Several UTRGV Chess Team members competed in the Texas Individual Collegiate Chess Championship Feb. 1 in Richardson, a Dallas suburb, and brought home first-second-and third-place medals.
Grandmasters Andrey Stukopin, a mathematics graduate student, placed first, and Vladimir Belous and Kamil Dragun, both accounting juniors, placed second and third, respectively.
Chess Coach Bartek Macieja said this championship is the most prestigious individual event in Texas.
“We [opponents and Chess Team] knew each other very well because we competed throughout the year with them,” Macieja said. “But typically, we compete with them in team events and that was [an] individual event.”
He said he was glad to see three of his students take the top-three places.
“That’s an amazing result,” Macieja said. “Really unexpected because other colleges also have very good players and grandmasters.”
He said his students were high in standings throughout the tournament.
“They kept that very high position,” Macieja said. “It’s a fully deserved success.”
Stukopin said it was a strong tournament for him.
“I scored five out of six [points],” he said. “So, I didn’t get clear first [place] but, nonetheless, I showed decent play and I managed to come out on top.”
Stukopin said he tied with chess teammate Belous and competed for the first-place spot.
Asked what his thoughts were when he found out he won the tournament, he replied, “My thoughts were, ‘Finally, I beat this guy,’ because he typically is much better than me in blitz.”
In December 2019, the Chess Team fell short of qualifying for the Final Four in the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Tournament.
Macieja said the Pan American Championship last year was the strongest ever.
“There [were] new colleges with very, very strong teams and out of top six programs, there is no place for two of them,” he said. “[Last] year, unfortunately, we were the unlucky ones. I would say the level of, among, top six colleges is comparable. So look at it rather as an amazing result for us last year and two years ago when, not only we qualified to the Final Four, but also won the tournament.”
Asked what the main takeaway from this tournament was Macieja replied, “We were winning so many events that somehow everybody thought we’d keep winning forever, which of course is not true. So, probably that one event which didn’t go well for us was a good sign that everybody can be defeated and we need to take it really seriously and prepare well and do our best in every event in order to be able to keep being successful in further events.”
The Chess Team’s next tournament is the Southwest Collegiate
Team Championship Feb. 29 in Lubbock on the Texas Tech University campus campus.
