The battle of the minds ended with University of Maryland Baltimore County crushing Harvard University.
Led by some top talent recruited through an aggressive chess program, the UMBC chess team has given itself some momentum for the collegiate chess championship by handily defeating Harvard on Saturday.
The UMBC chess team -- which has quietly become a national powerhouse featuring top-ranked Russian players, a Sri Lankan national champion and William "The Exterminator" Morrison -- cruised to a lopsided victory over Harvard, winner of five national chess championships. Of the six games played at the UMBC campus library, the locals won four games and tied two.
"We were favored to win, but we're still very proud of the victory, because, hey, it's Harvard," said Morrison, a 35-year-old UMBC history major who earned his "Exterminator" nickname with a bloodthirsty style of play. He has a national chess ranking of 2456, placing him in the top 1 percent of the world's players.
"I don't care if you're shooting marbles, beating Harvard at anything is a big deal," said Morrison, who defeated Harvard chess club president Daniel Benjamin in a tight game for one of Saturday's victories. Benjamin is rated 2293.
Benjamin said the UMBC team could be poised to win the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, the "World Series" of college chess play.
"They're a very strong team," Benjamin said, noting that smaller and less expensive colleges tend to attract many of the top-quality Russian players who have immigrated to the United States. "They [UMBC] clearly have a lot of the best young players in the country. I would expect them to do very well in the national championships."
Coached by Igor Epshteyn, a Belarussian who came to the United States in 1991 after having served as the Soviet Union's Olympic reserve team coach in Minsk, the UMBC team came in fourth at last year's college championships.
Alan Sherman, the team's faculty adviser, has built the team into a national contender by offering chess scholarships, a relative rarity in intercollegiate competition. This year UMBC awarded six chess scholarships.
The UMBC team has never won the championship, but Sherman said he's hopeful that the victory over Harvard -- which he called "sweet revenge" for a 1993 defeat -- will inspire the team for the national championships. They will be held in Baltimore in December.
Among the Russian players on the UMBC team are Oxana Tarassova and Pavel Pasmanik, both ranked in the 2100s, and the Sri Lankan champion, Ishan Weerakoon, ranked 2131.
Morrison, the top player on the team, learned chess as a street player in New York City, a self-professed "chess hustler" who made money off anyone foolish enough to play him for cash.
Also the oldest player on the team at 35, he wasn't able to join the Harvard and UMBC chess clubs when they went out to dinner after the match. "I had to go home to my two kids," said the community services worker. "Chess is great but it's not my only responsibility."
Pub Date: 10/14/96
