NYU's Chess Team Ties for First @ Pan-Ams 2025!

Over this past J Term, NYU's Chess Team participated in the Pan-American Collegiate Chess Tournament (Pan-Ams for short), a team tournament hosted (this year) in Charlotte North Carolina. 

During this event, our four players including the Team's co-presidents (Jesse & Maddie) ended up tying for first in the U1800 Section of this event! In this short blog post, we will show you some of the games and analysis by the player of that game!

Beginning with our board one Philip (2048) who ended up with a final score of 4.5/6. He played multiple masterful games including securing a draw against an NM in the final round to secure our team's win in this event!

Next lets go to our board two Maddie (1900), who ended up with an impressive 4/6. While she had some mis-steps early into the event, she ended up showing off her impressive tactical knowledge in her final round:

Nf3!! is just a pure beauty here, just an incredible tactical idea that only holds up due to the threat of getting black's pawn to f3 and the strength of the bishop preventing the white king's escape!

 

Now to our board three Jesse (1750) (me). While I did not particularly play amazingly this event, I ended with a final score of 3/6, I struggled with time pressure during this event as I am used to a much longer time control, however here is a game with some pure insane ideas from round 6!

I think the idea behind ignoring king safety and playing c4 was correct in principle, however I missed a few key defensive ideas under time pressure and turned a brilliant win into a shameful loss.

Last but not least our board four Michael (1209) who also scored 3/6, this being his second over the board tournament, he exceeded expectations and won crucial games (against much stronger opponents) to help secure our team the win!

A beautiful example of how Michael was able to take down not only one 1400 this event but actually two! The rook sac on move 48 was a beautiful finale to this game!

We had a ton of fun playing at this event, and we are so stoked we were able to tie for first!
That's all from the Chess Team for now, our next major event will be at the United States Amateur Teams Eastern (USATE) in mid February where our best and brightest will be playing to attempt and win a title for NYU!