In a blur of pawns, knights and bishops, Eric Rosen and Michael Auger could be seen on Fox News during winter break playing a speed game of chess while simultaneously being interviewed about their recent success.

In December, the Illini Chess Club went to the 2013 Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship and, for the second consecutive year, earned a spot in the President’s Cup, the collegiate chess final four.

The Illini team includes Rosen, Auger, Xin Leo Luo and Akshay Indusekar will be the only squad in the Final Four without any grandmasters or any coaches. The teams in the final four, two of which belong to Webster University and one hailing from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, will compete in Manhattan in April.

Auger, president of the Illini Chess Club, laughed as he explained the shock of winning a spot in the top four a second time.

“Before we went into (the Pan Am Championship), we joked about how we were going to do it again, but I don’t think any of us really believed it,” Auger said.

The championship, held in Lubbock, Texas, included 42 participating teams representing 23 schools. Many of the teams have grandmasters, the highest title given to a player by the World Chess Organization- FIDE. Most teams also have coaches that train players for tournaments.

Despite not having these amenities, the Illini players managed to beat some of the top teams.

Akshay Indusekar, junior in LAS, began playing chess when he was a sophomore in high school. This is his first year on the Illini A-Team.

“It was really interesting,” Indusekar said. “We played many difficult opponents. We upset three teams that were supposed to beat us.”

Auger explained that these were upsets of teams that out rated the Illini team by 200 points on every single board.

“It’s pretty unbelievable because (for us) to qualify a second year in a row is unheard of,” said Eric Rosen, sophomore in LAS.

Rosen began competing at a young age. By the time he was nine, he had a state championship under his belt. Rosen and Auger have a long history of playing chess together.

“Eric and I actually met at my first chess tournament,” Auger said.

Years later, when Rosen was deciding where to attend college, Auger helped persuade him to turn down a chess scholarship at University of Texas at Dallas to play for the Illini Chess Club.

Interestingly enough, UT Dallas was one of the high-ranking schools that the Illini team managed to surpass in the tournament.

The Illini team put in long hours of practice to get to their level of play up. The team has weekly practices where they play both long games, which can last anywhere from five to six hours, and “blitz” games, which can last from five to 10 minutes, Indusekar said.

Tournaments such as the Pan Am Championship only include long games, which have been described as mentally taxing.

“When you’re playing quick chess, you’re relying almost solely on intuition … it’s almost like a video game,” Auger said. “When you’re in a tournament, I’ve actually heard it described as mental torture. It’s a very different feeling … a little bit more stressful.”

Currently, the team is trying to raise $9,500 to prepare for the competition in April. Unlike the other Final Four teams, the Illini team has no scholarships. It is the love of the game that keeps them going, Auger said.

“There’s something about the way chess … pushes your brain as much as possible,” Auger said. “It really puts you in this zone where you feel so powerful in the way you’re thinking.”

The money the team fundraises could also help them afford a coach. Despite the funds, the players speak optimistically.

“It’s pretty incredible that we got to where we are,” Rosen said. “It’s really exciting going forward.”

Zila can be reached at [email protected].