All The Right Moves
Area boasts a pair of national chess team champions: Vianney High & Webster University
by Jaime Mowers
April 12, 2013
A pair of local chess teams are basking in the glow of recent national championship wins.
Webster University's Gorlocks and St. John Vianney High School's Golden Griffins are celebrating their national titles. Webster University won the Final Four of college chess in Rockville, Md., last weekend, while Vianney garnered top honors in its division in the U.S. Chess Federation's SuperNationals V K-12 tournament in Nashville.
Webster University's collegiate chess team is tops in the nation, having won the competition. Also known as The President's Cup, Webster entered the Final Four tournament as the top seed. The team has four starters and two alternates, all of whom are ranked as chess grandmasters by the World Chess Federation. In fact, the entire Webster chess team includes eight grandmasters -- unheard of in the world of collegiate chess.
The tournament ended just past noon on Sunday, April 7, with Webster University victorious in its match against the University of Texas-Dallas. A celebration welcoming the national champions back from the competition was held on Monday, April 8, in Marletto's Cafeteria on Webster University's main campus.
Webster's six Final Four team members include grandmasters Wesley So, Ray Robson, Georg Meier, Fidel Corrales, Manuel Leon Hoyos and Anatoly Bykhovsky.
Webster has been ranked number one in the nation since August 2012, when the team was officially formed. Susan Polgar, Webster's chess head coach, said this is the first time in history that a first-year collegiate chess team has gone to the Final Four, much less claim a national title.
Polgar said she hopes the team will have many more national championship titles in its future.
"It's a great honor and I'm very proud of bringing the first collegiate chess title to Webster University and St. Louis - I hope it's the first of many more," she said. "I'm very proud of the team. They've worked extremely hard over the past several months not only on their chess movements, but on their physical fitness to be ready for the competition."
Polgar said many people don't realize how demanding chess can be. The team played for 10 hours during the first day of competition and four hours on the second day.
"It's actually very grueling because of the length of the competitions," she said. "Even sitting and focusing your fullest attention for four or five hours at a time can be difficult."
Polgar would like to thank everyone who has supported the chess team including the Webster University administration, St. Louis and many community members.
The Final Four is the most prestigious team tournament in collegiate chess; the winner is known as the national champion of college chess. In addition to Webster University, the other three teems in the final four were the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, University of Texas-Dallas and University of Illinois.
More here.
Webster Celebrates College Chess Title, As New Hire Pays Off
by Alan Greenblatt
April 08, 2013 3:39 PM
NPR
If there's no such thing as bad publicity, how much is good publicity worth?
Webster University wants to find out.
Last year, the university didn't have a chess team. On Sunday, its team took
home the national college championship, the President's Cup, after winning what
is often called the "Final Four" of chess.
Webster, which is located just outside of St. Louis, picked up its team
nearly intact last year from Texas Tech. The university hired coach Susan
Polgar, who had won two straight championships in Texas, and the whole
team came along with her.
Webster's chess team includes eight grandmasters. It's become instantly so
dominant that two of its squads qualified for the chess Final Four, although
only one was allowed to play.
When it comes to winning championships, Polgar and her players "have been
there, individually and collectively," Webster provost Julian Schuster said
Monday at a campus rally celebrating the team's victory.
"Let us thank them for what they've done for us," Schuster said. "For the
first time in the almost 100-year history of our university, we are the national
champion."
Webster, which is now private and non-denominational, was founded as a
Catholic women's college and has become known over the years for its performing
arts programs and its business school. Its main campus is in the St. Louis
suburb of Webster Groves, but Webster boasts almost 100 satellite campuses
around the world.
Schuster said in an interview that chess was part of his upbringing in
Yugoslavia and that his primary goal in bringing Polgar to Webster was
incorporating the game into the intellectual life of the university.
Still, he added, "there's no doubt" that their victory is good news for the
university.
At the celebration, members of Webster's media relations team counted
reporters in attendance, noting that the weekend tournament had garnered the
university national attention (including from NPR).
"The Washington Post was the big one," said Patrick Giblin,
Webster's director of public relations, referring to a front-page
story that ran Saturday.
Chess has become big business in the St. Louis area. The World Chess Hall
of Fame moved to the city two years ago, while St. John Vianney High School
in nearby Kirkwood won its
second national championship this weekend.
Webster's own champions looked a little shy and sheepish as they entered the
campus lounge with their big trophy in tow, joining school administrators and
someone wearing the costume of the campus mascot, the cheetah-buffalo-St.
Bernard blend Gorlok.
There were no pom-pom girls, tipped cars or burning mattresses, but there
were cookies in the shapes of chess pieces.
"I wasn't even aware there was a team," said Brieanna Lee, a psychology major
sitting in the lounge, eating french fries and ranch dressing.
But Lee admitted their victory in the chess Final Four was "an
accomplishment." Other students who happened to be in the lounge said they
"lived in the music basement" or were otherwise "too busy" to follow the chess
team, but generally agreed its triumph would help their school nonetheless.
Success builds upon success. Most of Webster's grandmasters hail from other
countries, but one of the players from Vianney's winning chess team has
expressed an interest in joining them from neighboring Kirkwood.
"What we hope is that the success of our chess team will be perceived as the
success of the university in general," Schuster says. "It will permeate through
everything we do and will speak to how we do things in the future."
Source: http://www.npr.org
St. Louis quietly celebrates two national chess titles
April 09, 2013 12:05 am • By Jesse Bogan
St. Louis Post Dispatch
WEBSTER GROVES • As thousands gathered Monday for the
Cardinals home opener, two other local teams -- the Gorloks and Golden Griffins
-- were already celebrating national championships, but in a much lesser
followed event: chess.
Webster University won the Final Four of college chess in Rockville, Md.,
over the weekend, while St. John Vianney High School took top honors in its
division in the U.S. Chess Federation's Supernationals V K-12 tournament in
Nashville.
The wins are the latest nod to St. Louis, home of the World Chess Hall of
Fame, as it tries to establish itself as the chess mecca.
As quietly as the game is played, so are its championship celebrations quiet
compared with mainstream collegiate football and basketball competitions. About
100 people gathered Monday in a Webster University cafeteria to welcome their
winning team home.
Some hooted and hollered. Other students watched curiously from a distance as
they ate lunch in silence.
Julian Schuster, provost at Webster and chess enthusiast, told the crowd that
the win came from "hard work" and "vision."
"This a great day for all of us," he said.
Not only is it the school's first national chess championship, it's the first
year it fielded a team, school officials said.
Webster's bid to become a chess powerhouse happened just nine months after
luring grandmaster and coach Susan Polgar away from Texas Tech University in
Lubbock.
Traditionally thought of as a man's game, Polgar has not only broken the
mold, but dominated. Originally from Hungary, this is her third national
collegiate chess championship in a row as head coach.
Two of the six players on Webster's winning team followed her from Lubbock.
The four others recently came to Webster to play chess for Polgar and the
Gorloks, named for the private school's mascot.
All six of the championship players -- including two alternates -- are
grandmasters, or top players in chess.
"We hope its the first of many national titles," said Polgar, 44, who wore
blue high heels, black slacks and coat with a white T-shirt -- "2013 National
Champions."
The players come from all over the world. They are Georg "German Precision"
Meier, Wesley "Asian Tiger" So, of the Philippines, Ray "Fearless Attacker"
Robson, of Florida, Fidel "Casanova" Corrales Jimenez, of Cuba, Anatoly "Speedy
Rocket" Bykhovsky, of Israel, and Manuel "Yucatan Conquistador" Leon Hoyos, of
Mexico.
Bykhovsky, who followed Polgar from Texas Tech, won the last match of the
tournament. The game lasted four hours. The junior is studying finance. He said
he started playing chess young and became a grandmaster by 21.
"I am going to eat with my girlfriend, it's a nice day," he said of how he
was going to celebrate.
Leon, 24, a freshman studying economics, won the U.S. Open and is a 4-time
Mexican Open champion. He said that many things set his coach apart.
"I feel like I learn just speaking, knowing what her opinion is about many
things," he said.
But Leon couldn't visit long. He had an Italian exam to run to after the
celebration in the cafeteria.
Meanwhile, Webster University won its tournament with 9.5 points, beating
University of Texas-Dallas, which had 7 points, University of Maryland Baltimore
County, 5, and the University of Illinois, 2.5.
Webster dethroned UMBC, the former powerhouse in Maryland. What's more, Alan
Sherman, UMBC’s chess director, had predicted Webster would win.
“I think Webster just decided they wanted to win and if they invested more
money, they could just outdo the others,” Sherman recently told the Washington
Post. “They have the strongest team in the history of college chess. Unlike the
UMBC model, where we ramped up over a period of five years, they bought their
team in a year.”
Polgar left Texas Tech less than a year ago. Schuster, the Webster University
provost, helped lure her here. Both he and school president Beth Stroble
traveled to Maryland over the weekend to root for their team.
"Our goal is for these young people to be ambassadors of the university,
which they are, and to graduate and go on to great lives," Stroble said in an
interview.
A few minutes later, she told the celebratory crowd: "I am proud of an
accomplishment that is as strategic and intellectual and academic as it is
competitive in any other way."
As a player, Polgar said, she was the first woman to win the grandmaster
title and the first woman to qualify for the men's world championship. Now, she
said, she mainly just plays chess by computer.
As a coach, she said, she sets herself apart by training players not to
attack early, but also by focusing on life away from the chess board. She said
the team celebrates birthdays, plays soccer to try to have fun and be in a
supportive environment.
"It's a combination of things," she said of her success in coaching. "High
expectations. Working hard for it and focusing on team chemistry."
Physical fitness is part of it, too. It's not uncommon for a day's
competition to last 10 hours.
"People usually don't realize how important endurance is in a chess
competition," she said. "It's very grueling."
She said she left Texas Tech because of a lack of a budget that was promised.
She said there was also a lack of understanding and respect for chess
there.
"You know how Texas is everything is about football, football, football, and
then maybe some basketball and baseball, chess certainly is not on the
list."
She said she liked the chess culture in St. Louis, which hosts the U.S.
championship and other competitions.
"We are very comfortable with how chess is being respected as an activity,
practically like football would be respected at Texas Tech," she said.
Regarding the small turnout compared with the Cardinals home opener, she
said: "I understand it's not like baseball yet, but we are working on you
guys."
Full article here: http://www.stltoday.com
Webster wins Final Four of chess, with UMBC finishing third
By Michael S. Rosenwald,
April 07, 2013
Washington Post
Webster University won the Final Four of college chess in Rockville on
Sunday, dominating the University of Texas-Dallas and the University of Maryland
Baltimore County, the hometown favorite and former powerhouse.
UMBC finished third, behind UT-Dallas.
The victory was Webster’s first Final Four
championship, but not the first title for its coach, Susan Polgar, who left
her job directing the Texas Tech program last year after two consecutive Final
Four victories.
Polgar’s team of grandmasters followed her to St. Louis — an unprecedented
event in collegiate chess that made national headlines.
“I think Webster is now clearly the dominant force in chess,” said longtime
UMBC chess director Alan Sherman. “There’s no doubt about that.”
UMBC perfected the modern collegiate chess model, offering
scholarships to grandmasters from around the world, racking up championships and
generating positive PR. But UMBC is increasingly the underdog now. The school
has won just two Final Four titles since 2007 after winning four straight in the
mid-2000s. Sherman predicted Webster’s win last week.
Webster finished with 9.5 points in the round robin tournament with four
players competing for each team. UT-Dallas had 7 points, while UMBC had 5 and
the University of Illinois scored just 2.5.
UMBC was out of the running for the title after the first two rounds on
Saturday, when it scored just 2.5 points. The school lost its head-to-head match
against Webster, 2.5-1.5, and fell to UT-Dallas, 3-1.
Webster and UT-Dallas squared off Sunday morning for the title, with each
school playing four grandmasters. (UMBC came into the tournament with two
grandmasters.) Webster won the round, 3-1.
“I’m very happy for the team and proud of the way we prepared,” said Polgar,
whose bosses, the president and provost of Webster, traveled to Rockville for
the tournament.
Polgar will not, however, bring home the tournament’s coveted President’s Cup
trophy.
Before the tournament started, Polgar tweeted that her former employer, Texas Tech, “forgot to
send back the President’s Cup. Now the winning team will not have the cup to
bring back. 1st time cup was not returned.”
Source: http://articles.washingtonpost.com
