Chess Life TTU/Polgar Article

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:

Rosenberg did indeed skewer Polgar.