With a final-round surge against its archrival, the UMBC chess team emerged once again as the undisputed kings of the collegiate game by winning the 2009 President’s Cup April 5.
UMBC defeated the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), which served as host for the tournament – better known as “the Final Four of College Chess.
The Final Four victory was UMBC’s fifth in the past nine years.
“This team had a very strong drive to win,” said Alan Sherman, director of the UMBC chess program and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. “It is nice that our intellectual athletes get the recognition they deserve for their impressive accomplishments.”
One might guess the squad celebrated in Dallas before returning to classes April 6 at UMBC. Instead, Board 2 player Sergey “the Stealth” Erenburg, a 4.0 student, returned to his hotel room after the tournament to study for an upcoming physics exam, Sherman said.
Erenburg won the final match, a 140-move encounter that lasted more than six hours.
The President’s Cup is comprised of the top four finishers from the Pan American Intercollegiate Championship (the “Pan Am”), held each year in late December.
Although Stanford and the University of Texas-Brownsville emerged from the Pan Am as the two other Final Four participants, these top-level competitions remain a UMBC-UTD grudge match.
At the 2008 Pan Am, the two teams tied for first place. UTD won the 2008 Final Four, held at UMBC, by the slightest margin.
While the UMBC team enjoys international prominence, it remains committed to supporting the growth of chess in Baltimore and throughout the state. UMBC hosts the Maryland Scholastic Chess Spectacular May 10, a scholastic chess tournament open to any students in grades 1-12.
The Chess Spectacular will have two sections, one for novice players and the other for those with more experience. The top four finishers in the latter classification are invited to compete in a playoff that features live, move-by-move commentary from an established player.
“It is important to the chess program that we include the community in our activities,” Sherman said. “It has been demonstrated that students who play chess perform better on math and reading tests. Chess is a concrete way to develop young minds.”