Texas Tech Leaps to Top Chess Schools

This is cool - really cool.  Congratulations to Texas Tech, SPICE, Susan Polgar, and Paul Truong, for putting this great program together.

From The New York TimesChess
A Dallas University Finishes on Top in a ShowdownBy DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN
Published: January 9, 2011

A couple of years ago, college chess could be divided into two tiers. The elite included the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the University of Texas, Dallas. The second tier was made up of everyone else.

No more. With aggressive campaigns to recruit top players, the University of Texas, Brownsville, and Texas Tech University have joined the top tier.

Haraldur Karlsson, who is the faculty liaison for the chess team at Texas Tech, explained in an interview four years ago why the university had begun recruiting top talent.

“To be quite frank, Tech is not Harvard,” said Dr. Karlsson, who is an associate professor of geosciences. “And we have to compete really hard for the best students. And there tends to be a link between good chess skills and good academic skills.”

That also meant attracting grandmasters to mold the up-and-coming teams. Texas Tech, which is in Lubbock, hired Susan Polgar, a grandmaster and former women’s world champion, to run its program. In Brownsville, the university’s latest coach is Ronen Har-Zvi, an Israeli grandmaster.

Rest of article.

Reshevsky Memorial International Invitational

Is there anyone out there who doesn't read Susan Polgar's popular chess blog? If you haven't already seen the news, she posted that Texas Tech University, the home of SPICE, will be hosting the Reshevsky Memorial International Invitational from November 9 - 16, 2007. Dr. Eric Moskow has provided financial support for the event. In his quest to achieve his IM title (read more here), Dr. Moskow will be participating in this event. In addition to Dr. Moskow, confirmed players thus far are GM Boris Gulko (alright!) and GM Gilberto Hernandez. I found Dr. Moskow's posted suggestion under the Saturday Open Forum at Polgar's blog (September 1, 2007) of issuing invitations to some "senior" players delightful: susan. lets offer 3 spots to american vets in our tournament, lombardy, byrne, benko, soltis, bisquier, tarjan, commons, zuckerman, come to mind would be interesting all are friends of reshevsky im told or remember??? eric moskow I look forward to reading more about how this event develops and the final list of players. Good luck, Dr. Moskow, I expect this will be a tough event and a worthy test of your chess acumen.