Alexander Bublik will be in action tomorrow at the Challenger Phoenix event in the United States – fans reacted to his team allegedly qualifying for the Pro Chess play-offs.
Levitov Chess Wizards, a professional chess team, has reached the play-offs of the Pro Chess League and apparently tennis ace Alexander Bublik is a part of the squad. The team comprises 9 Grand Masters from multiple countries and tennis fans were pleasantly surprised to see Bublik’s name in the official team list as the 10th member. If you are wondering whether this is legit, well it is! Bublik is apparently a close friend of some of the Russian chess players in the team and they decided to include the Kazakh tennis star as a reserve player, just for the gags.
Bublik is currently gearing up for the Challenger Phoenix event in the US and his campaign is scheduled to begin tomorrow against local favourite Denis Kudla. Bublik lost to Wu Tung-Lin 4-6, 4-6 last week and suffered a shock exit from the first round of the Indian Wells Masters. The Kazakhstan star will now aim to brush it aside as a one-off loss and look to be at the top of his game in the upcoming tournament.
Let us take a look at some of the reactions from fans on social media.
“He’s that good in chess??”, asked a shocked fan.
“I can’t think of a tennis player who’d be worse at chess than Bublik”, trolled another fan.
“Wait how is he in a pro chess team when he doesn’t even have a rating?”, read a comment from another confused fan.
“Yep that’s him. I think he’s a friend of some of the russian chess players and they included him for the lolz. Even the chess commentators of the tournament were surprised like we all are”, a fan pointed out correctly.
Another fan wrote: “I was like ‘surely this isn’t tennis Bublik’ so googled Bublik + chess and found the following quote which sounds much more like him lmao.Bublik, though, acknowledged that he lacked the kind of focus chess requires, saying that he struggles to read a book for more than a half-hour.”
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