{"id":9731,"date":"2019-01-25T18:55:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T18:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=9731"},"modified":"2019-01-25T18:56:02","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T18:56:02","slug":"utrgv-chess-teams-advance-to-defend-national-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=9731","title":{"rendered":"UTRGV Chess Teams Advance to Defend National Title"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The UTRGV Chess Team, which was named the 2018 Chess College of the Year by the U.S. Chess Federation, will defend its title as national champions at the Presidents\u2019 Cup in April in New York. The team participated Dec. 27-30 in San Francisco in the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship, which determines the top four highest-ranking universities and advances them to the President\u2019s Cup tournament, also known as the Final Four of College Chess. Photo: David Pike\/UTRGV<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

by Victoria Brito<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
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BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>The UTRGV Chess Team, fresh off a successful tournament at the\u00a0Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship<\/a>, now will defend its title as\u00a0national champions<\/a>\u00a0at the Presidents\u2019 Cup in April in New York.<\/div>\n
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The team participated\u00a0Dec. 27 through 30 in San Francisco in the PAICC, which determines the top four highest-ranking universities and advances them to the President\u2019s Cup tournament, also known as the Final Four of College Chess.<\/div>\n
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UTRGV will now face rival Webster University, UT Dallas, and Harvard University in the chess showdown of the year.<\/div>\n
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Last year,\u00a0UTRGV was victorious<\/a>\u00a0in the country\u2019s top collegiate chess competition and was named the\u00a02018 Chess College of the Year by the U.S. Chess Federation<\/a>. The team also won the 2018 Texas State Championship.<\/div>\n
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Alex Mista, UTRGV chess program manager, said Webster has strong teams and always provides serious challenges, and the PICC competitions was no different.<\/div>\n
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\u201cIt was a tough tournament with many strong universities. It was difficult,\u201d Mista said.<\/div>\n
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The tournament consisted of six rounds. UTRGV had to win five\u00a0out of six rounds to qualify for advancement. Midway through the tournament, UTRGV faced a setback when it lost to Texas Tech University, and the win came down to a tiebreaker.<\/div>\n
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\u201cAfter losing the fourth round against Texas Tech, we had to win everything, but in the final round we faced Webster for a draw,\u201d Mista said. \u201cThe tiebreaker decided who qualified and who didn\u2019t, and all the results of other team\u2019s matches were in our favor to qualify for the Final Four.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The UTRGV A Team placed fifth behind Webster University A Team, UT Dallas A Team, Webster University B Team and Harvard University.\u00a0Since Webster had two teams, which ranked first and third, the top four highest ranking universities advanced to the Final Four.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe won last year,\u201d Mista said, \u201cand now we are going to defend our title.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victoria Brito BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0The UTRGV Chess Team, fresh off a successful tournament at the\u00a0Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship, now will defend its title as\u00a0national champions\u00a0at the Presidents\u2019 Cup in April in New York. The team participated\u00a0Dec. 27 through 30 in San Francisco in the PAICC, which determines the top four highest-ranking universities and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9731"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9733,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9731\/revisions\/9733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}