Photo credit: David Pike
(UTRGV Photo by David Pike)
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Around Campus, Student Life, Awards
By Amanda Alaniz
RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – It’s another checkmate for UTRGV’s three-time national champion chess team, which just brought home a national win as the 2023 U.S. National Collegiate Rapid Chess Champions.
The championship, held Sunday, Oct. 29, was played online on the lichess.org platform.
After nine rounds of competition, UTRGV and the University of Missouri scored 27.5 points (out of a possible 36), becoming co-champions.
Third place went to Webster University with 25.5 points. UT Dallas and Texas Tech University each had 24 points. The 6th spot went to the University of Washington with 22 points.
“The UTRGV Chess Team has been the most successful collegiate chess team in the nation since 2018. Winning the President’s Cups – Final Four of College Chess – in 2018, 2019 and 2021 was a demonstration of our potential,” said Bartek Macieja, grandmaster and UTRGV chess coach.
“This year, the event has shown that the UTRGV Chess Team can be equally successful in a shorter, ‘rapid’ time control,” he said.
The U.S. National Collegiate Chess Championships are organized in three different time control formats: blitz, rapid and classical.
In the 2021 World University Championship, UTRGV finished first in the team standings of the blitz championship, Macieja said.
Blitz is the fastest time control, with each game lasting up to 10 minutes. In rapid championships, each game lasts up to 30 minutes, and in classical, each game lasts up to four hours.
The blitz and the rapid championships are organized in the fall semester, with games played online.
The classical championship is organized in two stages. The Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championship is held at the beginning of January, and then the top four colleges play the Final Four tournament. Competition is Over-the-Board.
To stay updated with the UTRGV Chess Team, follow the Facebook page.
ABOUT UTRGV
The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund – a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.
UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.