UT Dallas chess team wins its first Texas collegiate title since 2022, beating Texas Tech in the last round

The University of Texas at Dallas chess program is back on top in the state.

The Comets' A team won the Texas Collegiate Super Finals, held Oct. 17-18 in Brownsville, finishing ahead of host UT Rio Grande Valley with three match wins and a draw, the university announced Friday. It is UTD's first title in the event since 2022 and its third overall in the tournament's 11 years, counting a 2017 crown it shared with two other schools.

The field had six teams: an A and a B squad each from UT Dallas, UTRGV and Texas Tech University.

How it was won

All four players on UTD's top team hold the grandmaster title: computer science junior Aditya Samant, supply chain management graduate student Sankalp Gupta, innovation and entrepreneurship graduate student Harikrishnan Rangarajan, and a psychology freshman who played second board.

The decisive match came in the last round against Texas Tech's A team. UTD won it 2½-1½, with Samant and the second-board player taking their games and Rangarajan drawing. Earlier, against UTRGV's A team, the Comets split the points after Gupta won on third board and the freshman beat José Gabriel Cardoso Cardoso.

The freshman finished with 3½ points from four games. Samant scored 3, and Gupta and Rangarajan each had 2½.

"It's great to win this strong collegiate event again," said program director Julio Catalino Sadorra, a grandmaster and UTD alumnus. He said he valued even more how the players backed each other during and after their games.

Third place for the B team

UTD's second squad, made up of grandmasters Koustav Chatterjee, a finance senior; Rahul Srivasthav Peddi, a finance graduate student; and Yair Parkhov, a computer science junior, plus Woman Grandmaster Maili-Jade Ouellet, a graduate student in healthcare leadership and management, finished third with two match wins and a draw.

Peddi, the team captain, scored 3 of 4 on second board. He said doing his best in his final year made the result especially meaningful.

The team's next stop is the 2027 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, Jan. 1-4 in Tempe, Arizona.

Sources

news.utdallas.edu