Baruch College Chess Team

Baruch: Former Student Activities Building

While in the graduate program at Baruch, I joined the chess team.  The only one who I knew previous from the Marshall was Tony Lee.  If you're ever in a rut and its possible to do so, you might find a college, especially a large college can give you some opportunities.  I was amazed that the college was willing to send multiple teams to Pan Ams in Kitchener Ontario and Columbus, Ohio.

Howard Prince (Right)

This was before Howard Prince's killer BMCC teams, but CUNY had some quite good teams.  I think it shows that attending an Ivy League school may correlate with intelligence to some degree, but by no means absolutely.

GM Maurice Ashley

I think Brooklyn had Mark Kurtzman and maybe John Herbst.  City College had an extemely strong team with Maurice Ashley, Ron Simpson, Steve Colding, and Jones Murphy.

Baruch had four masters, though possibly not at the same time:  Ron Young, Bruce Bowyer, Murray Schechter and Gideon Goetz.  We also had Tony Lee, Pete DiTuri, Andrew Longo, Jeff Delgado, and David Hee.

Pete DiTuri

Pete DiTuri, who was an officer of the Baruch College Chess Club for four years and president for two years recalls:


"...John Herbst was an alternate or Board 4 on Brooklyn College's team. I also recall Joel Benjamin as Board 1 for Yale in the early '80s. The Baruch College A team that finished 8th overall in the '80 PanAm in Atlanta: Gideon Goetz, Murray Schechter, Mark Tolliver and Fyodor Tsiporin, with Anthony Lee as alternate. The B team finished second in the 1600-1800 bracket in '80: David Hee, Andrew Longo, Martin McDowell and me. I think you first played for Baruch in the '82 PanAm in Columbus..."