UTD Chess Players Win National Tournament

RICHARDSON, Texas (Dec. 15, 2003) – The University
of Texas at Dallas (UTD) reaffirmed its standing as one of the nation’s top college chess powers
at the 2003 National K-12/Collegiate Championships, held Friday through Sunday in the Chicago suburb
of Rosemont, Ill. UTD sent six players to the tournament and captured the top six individual places
among college players and won the team title, as well.

The event, conducted by the United States Chess Federation,
for the first time featured a collegiate section in addition to kindergarten through 12th grade sections.
For the UTD team, the event was something of a warmup for the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess
Championship — the premier college chess competition in the Western Hemisphere — which
will be held in Miami in two weeks.

UTD junior Dennis Rylander of Sweden and senior Andrei
Zaremba of Michigan tied for first place, each with six and one-half out of a possible seven points
compiled through seven rounds over three days. Three UTD players — junior Michal Kujovic of
Slovakia, junior Ali Morshedi of Houston and sophomore Evan Rosenberg of New York — scored
five and one-half points and tied for third place. Daniel Fernandez, a UTD freshman from Florida,
took sixth place with five points.

Six players from other schools trailed the UTD players
with four points each. One was from the University of Chicago, another from the State University
of New York at Stonybrook and four from Ohio State University.

While the collegiate event is a competition among individuals,
the top three scores of players from the same institution served as a team score as well. As a result,
UTD was the tournament’s top team, followed in order by Ohio State, SUNY-Stonybrook, Roane State
Community College of Tennessee and Daytona Beach Community College of Florida.

“This was an historic win for UTD in the first year
that college students were able to compete in this prestigious national tournament,” said Dr. Tim
Redman, a professor of literary studies and director of the UTD chess program. “Our students — essentially
UTD’s “B” team — played extraordinarily well in what was a great training opportunity for the Pan
Am Championship later this month. Both our “A” and “B” teams will have to be at the top of their
game, because our biggest rival — the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, which didn’t participate
in the Chicago event — will be the Pan Am favorite.”

The Chicago tournament drew 1,937 participants from
across the country.

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.