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King’s College on top

When the devil approaches you in a serene landscape and demands that you fancy him with a game of chess, do you accept the challenge? When the devil is Brown, Penn, and Yale, the Columbia Chess Team obviously says yes – and naturally emerges victorious over the other sinister Ivy forces by taking away another Inter-Ivy League Chess Championship title this weekend.

We extend a great congratulations to this hard-working gang. Bwog staffer Lili Brown reached out to these chessmates of ours, and we received a solid recap of what went down this weekend from the Club’s President, Jennie Liu:

“The 5th Annual Inter-Ivy League Chess Championships was held all-day on Saturday in Earl Hall.  There were 8 teams in total from Columbia, Brown, Penn, and Yale, 4 schools that have notably been at the top of all Ivy League chess tournaments.  Columbia is also known to have the strongest college chess team in the US that does not offer scholarships to chess players.  We have been the favorites at the Ivy League tournament for many years in a row, and we delivered again this year.  Columbia A placed in clear 1st with 4/4.  Columbia B placed in clear 2nd with 2.5/4.  We had a C team prepared that was good enough to challenge for 1st or 2nd as well, but we decided not to play it in order to keep an even number of teams.  We wish more teams from other schools could have come, but unfortunately some schools don’t have enough strong players to form a team.  We’re lucky to have so many good chess players at Columbia, and we’re looking forward to repeating as champs next year too.”

Bwog is officially the Columbia Chess Club’s #1 fan, and we hope that next year they take away the turkey with three consecutive winning titles.

Their A-Team roster is comprised of Victor Shen (CC ’15), Kyron Griffith (CC ’17), Eigen Wang (CC ’15), Alex Fabbri (CC ’17). Their B-Team includes Anton Osinenko (GSAS), Jonathan Pagan (SEAS ’17), Xiuwen Sun (SEAS:Grad), Srikar Varadaraj (CC ’17).

The Seventh Seal now in technicolor via Shutterstock