"The age limit and the tightening of eligibility requirements never affected us," Sherman said. "All of our players are full-time students in degree programs, and they're all solid students."
The President's Cup draws the top four American teams from the sport's other major collegiate competition, the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship in December. This weekend's match features UMBC, Miami Dade College, New York University and the University of Texas at Dallas, this year's Pan-Am champion. Two years ago, UMBC hosted the Pan-Am event in Washington.
Sam Palatnik, UMBC chess associate director and an international grand master, will provide move-by-move commentary during the tournament. It will be broadcast on Internet Chess Club and Monroi, a wireless technology that enables chess matches to be viewed from the Internet.
UT-Dallas also plans to broadcast the matches to its campus with its own commentary. "[Chess] gets more attention than anything else on our campus," said Jim Stallings, director of the chess program at UT-Dallas.
At the UMBC campus on Wednesday, the oversized pieces were used in a blindfolded chess match between two members of the university's chess club - senior Katerina "The Kiev Killer" Rohonyan of the Ukraine and sophomore Timur "The Uzebekdragon" Gareev of Uzbekistan.
Sherman came up with the idea of giving players outlandish monikers.
"Intimidation is an effective strategy for psychological warfare against an opponent," he said. "Plus, it makes it more fun for the spectators."
About 200 people watched the match, with students and staff members helping to move the giant pieces. On several occasions, one player offered to call the match a draw, prompting students to yell, "No, don't draw!"
"That's why I kept playing," Rohonyan explained. "The public wanted me to keep playing. They wanted more emotions and more fight."
Rohonyan and Gareev also attended the campus pep rally Thursday with teammates Sergey "The Stealth" Erenburg, a freshman from Israel, and Pawel "The Polish Magician" Blehm, a master's degree student from Poland.
"We're really quirky, and we take a lot of pride in our chess team," said sophomore Josh Michael of Ellicott City, director of community governmental affairs. "This year, we've had a lot of success in basketball, but we've also had success in chess."
