For the second year in a row, Harvard took part in the Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championship. Five players ventured up to Toronto, Canada to compete in the annual event, where we hoped to finish in the top ten, and possibly improve on our third place showing in 1998. At board one was FIDE Master Jacob Chudnovsky '01. Life Master and team captain Woody McClelland '00 was at board two, Harish Bhat '00 was board three, Charles Riordan '01 was board four, and Lu Yin '02 was the alternate. Unlike last year, where we managed to finish third despite not playing our best chess, this year we overachieved. Despite not having as strong of a team on paper as last year, we once again tied for third with a score of 4.5-1.5 (along with the University of California at Berkely and Stanford University), finishing fourth on tiebreaks behind Cal-Berkely and ahead of Stanford. Only the University of Maryland at Baltimore County (UMBC) "A" who finished first with 5.5-0.5 by beating the University of Toronto's Team A, and the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), who finished second with 5-1 after drawing with Cal-Berkely in the last round, finished with more points than we did.

Although Harvard was never in contention to win the championship (due to a round three 3.5-0.5 loss to UTD), we played solidly, and after a very fortunate draw in round four, we won our last two matches against UMBC "B", and Peru.

The tournament started strangely, as a late flight forced us to play round 1 without our top board! Fortunately, everyone stepped up, and the team of Woody, Harish, Charles and Lu swept(!!) UMBC "C" in round 1. In the last round, our fourth board was not available, but once again, the team stepped up, as Lu came through with a big win on board 4, helping us to beat Peru 3-1.

Individually, the distinguishable stars were Woody and Lu. Woody had the best individual performance, finishing with 4.5/6, including a draw in round 3, an important win in round 5, and an impresive win over Peru's board 2 Gustavo Shiroma in the last round, which denied him of winning the top board 2 prize. After missing round one, Jacob was his usual stellar self, finishing with 3.5/5 (including enormous wins in rounds 4 and 6) despite not playing his best chess. Charles also finished with an impressive 3.5/5 including a big draw in round 4 and a win in round 5 before having to fly home. Lu came up huge as our alternate, winning both of the matches he played in rounds 1 and 6, and tying for the top alternate prize! Finally, Harish was a warrior. Although finishing 3/6, there were many times he came up big when we needed him (particularly rounds 4 and 5), and he was the only player besides Woody to play all 6 rounds.

Having had to organize the transportation, hotel accomodations, and funding for the Harvard team, I would like to express my most sincere thanks to everyone who made the sacrifice to represent Harvard in this event, as it was a major time committment, not withstanding the miscommunications, late flights, potential Y2K and U.S. border problems, and loss of rating points (for some) :). Hopefully Harvard will be able to reload for next year's championship!