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University of Texas at Dallas Invitational attracts young GMs from Around the Globe
Continuing their tradition of providing their players with the best sparring possible, as well as aggressively recruiting stronger players every year, the University of Texas at Dallas in conjunction with sponsors Turner Construction Company organized the UTD GM Spring Invitational from March 8th-13th.
UTD has become one of the leading research universities not only in the state of Texas, but in all of the United States. It is currently in the path of becoming a Tier One research university, and it boasts four members of the National Academies and a Nobel laureate as part of their faculty members. In recent years, UTD has strongly boosted many of its academic schools; the Naveen Jindal School of Management’s Master’s in Business Administration programs have climbed to the top 20 in many well-known rankings. The Arts and Technology department will be opening a new building later this year, the cost of it being well over $60 million. UTD was one of only four Texas universities to be in the top 200 world-wide, according to Times Higher Education, a UK based publication.
Chess has also improved tremendously not only in UTD, that is soon to be expanding and improving their chess-based scholarships, but in all of the United States. Highly prized tournaments are becoming more and more popular, while the competition grows increasingly fierce; this is largely because of the generous opportunities provided by institutions such as UTD, since young and promising players can come to America to pursue both chess and academia.
This year’s event was hosted in preparation for the upcoming Final Four of Collegiate Chess, one of the two most important collegiate tournaments in the United States. The other one, the Pan-American Collegiate Chess Championship, was won by UTD ahead of rivals Webster University, Texas Tech, Harvard, Princeton and many others. The player’s started with a nice warm-up at the newest jewel of Dallas culture: the Perot Museum of Natural Science. This beautiful location hosted a 5-round blitz tournament.
One of the permanent exhibitions of the museum, probably interested in Negi's blitz moves
At the end of the day it was yours truly that won the blitz tournament, but the festivities had just started.
The main event was the nine-round Swiss held at the Embassy Suites in Dallas. The top players included GM Negi, fresh from tying for first in the extremely strong Cappelle-la-Grande open in France, rival GM Zherebukh who now attends Texas Tech University (maybe in as a spy to learn UTD tricks?!) and GM Macieja, current coach of UTD’s sister university, UT-Brownsville.
The tournament also had, of course, the UTD A and B team: mainly GMs Chirila, Yotov, Sadorra, Holt and IM Pavlovic: the team that won the Pan-American in December. The ‘low’ rated players were specially invited because of their young age and extraordinary talent, and included 2013 US Championship participants Sarah Chiang, Samuel Sevian, Kayden Troff (the last two who are the current World Champions in their age categories) and also young Jeffrey Xiong, who at his twelve years of age already has two IM norms.
Here are two very impressive highlights of the fighting chess exhibited at the tournament:
IM Bercys, a Master level student and UTD Chess Captain, missed a GM norm by a very narrow margin. He had this crazy game against GM Moradiabadi, who, like Zherebukh, is from Texas Tech.
Here are some more action pictures from the tournament:
The tournament was hard fought to the very end, as the previous games should give you an indication of. At the end of the day it was Indian GM and top seed Negi who edged out UTD GM Sadorra on tiebreaks to take the cup.
Also worthy of mention are the following three:
Sarah Chiang had an extremely strong tournament, playing 3 GMs in a row and then 3 IMs! Her score was sufficient for a WIM norm. Jeffrey Xiong continues to be on a tear in US Chess, as he has now scored two IM norms back to back. Last but not least, IM Guijarro from Spain has now become GM Guijarro with this last norm, and hopes to join the ranks of UTD in the Spring.
Final Standings:
| Rank | Name | Score | Fed. | Rating | TPR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GM Negi, Parimarjan | 6.5 | IND | 2639 | 2655 |
| 2 | GM Sadorra, Julio Catalino | 6.5 | PHI | 2565 | 2623 |
| 3 | IM Anton Guijarro, David | 6.0 | ESP | 2546 | 2617 |
| 4 | GM Abasov, Nijat | 6.0 | AZE | 2465 | 2577 |
| 5 | GM Chirila, Ioan-Cristian | 6.0 | ROU | 2518 | 2546 |
| 6 | GM Ramirez, Alejandro | 6.0 | USA | 2535 | 2527 |
| 7 | GM Holt, Conrad | 6.0 | USA | 2504 | 2537 |
| 8 | IM Bercys, Salvijus | 5.5 | USA | 2427 | 2565 |
| 9 | GM Berczes, David | 5.5 | HUN | 2526 | 2517 |
| 10 | GM Zherebukh, Yaroslav | 5.5 | UKR | 2623 | 2538 |
The tournament was certainly a huge success. The players got their practice, the foreigners got to experience some of the best cultural aspects of Dallas and visit the university, and the ambiance was overall very pleasant and friendly. We will soon see how well this training paid off for UTD as the Final Four will be starting in a few days. Make sure to add US Collegiate Chess to your watch list in the chess world!
