Information and the article contributed by Jeff Semmens and Jeff Green

This school year has been the first in a decade that ASU has organized a competitive chess team. Since the Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship is held over winter break, I needed something to spark the interest of the team in the “off-season.” The University of Arizona is not only our school’s rival, but also fields a formidable chess team, headed by FM Warren Harper and Experts Amanda Mateer and Ben Marmont. The gauntlet was thrown down and we agreed to meet on April 23rd at IM Danny Rensch’s Master Trek tournament on the ASU campus. Despite having the home board advantage, we lost a very close match to the Wildcats (3.5-2.5).

The time control was 55 minutes with a 5 second delay, and the match was a six board, single game match. On board one FM Saeed Mohammad played FM Warren Harper. Both of these guys have taken a bit of a break from chess to focus on school, so it was interesting to see how prepared they were. I believe that Saeed did a bit of pre-game preparation, which appeared to pay off, this match went in our favor 1-0. On board two Expert Amanda Mateer played Expert Andrew Widener. This game was the second to last to finish and ended in a drawn endgame, 1/2-1/2. On board three Expert Jeff Green played Expert Ben Marmont. This was the last game to finish, and was a heartbreak for the Sun Devils. Jeff, in time trouble, blew a won game against his former high school teammate, 0-1. The fourth board saw the match up of Ray Tan and Dean Cullen. Ray has improved very much in the last year, and will probably be an Expert soon. Dean is also a member of the Hayden Library staff and the club advisor. Ray won this match, 1-0. On board five the match up was myself, Jeff Semmens, and Matthew Noble. At the time of this game, I was the President of the Chess Club @ ASU, and I wasn’t expecting to play, but we had two no-shows, and I had to jump in at the last minute. Despite being a 140 point underdog, I pulled off the upset and earned the point for my team, 1-0. On the last board Rex Tan, brother of Ray Tan faced off against Aaron Beavor, another last minute replacement. I played on the same high school team as Rex, and I can attest that he is a better chess player than his rating suggests. Despite being slightly lower rated, Rex won the game, 1-0.
All the games were closely contested, and despite losing, all of us felt good about getting to play the match. We look forward to a rematch with the Wildcats next year, especially since we will be adding NM Nick Thompson to our team. We intend on bringing the “Territorial Cup of Chess” to Tempe in 2012.
Jeff Semmens
President Emeritus — Chess Club @ ASU