Valeria Tokun Haga/THE RIDER
UTRGV Chess Team grandmaster and psychology senior Gleb Dudin defeated the current world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on Sept. 27, earning a gold medal for his individual performance.
Dudin represented Hungary at the Chess Olympiad, where the team placed seventh overall.
The competition is organized every two years and is one of the “most prestigious event in the chess world,” according to Bartek Macieja, UTRGV Chess head coach and director.
Dudin said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as it was his first Olympiad and described it as “pretty intense.”
“It was like a lifetime opportunity,” he said. “We had pretty intense preparations. I think, as usual, I was preparing until 3 a.m. Then I had a little bit of sleep, and then we had the game at 11 in the morning.”
Dudin said he held a winning position for most of the game and he knew he was likely to win, but his individual win would not be enough for Hungary to win the match.
“The match was 1-1, and we had two games left, and in the other game, my teammate was in a very tough position,” he said. “So, I was hoping that he could hold the game and I had a winning position for a while, so I understood that I was going to win. … I think at the moment, he resigned. My teammate also resigned, and it was 2-2. So, we didn’t win the match, we made a draw. It was a little bit disappointing.”
Despite the draw, Dudin said he was proud to represent his country and of his performance.
Macieja said Dudin’s victory was a big achievement.
Valeria Tokun Haga/THE RIDER
“Gleb would often come to me asking what else he could do by himself to improve even more,” he said. “I was very proud of Gleb. I also had myself experience back when I used to be a player and a competitive player. … I played for the national team of Poland at several of those Olympiads. … I won a silver medal for my individual performance at the Olympiad. … I was sharing with him some of my thoughts on how I did that. I don’t know how much it helped him, but Gleb performed better because he got a gold medal. You cannot do any better than that.”
Angel DeSanto, an integrated health science senior, said he heard the news from Facebook and was impressed by Dudin’s achievement.
“I thought it was pretty awesome, a really great accomplishment,” DeSanto said. “I don’t really play chess as much, but I know it’s a very, very tough thing to do, because it’s a lot of thinking and a lot of strategy.”
Dudin was born in Moscow, Russia, and began playing chess in school and at home with his grandfather. He came to the United States to attend UTRGV on a chess scholarship.
Macieja said Dudin’s parents contacted him to see whether Dudin qualified for a chess scholarship.
“So usually there are two scenarios when, as for recruitment, sometimes, I reach out to certain students, sometimes, they reach out to me,” Macieja said. “In the case of Gleb, that was him together with his parents … I looked at Gleb’s results, at his games, and I already could see that there was lots of potential in him. … He arrived in Brownsville and he made lots of progress, but that wasn’t an accidental progress. He worked very hard to achieve it.”
Dudin said he has been in the Rio Grande Valley for three years and the region has become a home to him.
“It’s already been more than three years,” he said. “I can’t call myself that kind of a native person, because I’m still not from here, but it became like home, and it feels like home.”
