Chess Team A wins Texas Super Finals Trophy

Nubia Reyna | The Rider

UTRGV Chess Team A defeated UT Dallas and Texas Tech University to win first place in the Super Finals Trophy tournament, held Oct. 22-23 in Dallas.

Team A members are Anton Kovalyov, Andrey Stukopin, Vladimir Belous and Carlos Herevia.

“We’ve been practicing every day, every week for many years. …” said Coach and Grandmaster Bartek Macieja. “We did not have a special preparation for the tournament.”

Macieja said the team stays in good shape by constantly practicing.

Belous, a Grandmaster and freshman finance major from Ukraine, said he has been practicing chess since his childhood.

“We’ve been practicing all the time … even before they came to Brownsville,” Macieja said.

Kovalyov, a Grandmaster and senior computer science from Canada, said, “We practice [together] twice a week.”

Macieja said only three colleges qualified for the tournament: UTRGV, UT Dallas and Texas Tech.

“They based the winner on match points,” he said. “Each college was allowed to send two teams, so there were in total six teams participating.”

UTRGV played against two teams from UT Dallas and two from Texas Tech. The team won three matches and drew one.

“We wanted to win and we tried our best,” said Grandmaster Stukopin, a physics junior from Russia.

Macieja said he thinks his students were more motivated to win. “They wanted it more,” he said.

“All of us were exhausted, except for Bartek,” Stukopin said.

Macieja said he was a “happy coach” when they announced the winners.

“Wherever we go, we win,” he said.

The team is getting ready for the 2016 Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championships, set for Dec. 27-30 in New Orleans.