FAMU-FSU Tallahassee chess clash… a first!

Florida A&M (FAMU) and Florida State (FSU) share the capital city of Tallahassee and have proud traditions, including football. While there is a natural barrier of the railroad tracks, the campuses are literally walking distance from each other. The two campuses share many things, including an engineering program, but lately they have also developed a shared passion for chess. This was the first such cross-campus match in a long time, if at all.

FAMU Chess Club president Caleb Parker and Faculty Advisor Dr. Daaim Shabazz discussed the idea of a match two years ago, but were unable to make it happen. In March, the idea resurfaced, and Parker was eventually able to contact FSU Chess Club president Alex Turner, and the negotiations began. A date was finally set for the fall semester, but unfortunately, Turner was unable to attend due to an unforeseen event.

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On Saturday, November 8th, chess players from both campuses met at the FSU Student Union to battle. FAMU brought 14 players while host FSU fielded 15. The arrangement was a Swiss pairing in which University of Florida freshman Jacob Sperber tried to avoid opponents from the same school. However, that proved cumbersome, so it became an open tournament, with the top five scores from each team counting toward the team score.

The excitement was evident, and 29 players meant that there would be some exciting battles. There were six rounds of 15 minutes with a 2-second increment, and players used their chess.com ratings. As a result, Parker was the top seed at 2000. However, in quickplay chess, results can be unpredictable.

The Seminoles jumped out to a sizable overall lead after two rounds. Eight FSU players had 2/2, while FAMU’s Leamon Hines had the only perfect score for the Rattlers.

After lunch, the competition started to heat up. The perfect scores for FSU continued, with eight holding 3/3, while all FAMU players took at least one loss. The 2024 HBCU Champion, Caleb Parker, was hoping for a strong second half to close the large gap.

Hines broke the FSU juggernaut, defeating Gus Jennetten. Parker got back on the winning track with a wild win over Nathan Heburn. This game went down to the wire, and after missing a mating combination, Parker went into a fierce time scramble. In the fury, Heburn lost track of his pieces and fell to a back-rank tactic.

Despite these losses, the Seminoles kept piling up wins. James Oram, Chutian Jiang, Charlie Stockstill, Eric Wood, Trittle Benny, and Ben Ebner were still undefeated with 4/4. Even counting only the top five players, FSU wasn’t ceding any points. Meanwhile, Leamon Hines and Elijah Bolds led FAMU with 3/4.

The last two rounds saw the field become more tense as players sprinted for the top score. Oram won his last two games, beating two of his teammates, Benny and Jiang. He would finish with the only perfect score of 6/6. At the same time, Bolds and Hines upended their last two FSU opponents to creep toward the top of the leaderboard with 5/6. Jennetten and Jiang also ended with 5/6, and there would be a tiebreak for second place.

The tiebreaks were five minutes with a two-second increment. Jennetten defeated Jiang while Bolds avenged his loss to Hines. In the final tiebreak, Jennetten beat Bolds to take 2nd place.

While the overall score was FSU 52.5 and FAMU 31.5, counting only the top five boards, it was a bit more competitive. FSU still held the edge 24.5-20. What this says is that there is a lot of room for improvement on the lower end. For the next match anticipated in the Spring, it will be a true team match in which no player can play a teammate. It was a good event and hopefully the beginning of a great FAMU-FSU tradition.

FAMU: https://www.instagram.com/chessclubatfamu/
FSU: https://www.instagram.com/chessclubfsu/