Yale University brought their season back to life on Saturday in the SIG-sponsored 2023 Collegiate Chess League (CCL) after toppling the heavily favored University of Missouri (Mizzou) by a single point.
3/4 scores by GM Nico Checa and NM Linden Lee, the latter of whom upset GMs Mikhail Antipov and Raja Harshit, steered Yale towards an 8.5-7.5 victory and pulled them back into finals contention.
In the second match, Columbia University (CU) pulled out all the stops against The University of Virginia (UVA) and secured a 9-7 win, with CU’s board one GM Brandon Jacobson dominating the field with a 4/4 score.
Week six of the CCL will continue on October 28 at 2:00 p.m. ET / 20:00 CEST / 11.30 p.m. IST.
Mizzou 7.5 – 8.5 Yale
Following a narrow loss against the season’s co-leaders, team Mizzou would have felt bullish about their chances of knocking over a struggling Yale side. Equipped with three GMs in their lineup, Antipov, Harshit, and Luka Budisavljevic, Mizzou was likely hunting for a blowout score against a Yale side who fielded only two titled players, Jacobson and Lee.
Mizzou kicked off the match with a 3-1 score in round one, with each of their GMs picking up wins in lopsided matchups. Budisavljevic was the most impressive as he shrewdly picked apart Lee’s King’s Indian Defense on board three after a healthy pawn gambit that procured the bishop pair.
Lee would get his revenge however in the very next round when he dispatched FM Beloslava Krasteva with the white pieces, a win that began an astonishing run of form for the 18-year-old. A win for Checa over Budisavljevic in an offshoot of the Benko gambit propelled Yale to 2-1 in the second round (Mizzou’s Antipov defeated Maxim Yaskolko) but the round’s real hero was the 1921-FIDE-rated Jorn Dammann, who held Harshit to a draw.
The underdog in this match, Yale, wins round two with a 2.5-1.5 score!#CCL pic.twitter.com/NWO9IkmgUu
— CollegiateChessLeague (@CollegiateChess) October 21, 2023
With the scores tensely poised at 4.5-3.5, Yale pulled off one of the more miraculous rounds of the CCL so far, starting with Lee bowling over Antipov. A move eight novelty, 8.c5!? on the white side of the Queen’s Gambit Declined: Ragozin Defense left Lee with a space advantage but susceptible to central breaks, which Antipov found.
With his position on the brink of collapse, Lee defended well and drained Antipov’s clock down a minute, which was the catalyst for a major blunder that allowed Yale’s board two to enter a winning queen and pawn ending and scoop up a win.
Meanwhile on board two, Checa won a miniature against Harshit that was decided by the brilliant 18.Nxe6!! which punctured Black’s kingside.
To capture a one-point lead in the match, Yale’s Yaskolko managed to overcome Krasteva, who suffered from a Botez gambit, setting the scene for a round four, winner-takes-all showdown.
After a Botez Gambit by White, Yale might just take the lead!#CCL pic.twitter.com/MNuBODMP7X
— CollegiateChessLeague (@CollegiateChess) October 21, 2023
On paper, Mizzou was still expected to win the match but carrying all the momentum, Yale stepped up and scored a 2-2 result to win the match by a single point. Commentator Korley correctly predicted a win for Checa on board one over Antipov but the real surprise was Lee’s win over Harshit in a rook ending which led co-commentator Jules Gambit to ask a pertinent question: “Which rook endgames has he been studying”?
Our Game of the Day, which secured a match win for Yale, has been annotated by GM Rafael Leitao.
Wins on boards three and four weren’t quite enough for Mizzou, who slumped to their second straight loss. For Yale, the victory was an immense stride forward, and with two wins and three losses after five weeks, they possess a reasonable chance of finishing in the top six.
UVA 7 – 9 CU
Continuing week five’s exciting matchups was the do-or-die duel between the season’s winless teams, who both desperately needed to win to keep their chances of making the playoffs alive.
UVA and CU are fairly matched teams in terms of lineup and both have two titled players each, FM Jason Morefield and NM Owen McCoy for UVA and Jacobson and FM Aristo Liu for CU. As Korley expressed, the result would likely come down to “where the upsets happen,” given their closeness in average ratings.
From the viewer’s perspective, a 2-2 tie was the perfect curtain-raiser for the match and it wasn’t until the second round that cracks began to show. While Jacobson, Morefield, and McCoy coasted to 2/2, Liu conceded a draw against UVA’s Mahin Ganesan in a 74-move Scotch while celebrity guest commentator GM Andrew Tang watched on.
Despite their 4.5-3.5 lead, UVA was unable to stop a CU rampage in round three. A third straight win for Jacobson, this time over McCoy in the Reti Opening: Dutch Variation, as well as wins for Edouard Fleury and Ze Wang, put CU in the box seat heading into the final round.
Two points to the good, CU only needed 1.5 points to win the match and with Jacobson on board one, it already felt as though they were halfway there. Winning positions for McCoy and Ganesan seemed to put UVA back in the hunt but Jacobson and Wang won their games to secure a 9-7 match result in favor of CU.
After a disappointing start to their campaign, CU has moved back into playoff contention, courtesy of a herculean effort from their board one Jacobson. With three round-robin games left in the season, the New York-based team will likely need to win at least two of their remaining matches to finish in the top six.
All Games | Round Four
The CCL is the premier online chess competition for college students. The CCL Fall Season is a team event that started on September 23 and features a $25,000 prize fund.
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