In the fourth edition of Blitzchamps, a chess tournament featuring eight current and former NFL players, Justin Reid emerged as the winner, taking home the largest share of the $100,000 prize pool for charity.
Two-time Super Bowl-winning safety Reid, who signed with the New Orleans Saints this offseason, won his second straight Blitzchamps, beating Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray in the finals on June 16.
The eight participants to compete for charity in high-speed chess were Reid, Murray, Justin Herbert, Mack Hollins, Richard Sherman, Rashawn Slater, AJ Dillon, and Harrison Phillips. Players played online on Chess.com, and it was livestreamed on the site’s YouTube channel.
Congratulations to New Orleans Saints Justin Reid for winning #BlitzChamps IV!
He’s the first EVER back-to-back BlitzChamps Champion and has won $30,000 toward his charity, @jreidindeed! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/6TcFsytz8G
— Chess.com (@chesscom) June 16, 2025
Reid said on the stream post-tournament: “I love (chess). I’m obsessed with it. I play it almost every day. Whenever we’re getting ready to play a game (in the NFL) and you start to get excited because you know that moment is coming where you’re about to go into combat with your brothers, I play one or two games to calm myself down and bring myself back to peace because I play my best when I’m calm and thinking clearly, rather then when I’m jacked up on emotion.
“So in those two ways, the games are very similar. You get too emotional and you make mistakes, a blunder here and there. If you stay calm under pressure, it ends up translating pretty well. … Sometimes you can see what your opponent is about to do before they do it. Both on the chess board and football field so you do a move to counter that before they even get to it.”
Reid won $30,000 for his charity, JReid Indeed, which focuses on supporting disadvantaged youth and communities through interactive programs, community engagement, and technology access in the communities of Houston, Baton Rouge, and Kansas City.
It was a double-elimination format, with a winners and losers bracket. All matches were best-of-two, and each player started with five minutes on the clock in the winners’ bracket, three minutes in the losers’ bracket, and both had one-second increments with each move (considered time to move the piece).
In the event of a tie, players competed in a sudden-death match, as happened in the final. Reid defeated Murray 2-1 in a repeat matchup of last year’s Blitzchamps III final.
Murray resigned in the third game after a blunder when he moved h4, trapping his Queen when Reid moved Bg4, but the quarterback still won $20,000 for the Kyler Murray Foundation.
(Photo: Michael DeMocker / Getty Images)