The US Chess League &
PRO Chess League

Top two teams from each division advanced to the playoffs.

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Top team from each division advanced directly; 2nd-place teams met in a wildcard round.

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* advanced on draw-odds tiebreak. ** won blitz tiebreaker.

Top two teams from each division advanced; 2nd-place teams met in a wildcard round.

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* won blitz tiebreaker.

Top four teams from each division advanced to a quarterfinal bracket.

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* won blitz tiebreaker. Dallas Destiny's 2nd straight title.

Top four teams from each division advanced to a quarterfinal bracket. Tennessee Tempo's final season.

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* won blitz tiebreaker.

Top four teams from each division advanced. New England's 9.5-0.5 record is the best in USCL history.

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* advanced on draw-odds tiebreak.

Top four teams from each division advanced. Roster size increased from nine to ten this season.

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* advanced on draw-odds tiebreak.

Top four teams from each division advanced. Connecticut Dreadnoughts joined as an expansion side; Chicago Blaze paused for the season.

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New four-division, two-conference format (Eastern: Atlantic/Northeast; Western: Southern/Pacific). Top two per division advanced.

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* advanced on draw-odds tiebreak. Miami Sharks' first title.

Three-division format; top teams seeded 1-10 for a knockout bracket. Rio Grande Ospreys and Atlanta Kings joined as expansion sides.

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* won blitz tiebreaker. St. Louis Arch Bishops' first title (of four across USCL/PCL).

Peak season: 20 teams across two 10-team divisions. Top six per division made the playoffs. Four expansion teams joined (Las Vegas, Lubbock, Minnesota, San Diego).

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* advanced on draw-odds tiebreak. Manhattan Applesauce's only USCL title, in the league's final-ever season.

Top six per division advanced to the playoffs. Rows marked † have team ordering confirmed from primary sources but exact match points could not be verified.

Inaugural PRO Chess League playoffs, March–April 2017.

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* Ties in Division QF (Gorky d. Riga), Division Championship (St. Louis d. Webster) and the Montreal–St. Louis semifinal were broken by Armageddon/tiebreak games; the winner shown advanced. Wesley So (St. Louis) beat Magnus Carlsen (Norway) in the decisive final-round game of the Championship; Carlsen went 4–0 individually in the final but his team still lost.

Top four per division (highlighted) advanced to the playoffs. Order and figures verified against the league's own final 2018 standings table (archived prochessleague.com), where the Pts column is cumulative game points. Under the new promotion/relegation rule, the bottom two teams in each division — Riga Magicians, Oslo Trolls, Reykjavik Puffins, London Towers, Montreal ChessBrahs, Buenos Aires Krakens, Rio Grande Ospreys and Las Vegas Desert Rats — lost automatic qualification for 2019 and had to re-enter the qualifier.

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* Ties (Chengdu Pandas d. Dallas Destiny in Div. Semis; Armenia Eagles d. Mumbai Movers in Div. Championship) were broken by tiebreak games. The Championship went to triple overtime; Armenia Eagles won the tiebreak 12–11 to claim the title over Chengdu Pandas.

24 teams were auto-invited back from 2017; two parallel 15-round Swiss qualifiers (15 rounds, 4 players/team) decided the remaining 8 of 32 spots for 2018. Top 3 in each (highlighted) auto-qualified; 4th–6th went to a fan vote, with the winner (highlighted) also advancing.

How the 24 automatic berths were awarded. Commissioner Greg Shahade — who called the 48-team first season “a bit too large and chaotic” — ranked returning sides on four criteria: final placement in 2017, social-media performance, enthusiasm from team management, and marketability of players. All eight 2017 quarterfinalists qualified automatically on the first criterion alone. Two 2017 playoff teams, the Mumbai Movers and Toronto Dragons, missed the cut and were sent to the qualifier. The league was at this point partially owned by Chess.com.

Six of the eight remaining berths were decided on the board and two by fan vote. In each qualifier the top three finishers were paired against the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-place teams in single knockout matches at the standard league format (15+2, Scheveningen); the top scorer chose its opponent and had White on board one, the second-place team chose from the two remaining, and the third-place team took whoever was left. The three knockout losers in each cycle then went into a Chess.com homepage poll, with fans voting one back in. From 2018 onward the bottom two teams in each division would lose their automatic berth for the following season — a golf-style “Q-School” rather than true relegation, since there was no second division to drop into.

Pre-event storylines: This was the first-ever PCL qualification tournament — over 100 players across both events in a single day, 3+2 time control, teams of 4 with average rating capped below 2500 (any player rated above 2700 counted as exactly 2700 toward that average, letting teams still roster a true super-GM). The Early Qualifier drew 26 signups (Europe/Asia/Africa, 8am PT) but four — Guntur Knightriders, Uganda Pirates, Nantes Kingslayers and Madrid Sharks — withdrew before the first round, leaving the 22 that actually played; the Late Qualifier drew 14 (Americas/Australia/parts of China, 1pm PT). Delhi Dynamite, Stockholm Snowballs, and Cannes Blockbusters were already guaranteed 2018 spots regardless of result. Notable entrants: Estonia Horses fielded a rare quad-GM lineup (Jaan Ehlvest, Sergei Shipov, two more) and were the pre-event favorite; Hyderabad Hawks featured GM Parimarjan Negi (2656); Malmo Moomins were led by Nils Grandelius (Magnus Carlsen's world-championship second); Seattle Sluggers (Hikaru Nakamura) were the only team averaging above 2500 (2507.75) thanks to the cap rule; Australia entered two teams for the first time, Kangaroos and Blitzkrieg (captained by GM David Smerdon).

Full field average team ratings from both qualifiers (official PCL graphic):

Confirmed via the official 2018 season divisional rosters: Oslo Trolls won the Early Qualifier fan vote (joined the Eastern Division) and Minnesota Blizzard won the Late Qualifier fan vote (joined the Atlantic Division) — San Francisco Mechanics did not make the 2018 season field despite reaching the fan-vote pool; they qualified the following year instead. Individual standouts: GM Vidit Gujrathi (Mumbai Movers) topped the Early Qualifier individually at 12.5/15; Yu Yangyi (Chengdu Pandas) and Hikaru Nakamura (Seattle Sluggers) shared the top individual score in the Late Qualifier at 12/15.

Exact regular-season points shown, cross-checked against the league's own final table (archived prochessleague.com) and TheWeekInChess. Top four in each division (highlighted) advanced to the KO Stage, same format as 2018; the bottom two in each division lost their automatic berth for the following season.

PRO Chess League KO Stage, 2019 — 16 teams (top four in each division), four single-elimination rounds at 15+2.

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Bracket reconstructed from TheWeekInChess round reports and the league's archived standings pages. Division semifinals were seeded within each division (1v4, 2v3), so the four division champions met cross-division in the Final Four. * Two matches finished 8–8 and were decided by tiebreak: Saint Louis over Montclair in the division semifinals, and Baden-Baden over Chengdu in the semifinal. The season ran January 8 – May 5, 2019, with a ten-round group stage.

Nov 3, 2018: 28 teams split into 2 geographic groups of 14 (round robin). Top 2 per group auto-qualified (highlighted); 3rd–5th seeded directly into Stage Two; 6th–8th went to a fan vote for one more Stage Two spot per group. Stage Two was single knockout matches for the final 8 of 32 spots.

Riga Magicians and London Towers won their groups' fan votes to reach Stage Two but were eliminated there by Moscow Phoenix and Barcelona Raptors respectively. Kazan Archers, Kharkiv Lawyers, Chicago Coyotes, and Paris Musketeers rounded out each group's Stage One top 8 but did not advance. Final 8 qualifiers for 2019: San Francisco Mechanics, Moscow Wizards, Tbilisi Gentlemen, Montreal ChessBrahs, Moscow Phoenix, New York Marshalls, Berlin Bears, Barcelona Raptors.

Final standings and performance ratings from the league's own table (archived prochessleague.com). Twenty-four teams played across three divisions of eight. The top four in each division qualified for the playoffs automatically; the thirteenth and final playoff berth went to the fifth-place team with the highest performance rating, which was the Chicago Wind at 2622 — hence Chicago's row is highlighted while Hungary (2582) and Italy (2552) are not. 2020 was the first season with no rating caps on rosters. Point adjustments were applied to eleven teams over the course of the season and are already reflected above: Russia −3, Spain −4, Brazil −2, New York −2, Norway −1, Italy −1, China +2, Sweden +2, Germany +2, California +2, India +1. Armenia Eagles won the Eastern Division on the board but were later stripped of the championship after a fair-play review.

PRO Chess League playoffs, 2020 — 13 teams. The three division winners (Saint Louis, Armenia, Germany) received first-round byes.

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Bracket reconstructed from Chess.com round reports and TheWeekInChess. * New York and France finished 8–8; New York advanced on tiebreak. † Saint Louis is marked as the winner because Armenia won the final 9.5–6.5 over the board, with GM Tigran L. Petrosian scoring 3.5/4, but Chess.com's fair-play review closed Petrosian's account days later and the title was reassigned to the Arch Bishops. The prize fund was $40,000 ($20,000 to the winner, $10,000 to the runner-up). The season opened January 6, 2020 with a seven-round group stage at 10+2 and was originally scheduled to finish May 5; Covid-19 pushed the closing stages to a live final at ChessParty2020 in Norway on September 25–27.

Nov 16, 2019: 8 invited teams played a “Battle Royale” Scheveningen event (10+2) for the final (24th) spot in the 2020 season.

Croatia Bulldogs (formerly Zagreb Chessentials in earlier qualifiers) weren't impressive at the halfway point but finished strongly, clinching the final-round match against Azerbaijan Wolves to win with a 22-point tally. Board one IM Le Tuan Minh (@wonderfultime) sealed the outcome by converting a rook-and-extra-pawn endgame in textbook fashion against GM Rauf Mamedov. Full round-by-round standings for all 8 teams were not published.

Playoff seeding (by record/tiebreak): #1 Indian Yogis, #2 Gotham Knights, #3 Levitov Chess Wizards, #4 Shanghai Tigers, #5 Norway Gnomes, #6 Team MGD1, #7 Saint Louis Arch Bishops, #8 Blitz.

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* Levitov Chess Wizards vs Team MGD1 finished 10.5–10.5 after regulation; MGD1 won the playoff tiebreak 2.5–1.5 to advance. Final: Gotham Knights won R1 2.5–1.5, R2 3–1, then drew R3 and R4 2–2 each. Prize money: 1st Gotham Knights $25,000, 2nd Shanghai Tigers $20,000, 3rd Indian Yogis $15,000, 4th Team MGD1 $10,000.

Feb 1–2, 2023: with 15 teams already invited, a 9-round individual Swiss qualifier decided the 16th and final Main Event spot (part of the PCL’s return after a two-year hiatus, now 16 teams, no region restrictions, 10+2 time control, $150,000 prize fund). The top 4 Swiss finishers (highlighted) advanced to a team knockout to determine the winner.

Knockout rosters (avg rating): Spanish Maniac Shrimps 2546.3 — GM Eduardo Iturrizaga 2636, GM Miguel Santos Ruiz 2587, GM Jose Carlos Ibarra 2563, IM Karina Ambartsumova 2399. Chinese Kungfu 2537.8 — GM Yu Yangyi 2716, GM Lu Shanglei 2605, GM Xu Yinglun 2553, WGM Li Xueyi 2277. Ferocious Tacticians 2514.0 — GM Vasif Durarbayli 2612, GM Aydin Suleymanli 2543, GM Vugar Rasulov 2525, IM Gulnar Mammadova 2376. Hungary Hunters 2511.0 — GM Viktor Erdos 2591, GM Tamas Banusz 2609, GM Adam Kozak 2558, WIM Zsoka Gaal 2286.

Swiss highlights: Spanish Maniac Shrimps (led by GM Eduardo Iturrizaga) fired a perfect 4/4 in round 3 — one of only two such rounds all event, the other by Argentina Krakens in round 5 — then scored 2+ points every round from 4–8 to win outright. Chinese Kungfu's best round was round 6 (3 wins, 1 draw), capped by GM Yu Yangyi defeating Hungary Hunters' GM Tamas Banusz.

SF1 — Spanish Maniac Shrimps 9–7 Hungary Hunters: Hungary led early (Banusz beat Ambartsumova in round 1), but Spain broke through in round 3 (3 wins, 1 draw) after Hungary's Adam Kozak declined a repetition draw and lost from a worse position; round 4 was 4–4 as Spain closed it out.

SF2 — Ferocious Tacticians 9–7 Chinese Kungfu: Ferocious Tacticians led from round 1 (2–1.5) and extended it in round 2 (3–1), highlighted by Vasif Durarbayli's rook-lift-and-bishop-sacrifice attack over Xu Yinglun; China never recovered despite an all-decisive final round.

Final — Spanish Maniac Shrimps 8.5–6.5 Ferocious Tacticians: Rounds 1–2 were tied at 2–2 each; Spain broke away in round 3 (3 wins, 1 loss), keyed by Miguel Santos Ruiz beating board-one Durarbayli with Black. Round 4's lone draw of the match was Iturrizaga–Durarbayli; Ferocious Tacticians nearly rallied as Vugar Rasulov let a won position slip and Gulnar Mammadova's near-winning attack was let off the hook, but Spain held on to win. Santos Ruiz afterward: “We were really lucky in the last game.”

Spanish Maniac Shrimps won both segments of the two-day event to become the 16th and final team in the 2023 Main Event, earning a minimum $2,000; Ferocious Tacticians won $1,000 for 2nd, Chinese Kungfu and Hungary Hunters $500 each for tying 3rd.