Dartmouth's chess team placed 21st out of 24 in college chess's World Series over winter interim -- a feat that seems impressive only after considering the team competed against national chess powerhouses, had never competed officially before, won the highest award in its division, and was manned by only three sophomores.
Robert Cousins '09, Kevin Fischer '09, Daniel Leung '09 and Nikhil Jain '09 competed at the newly formed team's first collegiate tournament, held Dec. 27-30 in Washington, D.C.
Called the Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championships, the annual event brought together 24 teams representing 18 colleges across North and South America. According to Cousins, the team's captain, the tournament is the most prestigious collegiate tournament in this hemisphere.
"There's no other tournament like it," Fischer -- no relation to chess great Bobby -- said. "It's definitely the most reputable tournament in America, and the tournament that the best chess teams attend."
The fledgling team exceeded its own performance expectations, defeating Montgomery College and University of Virginia.
"We came into the tournament expecting to lose," Fischer said. "We're a young team just getting organized coming into a tournament with bigger and better schools."
Dartmouth lost to the Yale University's A Team, Emory University, New York University and Miami Dade College's B team, leaving the Dartmouth with two out of a possible total of six points. Though the team placed near the bottom, they were higher than any other team in their rating category of 1600 points and under.
"Coming into the tournament we had an average rating below 1600," Fischer said.
"Some of the teams we played had average ratings above 2000, so we were very happy to do as well as we did."
The team owed much of its success to the surprising play of Jain, who according to Fischer, was largely responsible for the team's victory.
"He beat a player rated 800 points above him, which is supposed to be impossible," Fischer said.
Team members viewed their win as a sign of overall improvement, as this year marked the first time in over 25 years that Dartmouth competed in the tournament.
"As far as I know, the team had been in decline for some time," Cousins said, adding that the group had disbanded several years ago.
Cousins, Fischer and Leung, along with Molson Hart '09, revived the team last winter after each decided he wanted to compete at the collegiate level.
"We were reading about these chess college tournaments in magazines, and we thought "We're a college team, let's go," Cousins said.
One tournament, however, has by no means satisfied the team's hunger to play chess. Rather, the team sees this tournament as a stepping stone.
"We have two hopes for the future," Fischer said. "First, we want to expand awareness of the team; at the moment most people don't even know that it exists. Second, we want to keep entering tournaments, so that the team can continue to get better."
