Check Mates

The state's best chess team opens up—sort of.

Last year, after UT-Dallas lured grand master Yuri Shulman to campus by offering him a hefty chess scholarship, the team began to win major tournaments. In fact, the school, which doesn't field a football team, has had its image as Nerd-U boosted by a chess team with a national reputation. This month, the squad will even start the school year with the U.S. Chess Federation title as the best college chess team in the country. Yet when the modest, quiet members of this elite group gather to answer questions about their game, the responses do not come. Have they ever sweated onto a chessboard? Some big laughs. Then no answer. What do they think of the professors here? The clock ticks. A few blink. Many smile. Do they use psychological tricks on an opponent? "Sometimes you need some special feelings to crush somebody," the 26-year-old Shulman explains in a thick Belarusian accent, "but usually it is better to remain calm." Nobody laughs.