Chess team qualifies for Super Finals

On Feb. 23, two UTRGV Chess Teams competed in the 2023 Southwest Collegiate Team Championship where they took second and third place, qualifying the teams for the Texas Collegiate Super Finals in October.

UTRGV’s Team B, composed of International Masters Juraj Druska and Ekin Baris Ozenir and International Chess Federation Master Jakub Fus, placed second behind the University of Texas at Dallas with four out of five points while Team A, composed of Grandmasters Viktor Gazik and Kamil Dragun and International Master Gleb Dudin, followed in third place, finishing with four out of five points.

The tournament was hosted by Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where six universities came face-to-face in a five-round competition. 

It all came down to match No. 3, where UT Dallas Team A took the advantage over UTRGV’s Team B 2-1, ultimately taking first place.

UTRGV Chess Coach and Grandmaster Bartek Macieja said leading up to the event, the players practiced strategy and openings, and he believed the UTRGV chess players were experienced enough to know what to do.

“I expected definitely [for] Team A to finish high, fight for the first place,” Macieja said. “Our Team B, I also knew they were very good but I didn’t expect them to finish that high, on the second place.”

Druska said there are always challenges in the game of chess and ways to improve but one can never be satisfied with their level of play.

“T​​he only pressure is that we are trying to put UTRGV on the stage to show the other universities that the program is really good,” Druska said.

Fus said there was a demand to win against lower-rated players during the beginning of the tournament.

Out of the five matches played, Team B won four and was one point shy of first place.

“We wanted to win, of course, so we are unhappy that we didn’t win [first place],” Fus said. “We were expecting that we will perform better than A team. Because we are Team B, we have to always fight them. And we can not let them be ahead of us just because they are A, we are B.”

Dudin, who played for Team A,  joined the UTRGV Chess Team in the Spring 2023 semester.

He said this year’s Final Fours of Chess, otherwise known as the President’s Cup, is important because they have something to prove.

“The guys who [won the President’s Cup in 2021], they graduated,” Dudin said. “They have [left] some legacy. We have to prove that we are worth it.”

This Saturday the team will compete in St. Louis, Missouri against Webster University, Saint Louis University and the University of Missouri in the President’s Cup for the No. 1 spot in collegiate chess.

In other chess news, the Mathematics and Science Academy Chess Team placed fourth On March 3 at the 2023 Texas State Scholastic Chess Championship where they competed against 53 schools and 154 students.

The tournament had a rocky start for the UTRGV team and it all came down to the last round, according to team member Kevin Zhou.

“The final game was very important because at that moment, many schools were tied with almost the exact same amount of points,” Zhou said. “Before the last round, we were tied for, I believe, seventh.”

Despite the odds, UTRGV team members managed to draw and win the seventh round, enabling them to acquire fourth place.

“I expected [us not] to win because, unfortunately, there are some very strong competitors in the Super State Chess, especially in Houston. They had some very strong players,” Zhou said. “Our teammates played really well and managed to produce results that were not expected.”

Macieja, also the coach of the MSA Chess Team, said he is proud of the students. 

“Finishing fourth is a huge success,” he said. “MSA students fought really hard till the very last round and succeeded in surpassing other schools.” 

MSA Chess team player Lourens Torres said he faced challenges during the tournament but managed to move forward despite being fairly new to the game of chess.

“I’m a new fish into this giant pond and I feel like I, maybe not the biggest splash, but I definitely made a splash,” Torres said. “And I’m proud of that.”