Team wasn’t quite at full strength

April 05–The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, chess team was held in check as it finished last among the four teams during the President’s Cup competition April 2-3 in Herndon, Va.

Texas Tech University won the round robin tournament for the first time in school history, besting UMBC, the University of Texas at Brownsville and the University of Texas at Dallas.

UMBC has won the event, known as the “Final Four of College Chess,” six times in the event’s 11-year history.

This year marked the first time UMBC didn’t place in the top two spots.

“It was an unusually close tournament,” said Alan Sherman, the UMBC team’s director. “If one game each match had gone differently for UMBC, we would have transformed from last place to first place.”

Sherman said UMBC’s roster was the same as the one that won the tournament last year, but the team wasn’t quite at full strength.

Giorgi Margvelashvilli had an emergency operation on March 29 and didn’t play well in the first two rounds before being replaced by alternate Sabina Foisor, Sherman said. Foisor played her opponent, a grand master, to a draw.

“The bottom line was we didn’t have a very good tournament,” he said.