Chess Champions
The UMBC Chess Team captured first place at the Pan American Intercollegiate Championships held in South Padre Island, Texas, December 27-30, beating rivals University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB). UMBC placed ahead of 27 other teams including Yale, Princeton, Stanford and New York University.
UMBC has now won or tied a record nine Pan-Am titles and is ranked among the best college teams in the country. UTD challenged UMBC in the past, winning the championship in both 2007 and 2008 but not this year.
UMBC beat UTD 3-1 on Tuesday, December 29, followed by a 2.5-1.5 win over UTB later that day. Top-ranked college players Leonid Kritz ’12 and Sergey Erenburg ’11, both grandmasters, helped the team advance throughout the tournament.
This may be the greatest chess accomplishment for UMBC because it came against the strongest competitive field ever assembled on college chess, said Alan Sherman, director and founder of the chess program and associate professor of computer science.
Other members of UMBCs A team are Giorgi Margvelashvili ’12, Sasha Kaplan ’11 and Sabina Foiser ’12. Many of the players attend UMBC on chess scholarships, playing at least two hours a day. Three of the top four have 4.0 grade point averages.
The Pan-Am is the most celebrated intercollegiate chess tournament in the Western Hemisphere The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996. They embarked on a five-year championship streak from 1998 to 2002. Since its 1946 inception, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The tournament is open to any college or university team from North, South, or Central America.
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