RICHARDSON, Texas (Dec. 9, 2003) – For two consecutive
years, The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) sat atop the world of college chess as the number
one-ranked team, basking in the glow of national recognition as unmistakably the best and the brightest
in the most cerebral of all intercollegiate competitions (does anyone really believe that a quarterback’s
playbook is anything more than mere Cliff Notes compared with the hundreds of all-but-indecipherable
manuals and thousands of arcane variations chess players have to study?).   During that period,
UTD won the first two “Final Four” of Chess championship events ever held (in 2001 and
2002) and tied for first place in the prestigious Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship
two years in a row (2000 and 2001).

“We’re number One!   We’re Number One!”   For
two glorious years, that was the mantra chanted on the UTD campus.   With the university’s kings
of the square board suddenly now kings of the entire universe of college chess, it no longer mattered,
even during homecoming week, that U. T. Dallas didn’t field a football team.

But alas, that was yesterday, when all the UTD chess
team’s troubles seemed so far away, or, as they might put it in the slow-paced, tradition-bound game
of knights, bishops and castles:

Ancient History.

Last Dec. 30, UTD’s longtime chess rival, The University
of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), unceremoniously dethroned UTD in the Pan Am – albeit, by only
one-half of a point; and then on April 6 of this year UMBC again dumped – make that checkmated –
UTD, this time in the “Final Four” of Chess by 1 ½ points.   For the past eight
months, the chant in the chess office on the UTD campus, to the extent that it is discernible, has
been a diminished in tone and muffled in decibel level, “We’re Number Two” – three little
words that, as it turns out, may once have worked in rental car ads but have no place on either the
battlefield or the chess board.

Better, perhaps, and certainly more aspirational, are, “Let’s
kick some butt!” or “Let’s pin some rooks!” and that is what the UTD chessmen, a diverse
and eclectic group, hope to do to UMBC when they meet, eyeball-to-eyeball, pawn-to-pawn, in this
year’s Pan Am competition Dec. 27-30 at the Embassy Suites Hotel near Miami International Airport.

Dozens of other universities will participate in the
Pan Am, which is regarded as the top college chess tournament in the Western Hemisphere.   But
if past is prescient prologue as a predictor of performance, the winner will be either UMBC or UTD.   It
almost always is.   (Think mid-1980’s:   Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers in professional
basketball.)   At the Pan Am, everyone else – including Harvard, Stanford, U.C. Berkeley and
Chicago – will be playing for third place.   UMBC-UTD is the most competitive rivalry in intercollegiate
competition — and has been for at least four years.   Part of the reason for that is that the
presidents of the two universities, UTD’s Franklyn G. Jenifer and UMBC’s Freeman A. Hrabowski, both
view chess as a metaphor for academic excellence and intellectual rigor.   And both universities
have established themselves as places where it is “cool to be smart.”

“UMBC no doubt will be favored on the basis of
the chess ratings of its players,” said Dr. Tim Redman, professor of literary studies at U.
T. Dallas and director of the school’s seven-year-old chess program.   “But we have some
excellent new players, and our team has been training very hard under Coach Rade Milovanovic, an
international master.   UMBC will be making a big mistake if it takes us too lightly.”

UTD actually will be sending two teams to the Pan
Am in Miami.   The “A” team will be composed of Grandmaster (GM) Marcin Kaminski of
Poland, 26, a senior majoring in computer science and software engineering; International Master
(IM) Dmitry Scheider of New York, 18, a freshman business administration major; IM Magesh Chandran
Panchanathan of India, 20, a freshman majoring in telecommunications; IM Amon Simutowe of Zambia,
21, a freshman majoring in economics and finance; and FIDE Master (FM) Andrei Zaremba of Michigan,
21, a senior majoring in electrical engineering.   Playing for UTD’s “B” team will be FM Andrew
Whatley of Alabama, 22, a graduate student in public affairs; FM Dennis Rylander of Sweden, 24, a
junior majoring in business administration; FM Daniel Fernandez of Florida, 18, a freshman majoring
in economics; FM Michal Kujovic of Slovakia, 21, a junior majoring in mathematics; and FM Ali Morshedi
of Texas, 20, a junior majoring in electrical engineering..

About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart
of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor,
enrolls about 13,700 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront
of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment
of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please
visit the university’s web site at www.utdallas.edu.