The state of College Chess In America

All Things Chess
1

I recently read a few articles about Susan Polgar leaving Texas Tech and taking 8 or 10 players with her to Webster University. This has garnered much media attention and I would like to put in my two cents about what I see as the ultimate deficit with “college chess”. I graduated from an institution with no chess club when I got there. When I got there, I made the flyers, spoke with administrators, obtained an adviser and made all the necessary steps to create a college chess team. The fruits of my labor were bore when I was lucky enough to participate in the various events we had (including a tournament where we got to travel to princeton university to play other teams!). I was the first president of the club and was worried that once I left our club would die with me. Thankfully that has not been the case as other members have continued on and pressed forward. Nothing came easy those first few years, we had no money, and getting through my schools administration and red tape was more than a pain in the butt. We did it though, not because we knew that there was fame and glory at the end of the road, but because we believed in “college chess” and wanted a place where people could play and learn. I gave lectures, and did my best to try organize club events. Some nights there were only 2 or 3 people there. In fact, MOST nights there were only 2 or 3 people there when we were first starting out.

      That first event (the Princeton tournament) got no publicity at all, despite the fact that notables such as UMBC participated, (although it was their c team or some such none sense, they were all still strong masters). My team earned the top U2000 trophy. I was quite proud of my band of misfits as it was announced that we had won that section (despite the fact that my personal results were terrible). The USCF is lying to you me, and everyone else when they make the claim that they are interested in college chess. I propose that there are stricter guidelines implemented for who is eligible to play chess in college and which colleges are allowed to participate (and actually enforce said guidelines). In my mind Webster University should not be allowed to participate in events for one year, during this year they will be on a probation period, where they can prove that they are in fact a. real students and b. really interested in college chess and not just chasing funding and championships. 

            The lack of guidelines that currently exist in college chess is abysmal. It seems to me that there is very little oversight or commitment on the part of the USCF. This lack of oversight has enabled people to hijack college chess in america and thus we see the same 4 or 5 colleges every year that are playing for "our championship". I believe that there should be two categories of schools in college chess tournaments. The first category would be called category A, this category would include every school that cannot give scholarships to players. The second category would be called category B, this category would include every school that gives scholarships for players. Of course this would create a lopsided pool of teams where the category b teams would be marginally better than the category a teams. But that is the point, the point is not to see which college can buy the most gms and move them to the most remote location. The real challenge in my mind is to go to a school, and assemble a team from the hodgepodge of players who happen to go to the chess club, who play chess because they enjoy it and not because someone is paying them to.

So congratulations to Webster university for purchasing the latest installment of the “SPICE” institute. I hope that they win as many championships as dollars can buy.

2

It’s rare to see such pure, raw emotion that has such a salient point. Of course, it’s more than a chess issue. This hits at the money impact that influences so many university club (ie not varsity) sports.

So the point about standards for college chess is a good one, and the College Chess committee has an opportunity here. For one…I applaud the fact that I actually found information on college chess on the website without going through yoga-like contortions! It doesn’t get much easier (compared to other website info) than sidebar “Scholastic / College” and finding USCF College Chess Committee at the bottom of the link list. So real kudos to the committee for putting their actual contact info(!!!) and events on the website. The only downside is that it hasn’t been updated in 4 years (Panam 2008?).

The thing is, club sports in college are usually governed by a extra-university national organization. Ultimate Frisbee is a huge club sport in the Big XII…and it’s governed by USA Ultimate. College chess with club teams across the nation…USCF governed for rated competition. Updated eligibility and competition guidelines would be a great help to folks like the OP.

Then again…we’ll probably be OK if we ignore the folks toiling in obscurity who don’t raise a question on the forums. They don’t know what they don’t know until they realize what they didn’t know…and by then they’re already beyond what they didn’t know and don’t necessarily need it anymore. That’s our M.O. as an organization and not the hill I’d choose to die on.

3

Please reword this slightly. Instead of “scholarships” use “chess scholarships”. I’d guess that many of the players on a hodge-podge team receive some type of scholarship, just not because of chess.

P.S. I still haven’t decided if I agree but I’d definitely disagree without a rewording.

4

Personally I don’t have a problem with colleges and universities that want to “buy” a top ranked chess team.

  • It benefits the students who get a free college education out of the deal
  • It benefits the image of the chess community. Just look at all of the recent publicity
  • It should help encourage talented players to not drop out of chess after high school
  • Perhaps parents (and the greater public) will see chess as an important academic pursuit

I suspect if more of the scholarships were going to people born in the Unites States, and if she who’s name must not be mentioned was not involved, there would not be so many negative opinions on the topic.

5

There just aren’t enough young players with ratings good enough to attract chess scholarships all other qualifications being equal. FACT: There are over 2600 colleges and unis in the US. Also there are a total of just 2200+ total players uscf 2000 or higher in the whole country regardless of age.

6

i agree with bnolan and disagree with the poster.

As an aside, it’s easy to buy championships in lots of sports the NCAA doesnt run.

To take the ultimate frisbee analogy further (I happen to coach a pretty highly ranked high school team), if you gave me $250k a year, I’d pay myself a salary, and with the remaining scholarship money, could recruit enough of the top high schoolers to my program to make us a national force right away and probably champions in 3-5 years.

Women’s rugby? The price might be lower (admittedly it might be harder because unlike ultimate I dont think there are as many high school programs for safety reasons).

And i’ll tell you what, as a coach, if there were MORE ultimate frisbee scholarships, and they were truly full ride as opposed to the 8k a year ones you see now, I’d be happy, because for my most gifted sophomores, it would be an easier sell to the parents that sending them to an ultimate camp in the summer is a good idea, and that playing in the local summer league is a good idea, and travelling to boston in a couple of weeks to compete in the Northeast US championships is worth the money etc.

Most coaches in most sports point to the intangible benefits to be gained by playing a sport or learning an instrument or something. A scholarship though is tangible, and also helps.

Should the USCF focus more on college chess, that’s tbd.

But the fact that someone cares enough to try and “buy” a championship isn’t a bad thing. Not every top player will want to go to Missouri, to a school that doesnt have a great academic reputation per se.

And a as a club sport player on a non-elite team (but still well above average), the few times a year we got to play a top 5 team in the country, it was incredbily exciting and motivating. Yeah i enjoyed doing the hard work of recruitment and going to every campus fair and asking the soccer coaches if there were any kids who quit but still were promising athletes, and maybe this team doesnt get that experience, but those players and those captains will get learning lessons to about how to manage expectations and deal with pressure.

Until then, hope for a black swan style event to give college chess publicity, then maybe lots of people will try to buy their alma mater a national championship. I don’t think we will see such an event but you never know…

7

bnolan,

I wanted to address some points you’ve raised, although i first want to mention a few things:

  1. I believe (and this is clearly subjective) it is unethical to “buy” teams…for the same reasons that TCU and other colleges have been fined heavily in football for “bribing and paying” players to play. We can argue til we are both blue in the face but I don’t think either of us are going to make much progress on this matter. Imagine if a major NCAA team decided to move to another college because they felt the funding was better, picture this, Texas Tech Basketball moves to Webster University on the promise of “better funding” It’s ridiculous; the public would be up in arms. We should hold ourselves to higher standards than this.

  2. I have no issue with Susan Polgar or prejudice towards Susan Polgar or any of her affiliations, from what I’ve heard she is a nice lady and I don’t know enough about the other matters that she has with the USCF to comment on them, so lets leave her out of this. I’m more irritated with her situation than with her in general, if say she was to be replaced by a lovable character such as Joel Benjamin, Greg Shahade, or Ben finegold or anyone else for that matter, I would still make the claim that the action was by its very nature unethical.

To address some of your points (in order in which they occur):

  • Certainly, players who may not have had the chance to go to certain university’s may now be eligible to go. I think we can both agree this is a positive outcome.
  • I’m not confident that this has any effect (negative or positive) on the chess community, perhaps I am mistaken but I believe college chess is largely ignored by the public and chess playing communities, (aside from the occasional local news story about specific university’s). The exception would be Susan polgar’s move… but again I’m not confident this had any positive effect on the general public, or negative effect for that matter and this is an outlier in the general coverage that occurs about college chess.
  • This will not encourage (merely) talented players, the players we are talking about are GM’s, and IM’s. Make no mistake about it, this isn’t the talented 2100, 2000, 1900 kid from your local chess club, and it would appear that the majority of the players playing on these teams are coming from outside the US anyways. Generally GM’s and IM’s aren’t going to stop playing chess in the height of their youth. Especially when they can play in europe and get paid for just showing up and smiling.
  • I have a tough time believing that chess is an “academic pursuit”. Physics, Mathematics, history, hell even communications (hehe) are academic pursuits. Until we can actually support “professional” chess players here in America I find it tough to believe that we can consider chess an “academic pursuit”.

I agree with your last statement about scholarships going to people born in the U.S. Unfortunately the vast majority of college aged students do not possess any FIDE titles and thus will never garner the support from American Institutions. Perhaps if we were to give more scholarships to promising youngsters without titles we would actually see some real progress.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say about the points raised here.

8

dmn10 -

I have read the points you have made in your post. I think you may have misunderstood what I am advocating for.

I would like MORE oversight on college chess, that would make “buying championships” more difficult. Also just because “it’s easy to buy championships in lots of sports the NCAA doesn’t run.” Doesn’t make it right, or ethical, it is in fact highly unethical.

As you’ve mentioned you run a High school team, high school and college are different worlds (as I’m sure you are aware). It is very rare for people to get any kind of scholarship money to play in high school, in fact I think it is illegal, (you can correct me if i am mistaken). So I believe that your analogy here is a little off base.

I just have trouble with your argument because ultimately you are trying to sell ultimate summer camps and the like to prospective parents. There is nothing wrong with this, but dangling the promise of scholarship money and reward should not be the only incentive to do something. Perhaps I am naive in my standards and morals; but I believe we can do better than this. I am reminded of the movie hoop dreams where high school students are a commodity that can be bought and sold, I think we’ve come some way since then but we have a long way to go.

Certainly we can agree with the intangible and tangible benefits that chess has on students. Learning how to study and discipline are very tangible things that I believe chess does a good job of teaching to young children. Many other sports have similar benefits (teamwork, fitness etc). Most children who play sports (imo) aren’t playing youth t-ball because they want scholarship money. Chess is unique because children are exposed to money and prizes very early on.

I don’t agree that the focus on college chess is up in the air, the USCF should focus on all things chess, it isn’t that difficult and it is their job here in the states. I’m tired of making excuses for people who are unwilling to do their job.

I don’t understand this black swan reference. Perhaps you mean Cinderella? We could have a Cinderella moment, if it weren’t for the fact that most college chess teams are ill equipped and ill funded to even get to most college events. To take your analogy a little further, forget about the ball, Cinderella wouldn’t even have a fairy god mother. And, even if they did show up, they would face a litany of grand masters, the likes of which most 1900 2000 rated players are ill equipped to deal with. But hey buster douglas did beat mike tyson so I suppose anything is possible; albeit statistically unlikely.

9

The problem with colleges buying teams of top chess players, as opposed to buying teams of top basketball or football players, is that the chess world doesn’t have divisions that keep teams competitive while still offering some glory for winning, and that chess is fundamentally an individual sport. The current situation is what we’d get if, say, Manhattan Borough Community College took $400k/yr, recruited the top tennis or golf players in the world by offering them that money to register and take a few classes, and then claimed a top “college tennis” or “college golf” program. It looks cute for the winning schools, but it makes the concept of “college chess” a joke, and makes a team like Princeton look forward more to the USATE than the Pan-Am.

Why not divide the Pan-Am into Amateur and Professional divisions, with the former having the USAT standard of U2200 average based on established ratings? That would do a better job of distinguishing between schools that buy GMs and schools that have a truly amateur chess program, and keep the Pan-Am from being an annual exercise in futility for the schools that don’t buy European GMs.

10

rage… responded but didnt seem to quote your last post… but this should follow your replies.

Well… I guess we can go there. It’s also easy to buy success in NCAA sports, it is just done under shadier circumstances (in one case I am personally familiar with, a coach who just won a NCAA championship wanted an absolute top top player out of New Jersey. The scholarship wasn’t enough obviously, so the kid’s dad (who in fairness had a good basketball pedigree) was suddenly hired to be an assistant coach. The player’s best friend all of the sudden had a basketball scholarship too.

That is all legal. The amount of illegal stuff that gets done under the NCAA noses is astonishing. Not this most recent season but the one before the team that won the NCAA football title was widely reported to have bought (under the table) their quarterback to transfer from a Junior College. I worked briefly in that world through college and the stuff you hear about is only the tip of the iceberg, I promise you.

The reality is in all “amateur” sports it’s possible to buy championships. The NCAA adds some red tape. The extra layer of red tape and more signficant factor is that it may not be possible in football to guarantee prominence, just because the amount of money required is stupefying since LOTS of alums are playing in the arms race. (it’s also a huge sum in Basketball too i think, and probably even more necessary to go through some extra-legal channels).

In other sports, even those NCAA run, it’s cheaper. The long time coach of Princeton Lacrosse, a school that doesn’t give athletic scholarships bolted for Denver after a long career of coaching princeton. Almost instantly a team that had no notable lacrosse history was a top 10 program in the country, at the (lower than basketball) cost of a few scholarships and paying a (reported) 250k a year to the coach. Princeton of course cannot directly offer athletic scholarships because they were ivy league.

I hate to be cynical about this but across the country in almost every possible pursuit, there will be colleges (and their wealthy alumni looking for a tax deduction) somewhere who want to win championships more than other colleges.

I can promise you that oversight won’t stop teams from “buying championships”

I also disagree that buying championships is a bad thing, because it indirectly creates more opportunities for chess players, and puts more money into the game. Imagine that 50 schools all of the sudden were in an arms race to buy national championships!

All of the sudden your 2550 or so gm, who maybe was struggling on the tournament circuit to make a living but presents himself as a decent person is getting paid a solid salary by a college to coach chess! Furthermore as part of the contract they have to teach two courses, chess for beginners (lecture style), and maybe intermediate chess.

How is this a bad thing?

As for high scholarships are on a case-by-case basis and state by state, but usually even with regulations it’s easy to get around.

This also applies to colleges, but alot of places that ban athletic scholarships are allowed to give out community service scholarships and “need-based scholarships”. That really good soccer player from the broken home all of the sudden is coerced by a smart person to start working with habitat for humanity one summer and whaddyaknow, they win the community service scholarship for that person in need.

You missed my point though. As a high school coach, being able to tell parents that ultimate frisbee gives scholarships is a plus point for me if i had to use that line. I don’t really care that those teams are buying championships, because for my high school kids it’s something that could be inspirational if need be.

And you’re right. This shouldnt be the only thing I’m selling, or even in the top 3 of most important things. I am promoting primarily the physical fitness, teamwork, and conflict resolution skills in some order. Each parent is motivated by different things, just as some parents are really happy if their kid gets a trophy, even though we may view trophies as silly and a waste of plastic (or metal). In fact, my one senior who would be at the level of play to attract scholarship offers didn’t apply to any of those schools. He had a near perfect score on the math section of his SAT’s and is looking at Columbia, CMU, NYU etc.

As for the USCF, should they do more with the resources they have? Of course… I think people would want that for every non profit. Ideas on how to get them to do more with the resources they have is beyond the scope of this conversation, but are obviously supported…

If we agree that that right now USCF has a fixed amount of energy it can allocate, (and also agreeing we’d like that number to be more), then the question is where should USCF prioritize? Some people want more attention to the seniors. Right now alot of the attention is at the grade school level. I don’t have those answers, but if you wanted the USCF to focus more on college chess there would be some steps you could take that would, at least the first few steps, possibly have a decent sized impact at a relatively low cost of resources. I don’t know if a dozen reasonable people could agree on what the steps are, or if the extra marginal amounts of energy directed there would be worth it.

As for the black swan example… Again these things are all imporbable, and there are 100’s of cases…

One example might be some transcendent player in another field also happens to be a 2350 chess player (let’s say it’s Matt Barkley, who is the current USC quarterback and a likely NFL player in two years). AT the conclusion of that player’s football career, Matt joins the USC chess team, and because of his magnetism ESPN2 starts showing the top games at chess nationals. It just also happens that the top player from the top team is hilarious, and makes for compelling viewing. The show is expertly produced, all the moves condensed into a half hour and afterwards they have someone explaining the games that instantly make even a casual player more aware and simultaneously entertained.

That would of course seem ridiculously unlikely. Maybe it’s just the top exec at one of the major networks has a kid who gets really good at college chess and a light bulb goes off and this kid, with a knack for social networking and a vision for 5 years out collaborates with his dad to make an excellent show. Much more plausible.

That seems ridiculous but think that the first year ESPN decided to seriously show footage of the WSOP, and look who won…

A guy named moneymaker, who somehow appealed to the “every-day joe” that is hidden in most guys, and because he was camera friendly, and the story was compelling in so many ways, Poker took off for 5 years. (it later cratered because of unfriendly legislation that pretty much killed online gambling… and probably would have tailed off anyway but who knows)

Chess of course had the Fischer boom, but after reading endgame it’s pretty clear that Bobby Fischer was almost perfectly unsuited to be an ambassador of chess… and many of those traits that made him so unsuited were tied in to what made him so great at the game in the first place.

On that note, if it seems too improbable that someone could be so relatively dominant at chess AND some major sport, then imagine a female chess prodigy, who is american, and has been followed in chess circles from an early age. A fawning NYT profile hits her at age 14, at age 16 she gets her final GM norm, and in the same time becomes very comfortable with who she is as a person. She’s more polished than Michelle Obama, more stylish than Danica Patrick, and takes another leap forward at the relatively late age of 22. She makes a run through the candidates tournament despite being “only” at ELO 2725. It doesn’t even matter if she then wins the world champinship match. As uneasy as Fischer was with the limelight, this prodigy is at ease with it. She’s articulate, funny and self-aware.

All of those endorsement offers turned down are accepted and everyone recognizes her face.

Your “Fischer” boom of the 70s is then multiplied by 5. Not only does college chess take off, but probably chess at every level.

11

This merited special mention.

The biggest reason the NCAA exists (there is an excellent book on this somewhere) is to keep collegiate sports as “amateur” activities. It doesnt take too much cynicism to see just how farcical this is.

Many NCAA d1 football teams try to buy a championship. They pay coaches 7 figures, assistant coaches 6 figures, build ridiculous stadiums, workout facilities, etc.

They do this not because they love football or basketball, but because it’s a BUSINESS!

A business that is worth billions of dollars a a year directly, and even more indirectly. Look at the most recent SEC football contract (2.25 billion for 15 years for TV broadcasting rights, that arent 100% exclusive, on ESPN)

To buy season tickets at a powerhouse school as an alumni, to have the right to buy them even, often takes a hefty donation.

This is a business decision.

As for your outrage about texas tech moving to webster in another sport. It happens more than you think. When John Calipari left Memphis to go to kentucky, alot of those recruits to Memphis suddenly changed allegiances. Sure he couldnt take his existing players, but many of them were about to declare fo the NBA draft or go to europe to play anyway.

You can morally wrangle all you want about kids only getting a scholarship (or maybe you don’t want them to even have that), while they are spending 4 years focused on something other than their studies primarily, and possibly damaging their brains as well with multiple sub-concussive impacts. You can morally wrangle about people trying to slip these players money under the table (in some really creative ways), but the reality is there is a demand for a product and the money flows in.

The fact that you are UPSET about money coming in at all to chess puzzles me. Sure, the playing field is unequal. If you look at Alabama’s football schedule and wanted to bet on them to win (ignoring point spreads) you might have to wager a hundred dollars for the chance to make back $102 or $103 this year.

The kids at 1800 have a better shot of upsetting a GM than Western Kentucky does of beating Alabama in Tuscaloosa.(and again, the western kentucky kids won’t mind those odds, some of them will play the best most inspired game of their lives and tell their grandkids they went toe-to-toe with future NFL stars!)

Chess shouldn’t be primarily about the money, but if money finds it’s way into the game that isn’t a bad thing.

Even if you think it’s a bad thing though, you are powerless to stop it, and regulatory authorities mostly are too. Anyone that follows college sports even slightly realizes that.

12

Denver was pretty good in lacrosse before the hiring of Coach Tierney. The new coach did take the program to a higher level.

One impediment I see is that the good programs generally won’t play rated, online chess. If USCF (or somebody like Greg Shahade) put some effort into a collegiate version of the USCL, you might see a buildup of college teams and interest over time.

13

I agree with bnolan and dmn10 that injecting scholarship money into collegiate chess is by and large a positive–for chess, for the students who get the scholarships, and for the university that underwrites the program.

Webster is not guaranteed an instant championship, btw. The UMBC and UTD teams almost took the title this past year. The Webster team will have to work hard to achieve a title.

The idea of setting up separate championships for teams that offer chess scholarship and those that don’t is worth considering. This would be similar to the various divisions within the NCAA for sports like football and basketball, in which the divisions are based on the number of scholarships offered.

14

I was surprised that so many (all?) of S. Polgar’s chess team followed her to Webster. Weren’t any of them studying engineering or some other program where they would have wanted to stay at Texas Tech?

I would expect chess grandmasters to be better students than the football team, but maybe they are not. Based on my own college experience studying engineering, it’s real hard to devote the energy it takes to win at chess while doing justice to challenging coursework.

And due to the nature of the USCF rating system (same for FIDE), it’s painful to play when you aren’t prepared to focus on it. I did enjoy some ACBL duplicate bridge competition in college, and even though I got only a few masterpoints, presumably I still have them. One cannot lose ACBL masterpoints.

It could work out better for a serious academic student to play a physical sport rather than chess, so that at least the brain gets a rest. As I told Gregory Alexander way back when he was pushing college chess, for me college and chess weren’t a very good mix. I resumed playing chess right after college and promptly gained a couple hundred rating points.

I wonder if there was any significant benefit to the rest of the Texas Tech campus from the chess team being there. Did they play these guys in the chess club? Did they go to watch the matches? How is it at UTD, UMBC, etc?