St Louis University wins the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Championship

by Klaus Besenthal
1/15/2022 – The Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Championship is a university championship in which, as the name suggests, teams from both the Americas and the Caribbean are allowed to participate — but in fact most of the participating teams come from the United States. This year’s tournament was won by the Saint Louis University, which was the only team to emerge victorious from all six matches they played. | Photo: Bill Simmons
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Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship

The championship was held at the Marriott Hotel in Dulles (Virginia), an area that derives its name from the Washington Dulles International Airport located in the immediate vicinity — the airport of the US capital, which in turn is named after the former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (1888 - 1959).   

Illustrious universities are among the participants: Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, etc. These institutions usually have good financial resources at their disposal. Since talented young people from all over the world study in these universities, it is no wonder that numerous titleholders participated in the championship.

The biggest contributor to Saint Louis University’s victory was undoubtedly Dutch grandmaster Benjamin Bok, who scored 5½/6 points. In the face of a whole series of narrow 2½-1½ victories by his team, it was Bok who made the decisive difference on several occasions.

However, the grandmaster’s opponents were not always on an equal footing with their titled opponents, as can be seen in this game from the first round.

 

Benjamin Bok still had to give up half a point — in his sixth round game against Maria Malicka from Poland | Photo: Angie Le

Meanwhile, 1.b3 has also found its way into the practice of today's world elite, and now finally a modern top ten player has taken on the subject for ChessBase: none other than Grandmaster Wesley So!

Final standings

Rk. Team Team
1 Saint Louis University - A SLU-A
2 Univ. of TX at Dallas - A UTD-A
  Texas Tech University - A TTU-A
4 Webster University - A WEBSTER-A
  Univ of TX Rio Grande Valley - A UTRGV-A
  University of Chicago - A UCHICAGO-A
  Webster University - B WEBSTER-B
  Univ. of TX at Dallas - B UTD-B
9 Yale University YALE
  Saint Louis University - B SLU-B
  Univ. of MD UMD-A
  MIT Beavers MIT-BEAV
  University of Virginia - A UVA-A
  Washington U. in St. Louis - A WASHUSL-A
  Univ. of Illinois at Urbana - A UIUC-A
  UC San Diego UCSD

...57 teams

The winning team

Bo.   Name RtgI FED 1 2 3 4 5 6 Pts. Games RtgAvg Rp K rtg+/-
1 GM SWIERCZ Dariusz 2656 USA     1 ½ ½ ½ 2,5 4 2632 2652 10 -0,4
2 GM THEODOROU Nikolas, Mr 2577 GRE   ½ ½ ½ ½ 1 3,0 5 2523 2445 10 -3,1
3 GM BOK Benjamin 2619 NED 1 1 1 1 1 ½ 5,5 6 2321 2603 10 4,7
4 GM KEVLISHVILI Robby 2491 NED 1 1     ½   2,5 3 2050 2179 10 0,8
5 GM CHANDRA Akshat 2484 USA 1 1         2,0 2 1901 0 10 1,6
6 GM ALI MARANDI Cemil Can 2542 TUR 0   0 ½   ½ 1,0 4 2533 2245 10 -14,3

All available games

 

Links

Klaus Besenthal is computer scientist, has followed and still follows the chess scene avidly since 1972 and since then has also regularly played in tournaments.

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