Ravens guard John Urschel always wants to face the best, but when it comes to intellectual peers, there's not too many who can step into the Ph.D. mathematician's arena.
That is until Urschel faced off against Fabiano Caruana at the Liberty Science Center Genius Gala 5.0 in Jersey City, N.J. Caruana is the best American-born chess player ever, and No. 3 player in the current world rankings.
The match happened a month ago, but I just saw video of it, which is pretty amazing to watch.
Urschel was given a small handicap, but not much. The time control was two minutes for Caruana and three for Urschel.
The two players sparred quite evenly for much of the match, but Urschel seemed to be displeased with a move he made late in which his knight was captured.
Fabiano won once John resigned with a minute and a second left on his clock, where Fabiano had 39 seconds. Urschel had seven pieces remaining (four pawns, rook, queen, king) while Fabiano had 10 (six pawns, bishop, rookie, queen, king).
The whole match lasted three minutes and 18 seconds. My chess matches usually take around three hours, 18 minutes.
