This is the chess equivalent of the entire championship University of Alabama football team and coaching staff up and transferring

Sinquefield should focus on chess, not public school, boards
By BARB SHELLY
The Kansas City Star

Before Rex Sinquefield became a multimillionaire and a political kingmaker, he was a chess player.

And whatever you think of Sinquefield’s libertarian views and shameless flaunting of his fortune to influence Missouri government, know this: He is revered as a chess patriarch.

The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, a sparkling chess palace that Sinquefield renovated out of a 1897 building, has 700 active members and is host to the nation’s top tournaments. It has a grandmaster in residence and it helped persuade the nation’s top-rated player, Hikaru Nakamura, to move to St. Louis.

Sinquefield, a retired investment fund manager, engineered the move of the World Chess Hall of Fame from Miami to St. Louis. He and his wife, Jeanne, purchased the chess library of the brilliant recluse, Bobby Fischer, which includes notebooks Fischer used to prepare for his legendary match against Russian Boris Spassky.

Because of Sinquefield, dozens of schoolchildren in the St. Louis area play chess. And now the nation’s top-rated chess team has announced it is moving from Texas Tech University in Lubbock to Webster University in St. Louis.

This is the chess equivalent of the entire championship University of Alabama football team and coaching staff up and transferring to Creighton University in Omaha.

Hungarian-born chess champ Susan Polgar, who coaches at Texas Tech, says she is bringing five grandmasters and two international chess masters with her, and an additional three grandmasters are expected to join the team next year as freshmen.

I emailed a news clipping about this to my son, who plays on a chess team at a university that happens to be where Sinquefield did his graduate work.

“Wow,” he emailed back. “That is huge news.”

It’s rare that I am able to tell my son something he doesn’t know, much less get a “wow” out of him. So I thank Sinquefield for that.

Polgar told me Sinquefield wasn’t instrumental in arranging the move, but he was a factor. “We felt it was a nice coincidence,” she said. “We will be in the Mecca of chess in America that grew out of nowhere thanks to the generosity of Mr. Rex Sinquefield.”

Julian Schuster, the provost at Webster, a private, non-profit university, said the school aspired to become a “truly international university,” and chess, being an international sport, fits with that mission.

The school will at first provide scholarship aid for chess players out of its merit scholarship pool, Schuster said.

“We will also approach donors and other interested organizations and foundations,” he added.

Source: http://www.kansascity.com

Webster University attracts Susan Polgar, top ranked chess coach

Webster University attracts Susan Polgar, top ranked chess coach
9:50 PM, Feb 15, 2012
By Ann Rubin
NBC TV - St. Louis (KSDK)

Webster Groves, MO (KSDK) - They've never had a team before. But next year, Webster University will have the top ranked chess team in the nation.

So how did they pull it off?

Texas Tech had that top ranked team, but apparently not the funding to keep them.

So Webster University offered the head of the program, the manager, and many of the players a new home.

"Imagine if you would have like 8 Michael Jordan's or 8 Tom Bradys on a team. It would be insane. But unfortunately there's no funding. And if we don't have funding they would go elsewhere," said manager Paul Truong.

And now that's exactly what's happening.

The head of the Texas Tech chess team is moving to Webster University and taking her best players with her.

Susan Polgar, a grandmaster and former women's world champion, says Webster provided not only the right funding, but the right fit.

"Because they are a global university, because of the location, that it's in the Midwest right in the middle of the country and also, not less importantly that St. Louis is the chess center of America today," said Polgar.

The city is home to both the World Chess Hall of Fame, and the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis, places which have already attracted international attention.

"They said it's the Mecca of chess. So for us it was really exciting to hear that international players from half a world away have already heard about the club and St. Louis," explained Tony Rich, Executive Director of the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis.

Call it a strategic move. They're counting on the fact that having top level players will attract more top level players to the area.

In fact, Lindenwood University announced it too will be starting a chess team in the fall, complete with scholarships.

They're recruiting from Iceland to India and are looking forward to some stiff collegiate competition.

"We're really glad Webster is starting a chess program so we can make us work harder to make ours stronger. And the players know each other so there will be some friendly competition in the area. If it can be friendly," said Grandmaster and new Lindenwood coach Ben Finegold.

The top ten players from Texas Tech will all be starting at Webster in the fall. Susan Polgar will start June 1st, in time for a summer tournament.

Source: NBC TV - St. Louis KSDK

Could chess become the hottest collegiate sport?

Dastardly Doings in Chess World: Webster U. Poaches Texas Tech's Coach, Team
By Aimee Levitt
Thu., Feb. 16 2012 at 1:40 PM

Since we know now that chess is a sport, maybe it shouldn't be surprising that the chess community is resorting to sports-like behavior: boosterism, trash-talking and now wholesale poaching of the best collegiate players.

Case in point: This school year, Webster University has no chess team. Next year it will have the number-one ranked team in the country, thanks to its recruitment of Susan Polgar, former women's world champion and current chess coach at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Nearly half of the Texas Tech team has decided to follow its coach: Eight grandmasters and two international masters have already committed to study at Webster starting this fall.

Polgar cites Texas Tech's lack of financial support as her reason for leaving. When she arrived in Lubbock in the fall of 2007 to start up the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (known as SPICE), the university allotted her $15,000 for scholarships. When the chess team won the national championship last year, that amount was doubled, but, as Paul Truong, Polgar's husband and team manager, told KCBD News in Lubbock, many top-tier chess schools offer $30,000 per player.

"A grandmaster is the highest title in chess, and around the world there is maybe 1,200. Tech could potentially have eight grandmasters next year if we would have enough funding," he said. "Imagine having eight Michael Jordans or eight Tom Bradys...it would be insane. Unfortunately we don't have funding, and if we don't have funding they go elsewhere."

The exact terms of the deal haven't been worked out yet, says Webster spokeswoman Susan Kerth, but all the money will be coming out of the university's operating budget and each of the ten players transferring from Texas Tech will be receiving a scholarship.

There are other attractions, of course, notably the St. Louis Chess Club, which lured Hikaru Nakamura, one of the world's top-ranked players to relocate here and which helped get us named the United States Chess Federation's Chess City of the Year for 2011. Not to mention the deep pockets and generosity of local chess-loving billionaire Rex Sinquefield. Lindenwood University, meanwhile, has announced it will be starting up its own team, but from scratch, coached by Ben Finegold, the Chess Club's grandmaster-in-residence and chess correspondent for the St. Louis Beacon.

Polgar was never officially on the hiring block. Webster's provost, Julian Z. Schuster, learned through mutual friends that Polgar was considering leaving Texas Tech and initiated an e-mail conversation; eventually Polgar came to St. Louis for a visit and the deal was done.

Texas Tech is trying to put on a brave face. "With the most recent rounds of budget cuts, we're all experiencing a little tightening in the purse strings so to speak," Chris Cook, a university spokesman. "We have other national championship programs. We did see the importance of the chess program, but you have to meet the needs of all programs while staying in the overall budget."

Webster, solidly in the NCAA's Division III, has no such conflicts. (Quick, do you know the team nickname?) Could chess become the hottest collegiate sport in Webster Groves? (It's the Gorlocks, after Gore and Lockwood Avenues, two streets that border the university.)

Source: http://riverfronttimes.com

New York Times on SPICE Chess Move to Webster

New York Times on SPICE Chess Move to Webster
Feb 15, 2012

Webster University recently announced that champion chess Grandmaster Susan Polgar and her Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence (SPICE) are relocating to Webster University along with a champion chess team.

The St. Louis Beacon called it “a major coup” for Webster, and now The New York Times has covered the move.

The Times talked with Webster Provost and senior vice president Julian Schuster, who helped recruit and hire Polgar:

Mentioning that Webster has campuses in more than 100 places around the world, Mr. Schuster, who grew up in the former Yugoslavia, where chess is popular, said: “I did not grow up in this country. I do not play football. I do not have this connection from the old country. Chess is a global game, and we live in global times. And Webster is a global university.”

The coverage on the National page of the Times also drew the notice of Deb Peterson in her gossip column at stltoday.com, the website for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Webster U. Snags Texas Tech’s Chess Coach and 10 Top Players

Webster U. Snags Texas Tech’s Chess Coach and 10 Top Players
February 15, 2012, 11:09 am

Big-time college sports teams routinely pluck coaches from smaller programs with fewer resources. Today The New York Times reported on a different sort of coaching raid: Webster University, a private institution in suburban St. Louis, has hired away the head of Texas Tech University’s elite chess program. Susan Polgar, a grandmaster and former women’s world champion, has been at Texas Tech since 2007. Last April her team won the Final Four of Chess. Now she is taking her husband, who manages the team, along with Texas Tech’s top 10 players to Webster, which previously had no chess program. Ms. Polgar told the NBC television affiliate in Lubbock, Tex., that Texas Tech’s chess program had grown too quickly for the university to accommodate it, but a university spokesman disputed that characterization. Webster will finance the new program from its endowment.

Source: http://chronicle.com

Making the right move

GM Bykhovsky, GM Meier, IM Neimer, IM-elect Aleskerov, GM Boros, GM Diamant, GM Moradiabadi (missing is GMs So, Robson, and Hoyos)

Chess Coach to Leave Texas Tech With Her Team’s Best in Tow
By DYLAN LOEB McCLAIN
Published: February 14, 2012

Imagine if a university without a basketball program recruited Mike Krzyzewski, the legendary coach at Duke University, and not only managed to hire him but also persuaded most of his team to switch with him. In essence, that is what Webster University in St. Louis has done by hiring Susan Polgar, the head of the Texas Tech chess program.

Ms. Polgar, a grandmaster and a former women’s world champion, was hired by Texas Tech University in 2007 to create an elite chess program. The university even named the program after her, calling it the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence, or Spice.

Last April, Texas Tech won the Final Four of Chess, a competition in Herndon, Va., among the top collegiate teams in the country. It was Texas Tech’s first championship since Ms. Polgar arrived at the university.

Now Ms. Polgar and her husband, Paul Truong, the manager of the chess team, are leaving Texas Tech, which is spread over more than 1,800 acres in Lubbock and has more than 32,000 students. They are heading to Webster, a university mostly geared toward postgraduate students around the world, whose main campus in St. Louis is 47 acres. The chess program at Webster will be called Spice.

The top 10 players at Texas Tech — eight grandmasters and two international masters, some of whom had just committed to the university — are also switching. They are scheduled to start in the fall; Ms. Polgar is to begin on June 1. On paper, Webster will have the No. 1 ranked team in the country.

In an interview with KCBD, NBC’s local affiliate in Lubbock, Mr. Truong said the switch was caused by a lack of financial resources at Texas Tech. Ms. Polgar told KCBD that the program grew too quickly for the university to accommodate it.

Chris Cook, a spokesman for Texas Tech, said that budget cuts had affected several teams but that they were still adequately financed. “We are giving the programs what they need to compete,” Mr. Cook said. He said the university intended to hire a new coach and a new manager to succeed Ms. Polgar and Mr. Truong.

Julian Z. Schuster, the provost of Webster University, said he was responsible for recruiting and hiring Ms. Polgar and establishing the team. Mr. Schuster said that he and Ms. Polgar had mutual friends and that he had learned she was thinking about leaving Texas Tech. They exchanged e-mails, and Ms. Polgar went to visit.

“Technically, I don’t know who winked first,” Mr. Schuster said. “You know the old expression: it takes two to tango.”

Mr. Schuster said Webster had an endowment of about $80 million and was financing the new program, including the cost of scholarships, entirely on its own. The financial commitment would run at least long enough for the students who are matriculating, some of whom are freshmen, to graduate. Mr. Schuster said that having a top team would eventually more than pay for itself by raising Webster’s profile and stimulating interest in the university.

Mentioning that Webster has campuses in more than 100 places around the world, Mr. Schuster, who grew up in the former Yugoslavia, where chess is popular, said: “I did not grow up in this country. I do not play football. I do not have this connection from the old country. Chess is a global game, and we live in global times. And Webster is a global university.”

Distinguishing itself from other universities was one of the primary reasons Texas Tech created its chess program five years ago. Other universities — including the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County — have made similar decisions.

James A. Stallings, the director of the Dallas chess program, said Webster’s recruitment of such a top team was “unprecedented,” pointing out that most programs start from scratch.

(Coincidentally, just three days before Webster made its announcement on Feb. 3, Lindenwood University, a liberal arts institution just outside of St. Louis that has 17,000 students, said it was starting a chess program and had hired a local grandmaster named Ben Finegold as its coach.)

Mr. Stallings said he was a little concerned from a fairness standpoint about Webster recruiting so many of Texas Tech’s players as well as its coaching staff, but he welcomed the creation of another top program.

“It validates the concept,” Mr. Stallings said. “It is a good thing for scholastic youth in this country.”

Mr. Schuster at Webster said simply, “To use the chess analogy, I think we made the right move.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com

St. Louis: the new home of collegiate chess

St. Louis: the new home of collegiate chess
By Ben Finegold, Grandmaster, special to the Beacon
Posted 4:02 pm Wed., 2.8.12

Webster University stepped into the national chess spotlight after pulling off a major coup by luring GM Susan Polgar and the SPICE program (Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence) to St. Louis. Susan is bringing her championship chess team from Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas, to Webster, along with a number of top players. The Webster team will feature eight grandmasters and two international masters, which creates two formidable teams.

Susan said she felt that this would be a perfect location for her chess team as the Chess Club and Scholastic Center and World Chess Hall of Fame have already made St. Louis the center of chess in the U.S. Susan, her husband Paul Truong, and their family will move permanently to the St. Louis area in June, and the strong grandmasters will soon follow for the fall 2012 semester.

The city of St. Louis is the big winner here, as many of the students in these programs will be able to play in strong events at the Chess Club, and the development of both of these programs will continue to bring international attention to our city. Prior to these monumental announcements, St. Louis was clearly the center of chess in the U.S., and starting in the fall of 2012, I think it would be safe to call us the chess center of the world!

Source: http://www.stlbeacon.org

Leave our meat judging team and Law School moot court team alone

Tech gets checkmated
Submitted by Jon Mark Beilue on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 2:07pm

Hard times for us Texas Tech alums. First, the Red Raiders suffer their first losing football season since 1992. Then the men’s basketball team may not win a Big 12 game — and is proving it each time the Raiders take the court.

Now this. Tech is suffering the indignation of losing its entire national championship chess club. You read it right. The reigning national collegiate champions, and their coach, former world champion Susan Polgar, are leaving for Webster University in St. Louis.

Somehow I feel like I’ve been rooked.

But last Friday, Webster University smugly announced that the Hungarian-born Polgar is moving her Susan Polgar Institute of Chess Excellence (SPICE to the great uninformed) to Webster, and furthermore, taking the whole darn team with it.

Yes, exactly. Goodbye to eight grandmasters -- Georg Meier, Wesley So, Ray Robson, Manuel Leon Hoyos, Elshan Moradiabadi, Anatoly Bykhovsky, Andre Diamant, and Demes Boros, plus international masters Vitaly Neimer and Faik Aleskerov. Gone, just like that. They’re all transferring with Polgar.

This is an outrage. This is like Sul Ross stealing not only Nick Saban, but the rest of the Alabama football team. Call the NCAA. Call Interpol. Call Bobby Fischer (scratch that, he’s dead), but call someone.

It’s bad enough that St. Louis ripped my heart out in the World Series. Now the city is stomping on it. Unbeknownst to me and the rest of America, St. Louis is home to the U.S. Chess Championships, the country’s No. 1 rated player, the World Chess Hall of Fame, and a state-of-the-art chess club.

Retired St. Louis businessman and philanthropist Rex Sinquefield built the multimillion-dollar Chess Club and Scholastic Center of St. Louis a few years ago. The club prompted Hikaru Nakamura — the top-rated player in the country and No. 6 in the world — to move to St. Louis.

Mike Wilmering, a chess club spokesman, said the club wasn’t involved in discussions to bring Polgar to St. Louis but was thrilled with the development.

I just bet you are. Why don’t you go ahead and take the iconic Will Rogers statue while you’re at it?

Next year’s Webster team will include those eight ex-Tech grandmasters — something no other collegiate team has ever had, Polgar said. Pouring more salt in Red Raider wounds, the team is expected to be ranked No. 1 in the nation this fall.

Polgar is a five-time Olympic champion. In 1986, she was the first woman to qualify for the Men’s World Championship Cycle. She holds world records for most simultaneous chess games played — 326 — and for most consecutive games played — 1,131.

Polgar said she was grateful for her team’s stint at Tech, where it grow from “literally nothing” in 2007 to its status today. But in the end, she felt that St. Louis was a better home.

I’m not sure we’ve heard the last of this. While many ex-students feel like a pawn in this sordid mess, I wouldn’t expect Tech chancellor Kent Hance to take this lying down. Hance hails from another U.S. chess hotbed, Dimmitt, and may have one or two unexpected moves up his sleeves.

Normally, I would say let’s get Webster on the football schedule and exact some revenge, but the way the 2011 season ended, I’m not so sure that’s a wise move. But, please, Webster, leave our meat judging team and Law School moot court team alone. Right now, that’s about all we got.

Source: http://amarillo.com