For the first time in decades, from March 2nd to 3rd, 2024, the Hart House Chess Club (the official chess club of the University of Toronto) hosted a team vs. team match against the University of Waterloo. Games were held at the East Common Room of Hart House, on the University of Toronto campus.

Originally planned as the 6th Ivy League Challenge (an inter-university tournament), the tournament was re-organized as a team-vs-team Blitz and Rapid match. 

Each school fielded 12 players, split into two pools. 

For Waterloo A: IM Yuanchen Zhang, FM Richard Chen, CM William Li, Patrick Huang, Momin Fayzan, Sriram Kumar.

For Waterloo B:  William Ratelband, Dinny Wang, Vinushan Vijendran, Josh Zabor, Matthew Sekirin, Omkar Baraskar

For Toronto A: IM Advait Patel, IM Nicholas Vettese , Christopher Knox, Fengxi Mao , FM Eilia Zomorrodian, Ray Wu

For Toronto B: WFM Cindy Qiao, Bingfei Wang, Christopher Yu, Yukuan Zou, Daniel Stueckmann, Isabelle Wang / Eric Wan

Each player played 12 blitz games (double round) against players from the opposing school in the same pool, followed by six single-round rapid games against the opposing school. 

As the University of Toronto considerably outranked the University of Waterloo on almost every board, Toronto was the favourite in the match. The match did not disappoint, with many fighting and exciting games. From the get-go, Toronto took the lead and never looked back, winning all four tournaments: 55.5 – 16.5 in Pool A Blitz, 48.5 – 23.5 in Pool B Blitz, 21-15 in Pool A Rapid, and 19.5 – 16.5 in Pool B Rapid. 

The winners of the event were:

Nicholas Vettese for winning the Pool A Rapid 

Cindy Qiao for winning the Pool B Rapid

Advait Patel for winning the Pool A Blitz

Cindy Qiao and Bingfei Wang for winning the Pool B Blitz

Cindy Qiao for top performer UToronto in Rapid

Advait Patel for top performer UToronto in Blitz

Dinny Wang for top performer UWaterloo in Blitz

William Ratelband for top performer UWaterloo in Rapid

A big thank you to the organizers Victor Zheng (UToronto) and Richard Chen (UWaterloo) and the Arbiter team, which consists of Tanner McNamara and Victor. Also, a thank you to Deepanshi Matai, the photographer/assistant to the organizing team. 

Overall, the feedback from the event was very positive. Participants enjoyed the format and organization. Free pizza and small snacks were covered for the participants. We hope that the event created lasting memories and will be remembered as a great success! 

Event photographs taken by Deepanshi Matai can be found here. 

All games were broadcast to lichess.org via DGT boards. 

• All blitz games played can be found here. 
• All rapid games played can be found here.

Cross-tables of the event can be found here.