Friday, February 11, 2022
 

By Victoria Brito Morales

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – The UTRGV Chess Team has won the Second Annual Kasparov Chess Foundation University Cup for the second year in a row.

The online tournament was held this past weekend, with games played on lichess.org. Nearly 700 participants, making up 146 teams, flocked to the international event hosted on chessstream.com.  

This year, the event introduced a team rating cap of 2,400 to level out the competition in early rounds, so no early frontrunner could emerge.

By the end of the competition, it came down to UTRGV A team and UT Dallas A team in the playoffs, with UTRGV finishing in the top spot.

As the victors, UTRGV has earned a training session with legendary world chess champion Garry Kasparov, the namesake of the competition.

“After nine rounds, two teams scored 7.5 out of nine possible points,” said Grandmaster Bartek Macieja, coach of the UTRGV chess team. “The playoff match versus UT Dallas was tense. Our students succeeded in keeping concentration until the very end, eventually winning the match 2.5-1.5”

The winning team included:

  • Kamil Dragun, a Master of Business Administration student from Poland (grandmaster).
  • Viktor Gazik, a freshman economics major from Slovakia (international master).
  • Irakli Beradze, a post-baccalaureate computer engineering major from Georgia (international master).
  • Ricardo Peredo, a senior accounting major from Brownsville.

“This is one of the most prestigious university events worldwide, often considered an unofficial world championship,” Macieja said. “Indeed, the vision of a training session with Kasparov, a truly legendary world champion, is what brings hundreds of teams to this competition.”

 

ABOUT THE KASPAROV CHESS FOUNDATION 

Founded by World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, KCF’s mission is to bring the many educational benefits of chess to children worldwide by providing a complete chess curriculum and enrichment programs. The foundation promotes the study of chess as a cognitive learning tool in curricular classes and after-school programs for elementary, middle and high schools, both in the public and private school sectors. The not-for-profit educational organization also organizes tournaments and competitions on a local and national basis. For more information, visit kasparovchessfoundation.org.



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.