This year was Cindy Qiao’s second year participating in the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship. Cindy is now in her third year studying computer science at UofT and below are her thoughts and report on the unforgettable trip.
Tactical ingenuity, positional acumen, calculative precision. These are all remarkable chess talents to have. But if you were to ask me what I admire the most in a chess player, it would be their undying passion for the game. I see chess as a game of resilience and I think it is a player’s passion for the game that helps them overcome the worst blunders, the most frustrating losses, and ultimately emerge wiser–not only over the chessboard, but also in life.
I was fortunate to receive the opportunity to represent UofT at multiple team championships now and it is in the teammates that I’ve met over the years that I’ve witnessed such passion for the chess game. It is the same teammates that resparked my own passion for the game and inspired me not to bring my chess journey to a close just yet.
This year, from January 3rd – 8th, 2024, I set off with seven other UofT students on a memorable journey consisting of multiple flights, hurried transfers, and dreadful 6-hour bus rides to McAllen, Texas, USA, for the annual Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championship, the pinnacle of international collegiate chess. The tournament fields some of the strongest collegiate chess players, such as GM Grigoriy Oparin, GM Awonder Liang, and GM Benjamin Glendura, all rated above 2700 USCF and the top three seeds in this year’s Pan Ams. Dubbed the “World Series of College Chess”, Hart House Chess Club had fundraised and fielded teams to the Pan Ams tournament every year between 1965, the year the club first won it all, and 2019.
Once again, UofT sent two teams this year consisting of the top-8 finishers at the Pan Am Qualifiers tournament held earlier in September. Originally, FM Eilia Zomorrodian was guaranteed a spot on the team due to his visa troubles from last year, but due to continued unfortunate visa issues this year, he was unable to make the trip once again.
This year, the A team was led by WIM Yunshan Li, followed by IM Nicholas Vettese, NM Fengxi Mao, and Ethan Moon.
The B team was led by myself, followed by Riyaan Lakhani, Yixiao Wang, and Bingfei Wang.
Yunshan and I were assigned as co-team captains for the entire UofT team. We were in charge of ensuring the tournament went smoothly for both teams and we were greatly supported by the Hart House team back home, particularly Victor Zheng and Bowen Zhang.
As aforementioned, it sure wasn’t an easy time making it to McAllen, Texas. The trip started extremely early for the members, with most getting from zero to two hours of sleep. We had a packed travel schedule with only one hour to change flights and buses. There were members leaving their suitcases behind (??) and none got a chance to have proper meals for essentially the entire day of travel. Despite the stressful and tiresome moments, there was a certain charm in traveling together as a chess team. We would switch from team chess over to crazyhouse, over to bullet until someone finally got a headache from all the chess. For the more sane members, sleep was a much more natural choice.
After our plane-to-plane-to-taxi-to-bus-to-taxi ordeal in the span of 20 hours did the team finally make it to our hotel in McAllen. We were warmly greeted by Yixiao, who arrived earlier on her own, at the hotel lobby as she stared at seven people stumbling out of a taxi. Instead of worrying about the lack of internet access which Yixiao notified us about (of course, we switched rooms later on to fix this), the team set off for our first team dinner in McAllen. There were lots of food options near our accommodation, so after wandering around in darkness and nearly getting chased by an angry dog, we settled on the amazing option of Domino’s pizza.
It was a long day for everyone, but after what seemed like a short night (perhaps because we slept for less hours than the duration of our bus ride), it was the next day already. The schedule for the first day was pretty relaxed as the first round was in the evening. The members spent their morning enjoying the hotel breakfast, peak-quality filtered water from the hotel gym, and some card games in which we learned that Bingfei is a master in. Then, it was time for tournament check-in and the entire team headed to the tournament building which was a 15-minute walk away from the hotel we were staying at. The walk was harder than we expected, but some broken traffic lights weren’t enough to stop us.
After exploring the tournament rooms and having a small team meeting to discuss some technicalities (since there were no phones allowed in the venue, we decided to walk together at night so that no one gets lost) the team headed for lunch. This time, we had something a little less fancy than pizza, at a Mexican restaurant. There was still lots of time until the first round so everyone headed back to get some rest. Riyaan went for a walk to a park, but the park was completely empty except for reportedly one guy who stared at him from a truck in the parking lot. After a short break, I headed back to the tournament hall along with Ethan again for the captain’s meeting and to pick up team badges and other items.
After some more rest back at the hotel, the entire team headed to the tournament hall for round one. We were a bit worried as we were running late, but it turns out that there was a huge hold up at the doors due to all the security measures being taken–it definitely took some time to get hundreds of people through a metal detector. We joked that the security for entering the tournament hall was tighter than airport security.
In round 1, UofT A was paired down against the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and UofT B was paired up against Georgia Tech. UofT A sweeped 4-0 relatively easily, except for Yunshan who had a tough game as her opponent had clearly prepped for her. Luckily, as the stronger player, she caught her opponent’s mistakes and won her game. UofT B ended round 1 with 0.5-3.5, with Bingfei saving the team from getting sweeped.
Yunshan seems to have walked into some prep and has a pretty scary position to face here.
The tournament started picking up pace with round 2 the next morning. UofT A was paired with the tough University of Texas at Dallas in which all four boards had to face GMs. Except for Yunshan who drew her game, the rest of the team faced losses one after another. Ethan actually held his game for very long despite being low on time for essentially the entire game, but eventually the time pressure became too much.
In round 2, UofT B was paired with Georgia Tech again, except this time they were playing the B team. On paper, Georgia Tech B’s average team rating was still considerably higher and it was an expected loss for team B. Bingfei won his game, while boards 2 and 3 lost theirs. It was down to my game to decide whether we would lose or tie the match and at the time, it seemed unlikely I could win my position.
I had a decent position throughout the game, but eventually blundered an exchange and ended up in a worse position due to time pressure. However, due to black’s king being so open, I had high hopes in securing a draw through some sort of perpetual. After a couple of moves were made, I began to have hopes in winning the position and did go on to win the game, surprising not only myself, but also my teammates who saw me go from being down an exchange to up an entire piece. Thanks to the tied match, UofT B slowly started making our way up.
In the afternoon round, UofT A played against Texas Tech University Team B which was tougher than they seemed, as their board 2 and board 4 scored upset draws against our board 2 and board 4 players. Still, UofT A won the match 3-1 which was what mattered.
UofT B played against Washington University in St. Louis Team B. The average team rating for Washington University in St. Louis was 1983, whereas the average team rating for UofT B stood at 1737. UofT B went into this tournament severely underrated as all team members had significantly lower USCF and FIDE ratings compared to their CFC ratings. Throughout the tournament several of my opponents came up to me to complain about how our team members were underrated (in a friendly way). Despite every board being outmatched in rating for this round, UofT B was close to sweeping and won the match with 3.5-0.5. Particularly, Riyaan played a nice game against Jacob Song (1944 USCF) with a neat opening sacrifice. He has annotated his game here. I’m the one guilty for the 0.5, as I chickened out in a position I knew was better for me and offered a draw while down on time. Still, it was from this upset win that UofT B went on to receive the award for the ‘Biggest Team Upset’ throughout the entire tournament.
Riyaan sacrificed his c3-knight here with Nf5!
After round 3, there was a blitz tournament which Ethan, Riyaan, Yixiao, Bingfei, as well as myself participated in. The Pan Ams blitz tournament was one of my fondest memories from my time at Pan Ams last year, so I thought I couldn’t miss it this year. However, I started to regret deciding to play after realizing how late it would go until and how we still hadn’t eaten dinner. By the time the tournament ended, the five of us trudged back to the hotel half alive and got some–you guessed it–Domino’s pizza to eat at 1:00 am. It was the next morning that all the exhaustion hit. Half of the team members were feeling sick including me, but we still had to play regardless with no substitute players.
Round 4 pairings was a bit of a shock for team B as we weren’t expecting to face a school as strong as Stanford University, with two IMs included in their lineup and an average team rating of 2350. UofT A was also paired against a tough opponent, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (at this point, it was looking like UofT A was going to just be playing one Texas team after another!). UofT A ended up losing 0.5-3.5 with Fengxi scoring a half-point against IM Tianqi Wang. Yunshan was upset with her result this game as she actually had the advantage against GM Juraj Druska, but failed to play some key winning moves which she had actually calculated.
Team B was in for a rough ride this round against Stanford and lost 0-4 for the first time. However, many of the games were fighting games. On board 3, Yixiao was holding a rook endgame down a pawn for a long time, with her game finishing last. On my board, I was playing IM Bryce Tiglon, probably the highest rated opponent I had faced in a while. I played an okay game despite feeling sick, with an advantage in the opening and chances to hold throughout the game, but eventually got outplayed.
In between the morning and afternoon rounds, we always had plenty of time to get some rest and enjoy some good food. I went out to try some more Mexican food, whereas others tried very hot chicken and burgers.
Round 5 saw UofT A facing Saint Louis University and UofT B facing the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. UofT A won their match 3-1 with Yunshan and Ethan drawing their games and Nicholas and Fengxi winning their games convincingly. Fengxi played his beloved Czech Benoni and having known the opening and its ideas so well, he outplayed his opponent from start to finish.
As one of the lowest rated teams in the open section, UofT B was once again playing opponents that out-rated us on all four boards. However, our board 4, Bingfei was the first to finish with yet another win (he only lost one game throughout the entire event!). Boards 2 and 3 were not so fortunate and ended with losses, so once again it was down to my game to decide whether we could tie the match. I was playing Alan Finkelstein (2195 USCF) as black, and for reference, my USCF rating at the time was a solid 1875. It didn’t help that he played confidently into an opening line in which I forgot all theory in by move 13. I was left with a position down a clean pawn and down tons of time.
Despite not going on to win the game, which meant a loss for our team, this game was my favorite amongst my games in the tournament. I gave my all during this game, calculating every move I possibly could despite having only 1-2 minutes on the clock in the latter half of the game. I found a nice tactic that equalized the position, and after a long and tense endgame maneuver, I finally secured a draw.
With one round left to go in the tournament, I think everyone was relieved that the tournament was coming to an end. The ones who were feeling sick were only getting worse and personally, I lived off of throat-soothing candies for the last two days.
For the final round, UofT A was paired against Stanford University, which UofT B had faced in round 4. Yunshan faced IM Bryce Tiglon, but unfortunately her opening didn’t go well and she ended with a loss. Nicholas also lost his game against IM Carissa Yip, whom he played the French against. Despite all of us (including him) agreeing that his position looked ugly out of the opening, it turns out he had several chances to be better when we looked at the game later on. Ethan had the upper hand in a draw against his opponent, but at this point it was already determined that UofT A had lost the match. Fengxi’s game was the last to finish–it had seemed like his position was tough to win, as he was playing a queen vs. knight + rook position down 1 point in material. However, he slowly but surely grinded the game from an equal position to a win. Fengxi ended the tournament with 4.5/6, the highest scorer amongst the members in team A.
UofT B faced Cornell University, which we tied 2-2 with. Our boards 1 and 2 lost whereas our boards 3 and 4 won. Bingfei, our board 4, was the MVP of our team, ending with 4.5/6. However, all the members on both team A and team B gave their all given their own circumstances and I’d like to thank every member for that.
The tournament ended with UofT A scoring 3 points with 3 wins, and UofT B scoring 2 points with 1 win and two draws. UofT A was awarded the top international team award, and to our surprise, UofT B was called up to the stage as well for the biggest team upset award. Congratulations to the University of Missouri A Team for winning the Open event!
The tournament had finally concluded, but there was more to our trip! After the awards ceremony ended, the teams had an entire evening to spend as our flights back home were early the next day. Ever since arriving in McAllen, Yixiao and Yunshan mentioned their interest in visiting Mexico as the borders were so close to where we were staying. Originally I planned to accompany them, but given that I still felt sick on the last day, I decided to stay back at the hotel instead.
Out of us eight chess players, there had been no one wise enough to bring a chess set to McAllen. So far, we had made do with a scuffed iPad and phone setup to play games back at our hotel, but it just didn’t feel the same. Plus, we couldn’t play our favorite–okay, my favorite–bughouse! I decided to approach the organizers to ask if we could buy/borrow their chess sets and they were kind enough to lend us two chess sets that we could bring back to the hotel. I got the chance to speak to the organizers a couple of times throughout the tournament and they had been nothing but accommodating for any troubles we had. Here’s another thank you towards them for making Pan Ams possible this year.
As the rest of us gathered to play bullet/blitz/hand-and-brain/bughouse with our newly acquired sets back at the hotel, Yixiao and Yunshan headed off for their short but sweet Mexico journey. From what I heard, they spent most of their time waiting in line to cross the border and no more than a few minutes actually in Mexico.
Finally, our time in McAllen came to an end as we gathered at 4:00 am the next morning to begin our tiresome journey back to Toronto. All of the members were exhausted, some were feeling more sick than ever, but we all made it safely back to Toronto.
For me, this year’s Pan Ams felt completely different from last year’s, and I will treasure the memories I made from both experiences fondly. There’s just something so captivating about playing chess on a team when those teammates are friends that would genuinely support you for any loss and congratulate you for any win. I admire each and every one of my teammates not only for their chess, but also for who they are as people. To Yunshan, Nicholas, Fengxi, Ethan, Yixiao, Riyaan, and Bingfei: Thank you for making this trip everything that it was. Also, here’s a final thank you to Hart House Chess Club for giving all of us this opportunity–I look forward to next year to do it all over again!
Special thanks to Riyaan for proofreading the article and providing details I had missed.
Hart House Chess Club 