University of Texas at Dallas' GM Invitational

By Alejandro Ramirez

A preparation tournament for the UT Dallas' Chess Team gave American Conrad Hold the opportunity to achieve his last GM Norm and cross the 2500 barrier. The event was played in Richardson, Texas – but the blitz invitational was held in the 48th floor of one of Downtown Dallas' hallmark skyscrapers, the Thanksgiving Tower. 

The University of Texas at Dallas is known for many reasons. It has a fabulous engineering department, backed by the technology mammoth Texas Instruments. It has an up and coming Arts & Technology department that has game designers and animators working in companies that range from Blizzard Entertainment to Dreamworks and Zynga. The translation department is amongst the best in the country, while the nanotechnology institute is known world wide. The Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology program was recently ranked 11th in the US by US News and World Report.

Despite the uncountable achievements that UTD's students have achieved, and how strong it is academically, its pride and joy is the chess team.

Established in 1996, the UTD chess team has been a powerhouse in American chess since its inception. Recently, college chess in America has become extremely competitive. Many universities have been aggressively recruiting Grandmasters from around the world, and nowadays it is not unusual to see collegiate teams that look more like Olympic squads than a group of students.

UTD has always been very demanding of their chess team in terms of academics. They strictly require a certain amount of credit hours to be taken every semester, and much higher than average grades to be maintained. However, they also provide their players with fantastic tournaments and practice opportunities. 

The 2nd UTD GM Spring Invitational was held at the Hyatt in Richardson, Texas from March 10-16th. This is the student's spring break. No rest for the weary! The tournament was held in a Scheveningen format, in which two teams played each other. UTD fielded its 'A' team – the five strongest players who will represent the university at the upcoming Final Four of Collegiate Chess. One of the two crown jewels in American college chess – the other one being the Pan-Americans, which UTD has won the last two times. Their opponents were a group of strong GMs.

Thus, the teams looked like this:

University of Texas – Dallas

The UTD Team: Pavlovic, Sadorra, Iotov, Holt, Chirila and Coach Milovanovic

Turner Construction Company GM Team

Visiting GM Team: Lenderman, Robson, Kacheishvili, Panchanathan, Leon Hoyos

The tournament was very hard fought with almost no short draws. Actually the draw ratio was impressively low, a mere 25%!  This must be due to the young blood and ambition of all the players. 

Despite being a preparation tournament for the Final Four, UTD received a nice surprise when in round nine Conrad Holt was able to secure a draw against Aleksandr Lenderman. This not only secured Holt his third grandmaster norm, it also catapulted him above 2500 – thus making him America's newest GM elect!

This is the second time that this tournament has promoted a grandmaster for UTD, as last year Julio Sadorra got his GM title in the same event. 

At the end of the day, the rating difference proved too much for the UTD team. The visiting team won with a convincing 29.5-20.5. This was largely due to the fabulous performance of Ray Robson, who scored 7.0/10 and was the terror of the UTD team. Many points were lost for the home team due to being out of shape, as it was clear that had they been more active in chess recently they would have been able to convert many winning positions which ended up being drawn or even lost. This is after all the point of the tournament, and the players are now in prime shape for their late March encounter against the other top teams.

American chess is clearly on the rise. Recently many players have migrated to America for new opportunities and/or for education. There is no doubt the US will be a source of many exciting chess developments in the coming years. Events like this one, held by UTD, are breaking ground for the future.

It is also important to note that this event was possible thanks to the sponsorship of Turner Construction Company. One of the largest construction management companies, they are interested in helping UTD become one of the top schools in the country in every aspect. Hopefully, this will attract many brilliant minds to the campus.

GM Ray Robson concentrates furiously. Ray has been improving rapidly and is one
of the most active GMs in America, having broken 2600 recently.

This group picture was taken at the end of the blitz tournament. The event was hosted
in the 48th floor of a skyscraper! The view was absolutely breaktaking.

Glenn Anderson, from Turner Construction, addresses the players on the importance
of UTD's and Turner's cooperation.

The blitz winners and the sponsors: Matt Papenfus, GM Sadorra, GM Holt, Glenn Anderson

Pictures by Randy Anderson

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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