BLafferty
2012-06-03 13:05:29 UTC
From the June Issue of Chess Life
AS THE LAST ROUND BEGAN at the
2012 President’s Cup—perhaps better
known as the Final Four of College Chess
—Evan Rosenberg of New York University
(NYU) resolved to do one thing that no
member of his team had done for the
entire tournament.
No matter that he was playing against
an opponent rated nearly 200 points
higher going into the most elite event in
college chess.
Rosenberg was determined to make
sure that what he hoped would become
NYU’s sole victory at the Final Four, held
from March 30-April 1 in Herndon, Virginia,
took place in spectacular form.
“Going into the final round, my attitude
seriously affected my strategy for the
game,” Rosenberg told Chess Life.
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to try to
checkmate him,’” Rosenberg said. “Unfor-
tunately, that entailed playing heinouslooking
moves intended to make the position
complicated, usually to my detriment.”
Rosenberg said his final-round opponent—IM Sasha Kaplan of University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)—
proved to be a “tenacious defender, and
he has really good positional intuition.”
“So I decided to take the game into
risky, uncharted territory early on, with
the optimistic plan of eventually checkmating
him,” Rosenberg said.
In many ways NYU—the only team at
the Final Four without a coach, a grandmaster,
or alternates—had already found
themselves in unchartered territory. And
if ever there was a need for optimism,
that optimism became necessary from
the very moment NYU came in fourth
place at the 2011 Pan-American Intercollegiate
Championship—the qualifying
event for the Final Four.
The Pan-Am victory put NYU in a position
that was both coveted and unenviable
all at once.
On the one hand, there’s the prestige of
having made it to the Final Four—the capstone
event of American collegiate chess.
But then you look at the statistical
odds based on the competitors’ collective
rating strength, and if the complex
formulae from which those ratings are
derived mean anything at all, then perhaps
NYU shouldn’t have scored the half
point that Rosenberg was now trying to
turn into 1
1
.2
points.
To be clear, NYU entered the tournament
with a team average USCF rating of
2211, while UMBC, University of Texas at
Dallas (UTD) and Texas Tech (TT), entered
the event with team average USCF ratings
of 2521, 2597 and 2629, respectively.
As in previous years, all the other
teams fielded several grandmasters,
whereas NYU had just one international
master, Zhe Quan, two national masters
and one class A player.
Despite the ratings difference, opinions
differ on who was the true underdog.
Susan Polgar, the Hungarian-born
American chess great and leader of the
defending champions, the Texas Tech
Knight Raiders, described her team as
the “heavy underdog,” even though they
were superiorly-rated.
“Even though the SPICE warriors are
the defending champion, we are the
underdog for several reasons,” Polgar
said in a blog post just before the event,
SPICE being an acronym for the Susan
Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.
“Teams like UTD and UMBC are heavily
supported by their respective universities
with scholarships while the Knight Raiders
relied on donations in the past to even
exist,” said Polgar, who is currently in the
process of moving SPICE to Webster University
in St. Louis, Missouri because of
what she says is a lack of overall support
from Texas Tech.
In a form similar to her online bio,
which is rife with a litany of perceived
wrongs she has endured throughout her
chess career, Polgar complained that having
to move some items from the SPICE
office to another location on campus had
hampered her team’s ability to prepare for
the Final Four.
“While the other three teams were busy
preparing for this very important event, the
SPICE warriors were busy helping me
pack the SPICE office to move to a new
location on campus,” Polgar lamented.
“This directly took away our valuable time
for preparation.
“The school administrators decided that
right before the Final Four is the ‘right’
time to move instead of waiting (until)
after the Final Four,” Polgar said.
“I’m sorry, but that’s total [BS],” an
agitated Rosenberg countered. “It’s insulting
to the actual underdogs.
“Underdogs don’t typically print championship
T-shirts ahead of time,” Rosenberg
said of the Knight Raiders.
Polgar said the T-shirts—which she
had printed unbeknownst to her students—were simply her way of recognizing
her players’ incredible achievement.
“Last year, they were very disappointed
that they were the first and only Final
Four Championship team not to have a
cover on Chess Life,” Polgar complained.
[The Final Four has never been a cover
story, so this statement is false. ~ed.] “I
fully expect that they will be the first team
not to have a Chess Life cover on back to
back championships.
“Therefore, I wanted them to be recognized
in the mainstream media instead.”
For what it’s worth, this writer
reached out to Polgar and the Knight
Raiders immediately after the Final Four
but did not hear back until after a second
attempt over a week later, at which
time Polgar related that many of her
players had fallen ill for several days
after evidently contracting something
at the Final Four.
Of her previous “underdog” assessment,
she noted that many of her students have
been national champions, European
champions or Olympians.
“They are used to pressure,” Polgar
said. “They know that I only expect them
ogive their all. Whatever happens after
that happens.”
Interestingly, based on the points scored
and how the final rounds played out, the
Knight Raiders’ ability to rightfully don the
pre-printed championship T-shirts would
hinge directly on Rosenberg’s quest for a
checkmate against Kaplan of UMBC in
the following game, which Rosenberg
agreed to annotate below:
AS THE LAST ROUND BEGAN at the
2012 President’s Cup—perhaps better
known as the Final Four of College Chess
—Evan Rosenberg of New York University
(NYU) resolved to do one thing that no
member of his team had done for the
entire tournament.
No matter that he was playing against
an opponent rated nearly 200 points
higher going into the most elite event in
college chess.
Rosenberg was determined to make
sure that what he hoped would become
NYU’s sole victory at the Final Four, held
from March 30-April 1 in Herndon, Virginia,
took place in spectacular form.
“Going into the final round, my attitude
seriously affected my strategy for the
game,” Rosenberg told Chess Life.
“I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to try to
checkmate him,’” Rosenberg said. “Unfor-
tunately, that entailed playing heinouslooking
moves intended to make the position
complicated, usually to my detriment.”
Rosenberg said his final-round opponent—IM Sasha Kaplan of University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)—
proved to be a “tenacious defender, and
he has really good positional intuition.”
“So I decided to take the game into
risky, uncharted territory early on, with
the optimistic plan of eventually checkmating
him,” Rosenberg said.
In many ways NYU—the only team at
the Final Four without a coach, a grandmaster,
or alternates—had already found
themselves in unchartered territory. And
if ever there was a need for optimism,
that optimism became necessary from
the very moment NYU came in fourth
place at the 2011 Pan-American Intercollegiate
Championship—the qualifying
event for the Final Four.
The Pan-Am victory put NYU in a position
that was both coveted and unenviable
all at once.
On the one hand, there’s the prestige of
having made it to the Final Four—the capstone
event of American collegiate chess.
But then you look at the statistical
odds based on the competitors’ collective
rating strength, and if the complex
formulae from which those ratings are
derived mean anything at all, then perhaps
NYU shouldn’t have scored the half
point that Rosenberg was now trying to
turn into 1
1
.2
points.
To be clear, NYU entered the tournament
with a team average USCF rating of
2211, while UMBC, University of Texas at
Dallas (UTD) and Texas Tech (TT), entered
the event with team average USCF ratings
of 2521, 2597 and 2629, respectively.
As in previous years, all the other
teams fielded several grandmasters,
whereas NYU had just one international
master, Zhe Quan, two national masters
and one class A player.
Despite the ratings difference, opinions
differ on who was the true underdog.
Susan Polgar, the Hungarian-born
American chess great and leader of the
defending champions, the Texas Tech
Knight Raiders, described her team as
the “heavy underdog,” even though they
were superiorly-rated.
“Even though the SPICE warriors are
the defending champion, we are the
underdog for several reasons,” Polgar
said in a blog post just before the event,
SPICE being an acronym for the Susan
Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence.
“Teams like UTD and UMBC are heavily
supported by their respective universities
with scholarships while the Knight Raiders
relied on donations in the past to even
exist,” said Polgar, who is currently in the
process of moving SPICE to Webster University
in St. Louis, Missouri because of
what she says is a lack of overall support
from Texas Tech.
In a form similar to her online bio,
which is rife with a litany of perceived
wrongs she has endured throughout her
chess career, Polgar complained that having
to move some items from the SPICE
office to another location on campus had
hampered her team’s ability to prepare for
the Final Four.
“While the other three teams were busy
preparing for this very important event, the
SPICE warriors were busy helping me
pack the SPICE office to move to a new
location on campus,” Polgar lamented.
“This directly took away our valuable time
for preparation.
“The school administrators decided that
right before the Final Four is the ‘right’
time to move instead of waiting (until)
after the Final Four,” Polgar said.
“I’m sorry, but that’s total [BS],” an
agitated Rosenberg countered. “It’s insulting
to the actual underdogs.
“Underdogs don’t typically print championship
T-shirts ahead of time,” Rosenberg
said of the Knight Raiders.
Polgar said the T-shirts—which she
had printed unbeknownst to her students—were simply her way of recognizing
her players’ incredible achievement.
“Last year, they were very disappointed
that they were the first and only Final
Four Championship team not to have a
cover on Chess Life,” Polgar complained.
[The Final Four has never been a cover
story, so this statement is false. ~ed.] “I
fully expect that they will be the first team
not to have a Chess Life cover on back to
back championships.
“Therefore, I wanted them to be recognized
in the mainstream media instead.”
For what it’s worth, this writer
reached out to Polgar and the Knight
Raiders immediately after the Final Four
but did not hear back until after a second
attempt over a week later, at which
time Polgar related that many of her
players had fallen ill for several days
after evidently contracting something
at the Final Four.
Of her previous “underdog” assessment,
she noted that many of her students have
been national champions, European
champions or Olympians.
“They are used to pressure,” Polgar
said. “They know that I only expect them
ogive their all. Whatever happens after
that happens.”
Interestingly, based on the points scored
and how the final rounds played out, the
Knight Raiders’ ability to rightfully don the
pre-printed championship T-shirts would
hinge directly on Rosenberg’s quest for a
checkmate against Kaplan of UMBC in
the following game, which Rosenberg
agreed to annotate below: