Verilu Infante 
BROWNSVILLE – The UTRGV Chess Team competed at this year’s 2019 Texas Collegiate Super Finals. Team A earned first place and team B earned second.
“I think my guys were really focused, they wanted to show that we as UTRGV really are the best, the best forever maybe, hopefully,” said Chess Team Coach Bartek Macieja.
This is the second year in a row the UTRGV Chess Team has earned first place at the Super Finals but for freshmen Irakli Beradze it’s his first team championship win with UTRGV.
“It was kind of hard because one chess game stretches up to four, three hours and you have to be concentrated during that time plus you’re nervous because it’s a team championship and it’s not only you. Three players are playing. So at the end I was really happy because we won and it started very nicely,” said Beradze.
The next tournament the Chess Team will be competing at is the Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship taking place in December.
“Our goal there is to finish among the top 4 colleges. Why top 4? Because later top 4 will play the final tournament called the final 4 and that’s how we can try to defend our championship title,”said Macieja.
Macieja also mentions that UTRGV will have a new course next semester offered by the School of Mathematics called the Mathematics of Chess.
According to Macieja, UTRGV will be the second institute in the nation to offer this course alongside Harvard University.
Both Macieja and Beradze encourage others to join or learn chess whether it’s in the UTRGV Chess Club or in local community events.
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