Brno University Chess Feels Right at Home at FIT

The fourth Interfaculty Chess Tournament, which we can, without exaggeration call the largest academic chess competition in the Czech Republic, took place in late March. This time, it was held at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at BUT—our faculty had hosted the previous tournament in the fall. In early spring, members of 20 teams took their seats at the chessboards, and 90 players competed in at least one game. And the FIT students, who were tipped to be the dark horses of the tournament, performed brilliantly. Our team managed to defend its title.

Since April 2023, the inter-faculty tournaments have been organized by the Brno University Chess club, led by FIT VUT student Martin Benovič, together with Ondřej Havelka from FSI VUT. The club is, in Benovič’s words, “a group of six enthusiasts who strive to organize and promote chess events for college students.” The March Interfaculty Tournament was the last one organized by Benovič, a prominent figure in Brno university chess.

Martin, who has been playing chess since he was five, enrolled at our faculty in the fall of 2019. He soon became a member of the Student Union and began organizing increasingly popular online tournaments on the Discord platform. The interest shown by both students and faculty motivated him to try his hand at organizing a major competition—he held his first tournament in the fall of 2021 for 32 participants, which was a major challenge for him. Inter-faculty tournaments are now considered one of the two highlights of his career as an organizer. The other is the Brno Universities Chess Championship, which took place at Mendel University in October 2023. He and his colleague Ondřej Havelka would like to repeat this event this fall. “I told myself that after five years, I’d had enough of the work. Altogether, these events involved about a thousand people. I want to make room for others and enjoy a role like that of a referee myself,” says Benovič, revealing his motivation for handing over the organizational reins. Read more about the background of university chess in Brno and about Martin Benovič himself here.