Harvard Routs Yale In Chess Tourney

While Harvard and Yale had it out on the gridiron Saturday afternoon, the Crimson was tackling the Elis "over the board"--the chess board, that is.

The Harvard Chess Club came out as champions this weekend, beating Yale 10-2 in the one-day match in Lowell Lecture Hall and affirming a seven-year consecutive winning streak.

The match nearly didn't happen however. With several members of the Yale team missing the match, Harvard was forced to play via the Internet. Their absence was a sore point for many Harvard players who said they resented Yale for not bringing a full team.

The six-person Harvard team was composed of: Shearwood "Woody" McClelland '00, Daniel J. Benjamin '99, Jacob Chudnovsky '01, Nicholas J. Proudfoot '00, Jonathan A. Wolff '0 and Lu Yin '02.

McClelland, club president, said he was pleased with the outcome.

"The match is very important," he said. "I'm very happy that we're able to keep the streak going."

"Yale was talking about forfeiting. Fortunately they were able to come up with a team," he said.

The Yale team is less organized than its Harvard counterpart, said Benjamin, club president emeritus. Just putting a team together for the tournament was "honorable," he said.

But some members of Harvard's chess team weren't satisfied by that explanation.

"It was unfair that all our team came to Yale last year, and they didn't care to reciprocate that," McClelland said.

Chudnovsky, the chess club's vice president and only member with a Federation Internationale des checs Master ranking, had to face Yale's top player by computer. He said he was annoyed at having to play through a mouse.

"I was upset with the whole attitude of the Yale team. They didn't bother to have all their players show up to Harvard," he said.

Yale's attendance notwithstanding, most of the outcome of the match was anticipated. Harvard's team was wellfavored against Yale, with almost all of its members ranked higher than Yale's.

The chess victory contrasted with the defeat of Harvard football, but the Harvard chess win would have been significant regardless, Benjamin said.

"I think that the outcome of the chess match and other competitions between Harvard-Yale are significant regardless of the outcome of the football game," he said.

Chess players said they weren't gladdened to be the only Harvard victors this weekend.

"I love it when the football team wins, so I was pretty disappointed," McClelland said.

The match victory keeps the prized Wolff Cup in Harvard hands. The silver trophy records the victories of Harvard-Yale chess matches since 1986, but has only been part of Harvard-Yale chess tradition for two years.

The cup's name recalls Patrick Wolff, the only grandmaster to have played for both Harvard and Yale chess teams.