The UTD Chess Team hosted the President’s Cup for the second year in a row April 5-6 in the McDermott Library, once again finishing last.
Chess teams from four universities participated in the event, which functions as the national college chess championship under the United States Chess Federation. At seven points each, Webster University and UT Rio Grande Valley were declared the co-champions of the tournament, and Webster took home the trophy and first place after a tiebreaker based on the number of matches won. St. Louis University came in third place with six points, and UTD took home fourth place with four points and zero round wins.
The cup brought extremely talented chess players from around the U.S. to UTD, with a total of 14 chess grandmasters, seven international masters and one national master present. UTD’s team had an average FIDE rating of 2468, placing it second overall among its competitors. UTRGV had the highest average rating at 2479, Webster had the third highest at 2462 and St. Louis had the lowest average rating at 2420.
UTD invited Collegiate Chess League commissioner Joe Lee and grandmaster Brian Escalante to provide a live analysis of the tournament, hosted at the SSA Gaming Wall. By round three of the tournament, Lee began to speculate the tournament would end with co-champions. The full ten-hour analysis can be found on the league’s Twitch channel, which as of publication has been viewed by over 25,000 people, and a complete breakdown of the tournament, matches and results can be found on Chess.com.
Webster chess coach and grandmaster Liam Le said his team was incredibly happy to have won the tournament. Le said part of Webster’s unique approach to support its chess team is partnering with Chess.com to provide students diamond membership for free if they enroll in the chess minor at Webster.
“The students really love all the features provided by Chess.com,” Le said. “And this has helped us keep growing and growing, something we hope to continue in the next few years.”
Annamaria Marjanovic, international master and woman grandmaster, said that as a member of the Webster team, she focused on supporting her peers in all their matches. Marjanovic said that whenever she was not competing in a match, she was watching how her teammates and the other schools competed.
“This is not about individual efforts,” Marjanovic said. “Our goal is about being the best team, so we avoid competing against each other and instead focus on supporting each other. It makes it easier to be happy for each other since we are scoring well.”
Le said it was important to have a team culture that saw each match and tournament as the most important to minimize blunders and obtain victories.
“No matter how strong your players are, if you don’t put in the work, you aren’t going to succeed,” Le said. “That is why we always try to work harder than everyone to come out on top. We take every game and tournament seriously.”
UTRGV chess coach and grandmaster Bartek Macieja said that he was impressed by the level of organization UTD brought to the tournament in both 2024 and 2025.
“I am happy UTD hosted the President’s Cup this year,” Macieja said. “They always organize the event at the highest possible level. We saw it last year and this year was even better.”
UTD officials said UTD has qualified for the President’s Cup for 20 out of the past 25 years, and plans on continuing to foster the skill of its chess players through events like the pep rally hosted in the lead-up to the tournament. UTD chess coach and grandmaster Julio Sadorra commended the efforts of all the teams this year. As of publication, players on UTD’s chess team declined to comment.
“All games were hard fought from the beginning ‘till the nail-biting finish as usual,” Sadorra said.
