Grandmaster Yuri Shulman of Minsk, Belarus, a graduate student in the School of Management, this week handily won The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) Intramural Chess Championship over nine opponents for the second straight year. UTD is the only American college ever to hold a tournament sufficiently international in stature to be rated by the world governing body of chess, FIDE (Federation Internationale des Echecs).
Before UTD, which has the top-ranked collegiate chess team in the United States, held its first such competition in 2001, it had been 45 years since North Texas had been the site of an FIDE-rated tournament.
Shulman amassed eight points and did not lose a match in the three-week-long event. He won seven games and registered draws in two others.
Grandmaster Marcin Kaminski of Poland, a senior majoring in computer science, International Master Rade Milovanic of the U.S., the UTD coach, and International Master Dmitry Schneider of the U.S., a freshman majoring in business administration, tied for second place with 5.5 points each in the round-robin event.
Prior to last year, no American university had ever held a FIDE-rate tournament because of the high quality and geographical diversity of players required. UTD was able to do it because of the strength of its chess team (a team with two grandmasters and two international masters) and because it has players from more than the four countries FIDE requires to sanction an international tournament.
For two years in a row, UTD has won the “Final Four” of Chess – over the likes of Harvard, Stanford and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County – and tied for first place in the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship. In 2001, the U.S. Chess Federation named UTD “Chess College of the Year.”