Esports organization Team SoloMid has broken new ground in the esports space by expanding into one of the oldest competitive games in the world. Chess Grandmaster and professional Twitch streamer Hikaru Nakamura will now represent the organization as its first competitive chess player.
Nakamura is among the world’s most-accomplished chess players, having won the U.S. chess championship five times, and at age 15 became the youngest American to achieve the title of Grandmaster.
Nakamura was also at the forefront of this summer’s chess craze on Twitch, which first picked up momentum when he played matches live on stream with one of the platforms most popular figures, Félix “xQc” Lengyel. Between broadcasts with various high-profile streamers and his turn as a commentator for the highly-viewed streamer chess tournament Pogchamps organized by Chess.com, Nakamura has seen his own Twitch stream grow substantially in the last few months, recently surpassing 500K followers.
