Texas Tech's Knight Raiders Repeat as National Collegiate Champs

Congratulations to Texas Tech University and its chess program.  Another national trophy for the display cabinets.  Will it be the last one?  As those who follow chess may know, GM Susan Polgar is departing Lubbock for St. Louis and a university no one has ever heard of, and most of the top chess players she recruited to the Texas Tech Knight Raiders are going with her.  Texas Tech's chess program has been effectively gutted.

Report from kcbd.com

Texas Tech chess team repeats as National Champions
Posted: Apr 01, 2012 10:42 PM CDT
Updated: Apr 01, 2012 10:42 PM CDT

Provided by Texas Tech University:

The Texas Tech University Knight Raiders are national champions – again.

For the second straight year the Knight Raiders won the President's Cup, a premier event that is known as the Final Four of College Chess and determines the country's top intercollegiate team.

The three-day event in Washington D.C. began Friday and concluded Sunday with the Knight Raiders repeating as national champions with eight points. The University of Texas at Dallas and University of Maryland Baltimore County finished second with 7.5 points each, and New York University finished fourth.

Susan Polgar, Knight Raiders head coach and director of the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE), is the first woman in history to lead a men's Division I team to two straight national championships.

"It was total teamwork. Nothing was decided until the final second," Polgar said. "We are very proud and happy to bring another Final Four Championship to Texas Tech."

Knight Raiders who participated in the tournament are GM Georg Meier, a freshman finance major from Germany; GM Elshan Mordiabadi, a business graduate student from Iran; GM Anatoly Bykhovsky, a sophomore finance major from Israel; and GM Andre Diamant, a sophomore economics major from Brazil. Also in accompaniment are two alternates: GM Denes Boros, a sophomore psychology major from Hungary; and IM Vitaly Neimer, a freshman finance major from Israel.

The SPICE program is a unit of the Division of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement.