracting organisations like Cloud9.
Other top-level GrandMaster Chess players have also signed with elite esports organisations, such as Qiyu Zhou who signed with CLGaming and Hikaru Nakamura who joined Team SoloMid. The latter has since become the face of Chess esports, teaching the games to a huge variety of people on streaming platforms, and even did a one-to-one tutorial with the former Worlds Strongest Man: Game of Thrones' Hafþór J. Björnsson, a.k.a. "The Mountain".
As this new craze of esports begins to lift off, it has been compared to strategic games like Hearthstone, and the official chess category on Twitch has just shy of one million follows. Typically having 10,000 concurrent viewers, attracting organisations like Team SoloMid and Cloud9 will only help increase this.
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Image via Cloud9
