Varsity Matches
The term varsity is used by the chess club to denote a general match against another university team. Of these, there are two sorts - friendly matches, played about twice a term against our neighbouring universities, and competitive matches, such as the Annual Varsity Match against Cambridge.
Friendly Match
So far, the list of friendly match fixtures are:
- A competitive match (The Valentines Cup) against Imperial on 23/11/2019
- A friendly match against Warwick on 01/12/2019
- A friendly match with LSE on 26/01/2020
- A friendly match with Imperial on 15/02/2020
Check the termcard for upcoming fixtures. Check the news feed for match reports. Not all of these are first team matches! If you want to get involved, let our Varsity Captain, who chooses the teams based on what's required for the vent, know.
Annual Varsity Match against Cambridge
Every year we seek out the eight strongest chess players in Oxford University for our annual varsity match against Cambridge, kindly hosted by the Royal Automobile Club's Chess Club. Our varsity captain has the ultimate decision over which players he believes combine to make the strongest team, as long as he meets the current criteria decided by the RAC:
- We are required to have at least one female player on the team.
- We are required to have at least three undergraduates on the team.
- All players must be matriculated current students of the university (post-docs and faculty are unfortunately not eligible to play).
We do not require participation in any of our club activities to consider you for selection; we simply request that we know you and we recognise that you play incredibly strong chess, either through a rating or by witnessing your ability first-hand. Except in extreme cases most of our varsity players have a rating equivalent to FIDE 2000 or above.
The varsity captain is free on a year-by-year basis to implement the selection process as he sees fit; some years there may be eight obvious choices and on other years he may wish to observe the candidates in action to gauge their abilities.
The Varsity match is usually held in the 7th week of Hilary Term. Check the termcard for the latest details.
