ΘνΓΓΙη Wins Collegiate Chess League Title
Maggie Rotermund
Senior Media Relations Specialist
maggie.rotermund@slu.edu
314-977-8018
Reserved for members of the media.
The ΘνΓΓΙη Chess Team won the Collegiate Chess League (CCL). The season-long tournament culminated on April 16, with ΘνΓΓΙη defeating the University of Missouri.
ΘνΓΓΙη is the first team in the CCLβs five-year history to win two championships.
Varuzhan Akobian, a grandmaster and interim head coach of ΘνΓΓΙηβs chess team, said the team worked hard over the course of months to achieve this goal.
βOur players are playing quite well, and we are continuing to win tournaments,β Akobian said.
ΘνΓΓΙηβs roster of players for the CCL included Benjamin Bok, Nikolas Theodorou, Robby Kevlishvili, Stavroula Tsolakidou, Thalia Cervantes Landeiro, and Gabriela Antova. The blitz chess online tournament was played each weekend over the course of the season.
βWe really worked on speed and playing fast,β Akobian said. βI think we are the strongest team in the country on shorter time control matches.β
ΘνΓΓΙη competed against teams from Duke, Yale, Brown University, Washington University, and last yearβs champion University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV).
UTRGV entered the finals as the favorite to play Mizzou for the championship. After the first two rounds, ΘνΓΓΙη and UTRGV were deadlocked at 4-4, when ΘνΓΓΙη took control to win the next 7.5 out of eight games to advance.
ΘνΓΓΙη and Mizzou faced off earlier in the year, with Mizzou coming out ahead. The two teams also both competed in the Presidentβs Cup, with ΘνΓΓΙη coming in second place to Webster University.
ΘνΓΓΙη won the Presidentβs Cup at the 2022 Final Four of Collegiate Chess, defeating Webster.
Akobian said this was the final team competition of the 2022-23 season. Individual team members will compete in various tournaments over the summer.
About ΘνΓΓΙηβs Chess Team
Established in the fall of 2016 as a partnership between ΘνΓΓΙη and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, with support from ΘνΓΓΙη alumnus, University trustee and chess enthusiast Rex Sinquefield, the team is not just a club activity but rather a strategic effort by administrators and alumni to recruit promising players and build on the Universityβs excellent academic reputation.