Harvard Chess Team Fourth Best in Country

In an anticipated but disappointing loss, Harvard’s chess team took fourth place in the national Final Four chess tournament in Miami last weekend.

The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) took first place at the World Chess Hall of Fame and Sidney Samole Museum, where the round-robin tournament was held.

“Had we beaten UTD, we would have had a good chance of coming in first,” said Yue Wu ’02, vice president of the Harvard Chess Club. Harvard faced UTD in the first round.

Teams from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and Stanford University also competed.

“[The competition] was very difficult,” said team member Marc R. Esserman ’05. “I played two Grand Masters. Both of them are ranked near the top 100 in the world.”

Wu said he agreed.

“[UMBC and UTD] outranked us by 300 points. Stanford also outranked us by 200 points,” he said, referring to the ranks of the competitors before the tournament began.

Esserman attributed the loss to Harvard’s relative lack of experience.

“They’re much more serious [about chess] and they play a lot more often than we do,” he said. “When you play more, you have an advantage. Plus they recruit.”

Both UTD and UMBC recruit for their chess programs and award chess scholarships. All of the members of the UTD and UMBC teams had qualified for chess scholarships from their schools.

“We had our best chances in the first round,” Wu said. “We had two winning positions. But the two players got into time trouble.”

The challenge of dealing with time limits and the exhaustion of playing two rounds each day contributed to Harvard’s loss, he said.

Still, the competition was good practice for the team, most of whom will be returning next year, Esserman said.

Undergraduates Daniel H. Thomas ’05 and Lu Yin ’02 and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student Jason M. Rihel competed for Harvard’s team.

Daniel J. Benjamin, another graduate student who competed for Harvard, won an “upset” prize by drawing Grand Master Marcin Kaminski of UTD, Wu said.