Mizzou Sweeps First Round On Way To Victory: CCL Week 4
In week four of the Collegiate Chess League Spring 2025 (CCL) the powerful University of Missouri—Columbia team showed why they're favorites to make it back to the league finals with a dominant victory against a prestigious Yale University team.
The CCL continues with week five on Saturday, February 22, at 2 p.m. ET/20:00 CET/0:30 a.m. IST (Sunday, February 23).
Collegiate Chess League Division 1 - Spring 2025 Week 4 Standings
Mizzou March On: Missouri 10.5-5.5 Yale
Yale is one of the strongest chess teams from a school that does not offer scholarships specifically for chess. They feature two grandmasters, Nicolas Checa and Arthur Guo, alongside IM Maximillian Lu and NM Linden Lee. It's an impressive lineup, but they had their hands full with Missouri's all-GM lineup (three GMs and one GM elect) of Aryan Tari, Mikhail Antipov, Luka Budisavljevic and Isik Can.
Missouri made a statement by sweeping the first round 4-0, including a quick win by their bottom board, Can, against Checa, Yale's top player. Checa must have missed an unusual pin along the fifth rank, which cost him a piece. This was a 100% accuracy game by Can according to Game Review. An impressive start to the match!
Yale isn't the sort of team to be shut out in a match and was competitive in each of the remaining rounds. It looked like they were going to make things close in round two until Lu dropped a rook in time pressure, while holding a fortress against Antipov.
The bright spot for Yale was Checa on board one. After the first-round loss, he was undefeated the rest of the way, finishing with 2.5/4 and holding Tari to his only draw of the day. Here's Checa's victory against Antipov in the last round.
You can watch the Collegiate Chess League 2025 Spring presented by Susquehanna on Chess.com/TV. You can also enjoy the show on our Twitch channel and catch all our live broadcasts on YouTube.com/ChesscomLive. Games from the event can be viewed on our events page.
The live broadcast was hosted by GM Benjamin Bok and JulesGambit.
The Collegiate Chess League is the premier online chess competition for college students. The 2024 CCL Fall Season is a team event starting September 28 at 2 p.m. ET/20:00 CET/0:30 a.m. IST and featuring a $25,000 prize fund.
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Jeremy Kane is a National Master and three-time Wisconsin state champion. He is the Director of Training Content for Chess.com. He has been teaching chess in person and online for over 15 years and has designed hundreds of lessons, available on chess.com/lessons. He is the author of Starting Out The Trompowsky on Chessable and The Next To Last Mistake, a book on defensive ideas in chess.
He is the developer of the Caro-Kane Variation of the Caro-Kann Defense.
email: jeremy@chess.com
Twitter/X: @chessmensch
