Final Four of College Chess Set

The 2008 Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championship was held just before New Year's, and ended in what has become a predictable result: the top teams once again came from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). In this case, the two college chess powerhouses tied for first, with UTD taking the championship on tiebreaks.

The tournament featured 29 teams from North and South America, with the top two international teams both coming from the University of Toronto.

The battle for the last two spots in the President's Cup -- known as the Final Four of Chess -- was heated; unlike the top two spots, various schools have filled out the President's Cup field in recent years. There were several strong teams with average ratings of over 2000, including NYU, Miami Dade College, and Harvard. In the end, Stanford University and the University of Texas at Brownsville won out.

The President's Cup will be held in April, at UTD. While it would be nice to see a new school break into the top two, it's almost certain that the championship will come down to UTD vs. UMBC yet again. UMBC has the slightly stronger lineup, and sports three grandmasters, but UTD showed they can hang with them at the Pan-Am. Who do you think will come out on top?