Photo of IM Marko Zivanic, UTD (back to camera), IM Jacek Stopa, UTD (standing, left), IM Sasha Kaplan, UMBC (seated), and UMBC coaches GM Sam Palatnik and National Master Igor Epshteyn. This photo was taken shortly after Zivanic won in the final round (played Sunday, April 5th), when the other three UTD-UMBC games were still going on in the President's Cup (Final Four of College Chess).

After Zivanic won, everything looked good for UTD. As you can see from the games on MonRoi (click on Chess Games tab, then on 2009 Presidents Cup), UTD only had to tie the match with UMBC 2-2 to win the title.
   

After UTD's Zivanic won, UTB's Fernandez also won. So then there were smiles from (left to right) Jim Stallings (UTD Chess Program Director), Russell Harwood (UTB Chess Program Director), and Rodney Thomas (UTD Chess Program Advisory Board). Russell (Rusty) Harwood bought a copy of my Read, Write Checkmate: Enrich Literacy with Chess Activities. (Thanks, Rusty!).

 

At the same time, in the analysis room, Final Four commentator GM Babakuli Annakov (seated) was predicting an 85% likelihood that UTD would win the match with UMBC, which caused UTD President David Daniel to smile, and Stallings to agree. See photo.
   The other three games in each of the UTD-UMBC and Stanford-UTB matches took much longer to finish. UTB went on to win against Stanford, and finish in third place in the Final Four, just one game point behind UMBC and UTD. UMBC won in match points, after winning the final round 2.5 to 1.5 over UTD, so gets the President's Cup. Results in this press release, which also mentions (at the end) my online courses.
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