# She Won Every Deciding Game — And a Mining University Became World Chess Champions

> At the first-ever FIDE World University Team Championship, six games in the final ended in quiet draws — so the entire trophy for a Russian mining university came down to just one player, who won every single game that mattered.

_By Akash Mitra · Aug 11, 2026_

## A New Kind of World Championship

Most world chess champions are grandmasters who have spent decades at the board. This week's newest champions are something different: a team of students who also have to hand in essays and pass exams.

From August 3 to 9, the city of Almaty in Kazakhstan hosted the very first **FIDE World University Team Chess Championship Finals** — a brand-new event that FIDE, the world chess federation, created just for university students. Sixteen university teams from around the world qualified to be there, and the list of schools reads like a mix of chess powerhouses and complete surprises: participating universities included Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Harvard University, Kazakh National University of Sports, National Technical University of Athens, Peking University, Saint Louis University, University of Cambridge, University of Melbourne, University of Oxford, University of Pretoria, University of Texas at Dallas, and Ural State Mining University, among others.

To even reach Almaty, teams had to survive online qualifiers. The competition has three stages, beginning with Online Swiss Qualifiers, followed by an Online Knockout stage, before the over-the-board finals in Almaty. Once there, the finals featured 16 teams — eight that qualified through the knockout stage, plus eight wild cards invited by FIDE and the organizer.

FIDE also built in a rule you don't often see in chess: each match was played on four boards, and lineups had to include at least one female and at least one male player. Add a €50,000 prize fund with €25,000 for the winning team, €15,000 for second place, and €10,000 for third, and you have a genuinely new kind of chess event — part world championship, part reunion for students who normally only see each other on a screen.

## The Final: Three Draws, Then One Player Decided Everything

By Sunday, the field of sixteen had been narrowed down to two finalists: Ural State Mining University, a technical university from Russia not exactly known as a chess factory, and Saint Louis University from the United States, representing one of America's strongest college chess programs.

The final was played as two matches, and the pattern that emerged was almost eerie. In the first match, the contest was closely fought across all four boards, with the top three games ending in draws — Arseniy Nesterov against Aryan Chopra, Rudik Makarian against Bharath Subramaniyam, and Sergei Lobanov against Nikolozi Kacharava all splitting the point. That left everything down to board four, where IM Leya Garifullina defeated WGM Thalia Cervantes Landeiro, giving Ural State Mining University a 2.5-1.5 win and a narrow lead going into the return match.

Then it happened again. The second match followed almost exactly the same pattern: draws on the first three boards, leaving the result to Garifullina and Cervantes Landeiro once more — and for the second time in the day, Garifullina won, delivering the decisive point and another 2.5-1.5 victory.

Add it up, and the numbers are startling: with a 5-3 overall score, Ural secured the title and became the first champion of the FIDE World University Team Championship Finals, with Garifullina scoring the only two victories across all eight individual games played in the final. Every other board, every other player, on both teams, drew every single game. One 21-year-old international master carried her entire team across the finish line.

Her teammate and captain, GM Arseniy Nesterov, put it simply afterward: "It's a great victory, especially considering our way through the tournament. We had some really challenging matches, particularly in the playoffs, so I'm very happy that we finally won." He also spoke about something that matters to every student-athlete: "It's not easy to combine university with chess, but I'm very glad that the university supports us through its chess programme. If I want to go to a tournament, I'm always able to do that."

For the runners-up, the disappointment came with warmth. Saint Louis University's Bharath Subramaniyam said the tournament's real prize was the people: "For me personally, the best thing is just being with my team. They are very supportive people, and it's really fun to be around them."

## Bronze Decided by a Single Game

While the final grabbed the headlines, the bronze medal match was arguably even tenser. Kazakhstan's home team, Kazakh National University of Sports (KNUS), faced The University of Texas at Dallas, and neither side could shake the other loose. The battle for third place proved much more dramatic: UT Dallas took the early advantage in the first match, winning 2.5-1.5, before KNUS struck back in the return encounter with a 2.5-1.5 win of its own, levelling the overall score and forcing tiebreakers.

Even the tiebreak couldn't settle it. The first tiebreak match also failed to separate the two sides, ending 2-2 — meaning the bronze medal would come down to a single sudden-death game on one board. It was the home crowd's team that came through: GM Kazybek Nogerbek defeated GM Aditya Samant, clinching third place for KNUS and a medal for the host nation.

Nogerbek admitted afterward what the moment meant to him: "It's very important for us because we are playing at home and a lot of fans are supporting us. Of course, we wanted to win gold, but this is sport. Now it's about the bronze medal."

UT Dallas's Koustav Chatterjee, meanwhile, reflected on the reality every student chess player knows too well: "It is hard to balance. At UT Dallas we are expected to play chess really well, but we also have a very challenging academic programme." He added a lesson that goes well beyond the chessboard: "Time management is probably the biggest thing. In chess, you have a limited amount of time and you are constantly under pressure. Playing chess teaches you how to deal with that pressure and stay calm."

## Why This Story Matters

It's easy to assume a "world championship" belongs only to full-time professionals with sponsors and coaches. This event was a reminder that chess also lives in dorm rooms, in study groups squeezed between lectures, and in universities most casual fans have never heard of.

The inaugural FIDE World University Team Championship Finals closed with an official ceremony that brought together players, officials, and guests after six days of competition in Almaty — a fitting end to a tournament built entirely around students who refuse to choose between the classroom and the chessboard.

And somewhere in that closing ceremony stood Leya Garifullina, holding a gold medal for a mining university that, for one week in Almaty, became the best university chess team on Earth — almost entirely because of her.