Webster Wins 3rd Straight Final Four Title
For the third time in a row Webster University won the Final Four College of Chess. It was held March 28-29 in New York.
The winning team included GM Le Quang Liem, GM Ray Robson, GM Ilia Nyzhnyk and GM Vasif Durarbayli.
Photo Paul Truong.
The Webster team dominated from start to finish and eventually scored a record 10 points out of 12 games.
In the first round on Saturday, Webster University started with 3.5-0.5 against University of MD Baltimore County, with GM Niclas Huschenbeth, IM Tanguy Ringoir, GM Akshayraj Kore and IM Levan Bregadze.
Akshayraj vs Nyzhnyk was the most interesting game, and the result wasn't clear until a few moves before the end.
Webster again scored 3.5-0.5 against its next opponent: the University of Texas, who played with GM Giorgi Margvelashvili, GM Leonid Kritz, GM Conrad Holt and GM Valentin Iotov.
Robson played a very powerful game as Black.
The final match on Sunday was against another team from Texas: Texas Tech, who won the Final Four in 2011 and 2012 coached by Susan Polgar, before she moved to Webster. This team consisted of GM Yaroslav Zherebukh, GM Elshan Moradiabadi, IM Andrey Gorovets and GM Samy Shoker.
Le Quang Liem played a model game against Zherebukh's Benoni.
Webster won 3-1, and finished the tournament on 10 game points without a single loss.
New College Chess Records: 5 straight Final Four Championships / 10 pts in 12 games / 4.5 pts ahead of 2nd place team @websteru @websterpres
— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) March 29, 2015
2015 Final Four | Final Standings
| Place | Name | Team Points |
| 1 | Webster University | 10 |
| 2 | Univ. of TX Dallas | 5.5 |
| 3 | Texas Tech University | 4.5 |
| 4 | Univ of MD Baltimore County | 4.0 |
Big @websteru welcome home celebration! The entire team was at airport to greet the Final Four Champs! @websterpres pic.twitter.com/o3kR2Wne0v
— Susan Polgar (@SusanPolgar) March 30, 2015
Officially named the President's Cup, the Final Four is the official U.S. college team chess championship. It is played between the top four U.S. schools from the most recent Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship (Pan-Am).
This year's Pan-Am (covered in this report) was University of Texas at Brownsville and held December 27-30 at the Hilton Garden Inn in South Padre Island, Texas. Held since 1946, this annual tournament is open to college and university teams from North and South America, including the Caribbean.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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