Top Chess Colleges

The Collegiate Chess League (CCL) began in 2020 and allowed top college chess teams to compete while over-the-board chess was inactive during the pandemic. It has quickly become a premier event in the space, joining the much longer-standing Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship (established 1946, a.k.a. the Pan-Ams) and President's Cup (established 2001, a.k.a. the Final Four of College Chess as it is a tournament between the top four U.S. schools from the Pan-Ams). In fact, the CCL has begun broadcasting the Pan-Ams and President's Cup as well since 2022.

As a result of all of this, there are more ways than ever to compare the top post-secondary schools when it comes to chess. No longer are football and basketball the only paths to college sports dominance.

But who are the top chess colleges? That's what we're here to discuss, as the Fall 2023 season of the CCL sponsored by SIG is set to begin soon. 

• University of Missouri
• University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley
• Saint Louis University
• Texas Tech University
• University of Texas-Dallas
• University of Chicago
• University of Maryland-Baltimore County
• Webster University
• Conclusion

Missouri

In addition to winning the Spring 2021 season of the CCL, Mizzou is home to both finalists of the Fall 2022 CCL, which was played as an individual event. GM Grigoriy Oparin beat GM Mikhail Antipov in the final. The school continued to push along in Spring 2023, finishing as runners-up.

There's no reason large public state schools with Division I programs in the more traditional sports can't also put resources into chess, and Mizzou proves it. However, most of the best chess schools aren't necessarily well-known outside of chess circles.

University of Texas-Rio Grand Valley (UTRGV)

If you didn't know any better, you might not necessarily think this was a real school—and until 2013, you'd have been correct. That was the year that the University Texas-Brownsville, which already had a great chess program, merged with the University of Texas-Pan American and became the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV).

By 2018, Rio Grande Valley had broken the five-year winning streak by Webster University—more on them later—at the President's Cup. And in Spring 2022, UTRGV took the CCL by storm, winning all 10 of their matches without a loss before defeating the University of Chicago in the finals.

SLU

Winner of the inaugural (Spring 2020) and most recent (Spring 2023) seasons of the CCL, SLU also swept both the Pan Ams and Final Four in 2022. GMs Benjamin Bok, Robby Kevlishvili, and Nikolas Theodorou have led the way.

SLU has a rather young chess program, only founded in 2016. That hasn't stopped them from an eventful first seven years.

Texas Tech

Texas Tech is another big school, like Mizzou, to have found that it can support a chess team. They won the 2011 and 2012 President's Cups, hosted the 2022 edition, and qualified for it for nine straight years from 2014-22. They found victory in the 2019 Pan-Ams as well.

Although their CCL success hasn't quite reached the same levels, Texas Tech is another big school, like Mizzou, to have found that it can support a chess team in addition to everything else.

UT-Dallas

In the first nine years of the President's Cup, only two schools even reached the finals, and UT-Dallas was one of them. They won the Cup in the inaugural 2001 edition as well as 2002, 2007, and 2008. Like Texas Tech, UTD hasn't found quite so much CCL success, but they're always a team to worry about.

Chicago

Texas and Missouri aren't the only states that boast strong chess programs. The Fall 2021 CCL winner wasn't any of the teams already discussed, but rather a University of Chicago team led by GMs Awonder Liang and Praveen Balakrishnan. They followed up in Spring 2022 by reaching the finals. Their 2021 victory was made more impressive by the presence of strong schools outside the United States.

Chicago, along with Princeton (with GM Andrew Tang) and Yale (with GM Nicolas Checa), belongs to a third category of chess college: In addition to big state schools with a big overall budget (Missouri, Texas Tech) and smaller schools with a big chess budget (e.g. UTRGV), there are top-level academic schools (whether officially Ivy League or not).

UMBC

Former powerhouse UMBC has fallen upon hard times lately. One of the very first schools to realize it could use chess scholarships to bring in top players, UMBC dominated college events in the early 2000s. Remember UTD winning four of the first nine President's Cups? Well, UMBC won the other five.

Once schools like Webster caught up, however, they soon passed by the Maryland college. UMBC still attracts some grandmasters, but they don't win major events much anymore and have yet to finish high in the CCL standings.

Webster

Webster has yet to ever send a team to play in the league, but led for a long time by GM Susan Polgar and now by GM Liem Le, Webster is objectively one of the most accomplished chess colleges in the United States. The school has won eight Pan-Am championships, including seven in a row from 2012-18, and six President's Cups, five of them consecutively from 2014-18.

Chess is so big at Webster, in fact, that the school even offers a chess degree—a minor discipline known as "Chess in Education." Perhaps it's time they jumped in on the CCL action train—and just maybe they will!

Conclusion

With the CCL presented by SIG beginning on September 23, all of these teams as well as countless others will begin competing for the next title. Who will win? We'll find out.

What are some other great chess schools that didn't make our list? Who do you think will win the Fall 2023 CCL? Let us know in the comments!