2010 Texas Team Champions: Matthew Michaelides, Bob Shao, Alex Chua, Jeffrey De Jesus
2010 Texas Team Champions: Matthew Michaelides, Bob Shao, Alex Chua, Jeffrey De Jesus

18 teams (77 players) participated in the 2010 Texas Team Championship in Austin over the weekend. This is probably the largest turnout ever for this event, and certainly the largest in the USCF’s online database, which goes back to 1992.

First place ($500 + trophy) went to “Your Queen Wants to Mate Me”, a Houston-based team captained by NM Alex Chua. They scored 4-0, a half-point ahead of Austin’s “Barely Legall”, led by FM Michael Langer. In the under-1900 section, “Austin Powers” took first with 3 points.

First place under-1900: George Qi, Austin Jiang, Alexander Jiang, Matthew Liu
First place under-1900: George Qi, Austin Jiang, Alexander Jiang, Matthew Liu

The Team Championship has traditionally been a 4-round event, but with more than 16 teams in the field, a 5-round schedule would guarantee that two teams don’t each finish with perfect scores. Also, in this year’s event, the first and second place teams never faced each other.

Board prizes:
Board 1 – FM Michael Langer (4.0)
Board 2 – Seth Thompson (4.0)
Board 3 – Bob Shao (3.5)
Board 4 – Josh Newsham, Arindam Raina, Matthew Michaelides (3.5)

Thanks to TD Lori Balkum for an extremely well-run event!