Contributed by: Matt Trujillo, CFP®
October 7th marked the first day of the North American Corporate Chess League (NACCL). The league is relatively new, coming into existence in 2019, but has grown quite rapidly and expanded to 35 total teams this year for Season 3. This is the Center for Financial Planning’s first year competing in the league, and I’m pleased to report that we started off with a bang!
To summarize the format, you play two games every week. The games are played at www.lichess.org and last approximately 30 minutes each. The pairing software for the league takes your chess rating and pairs you against an opponent from another team that is right around the same rating as you are. So, leading up to the games, you have no idea what team you’ll be paired against!
The team currently consists of 9 players of all strengths, with yours truly, Matt Trujillo, as the captain and first board (top-rated player). Week 1 saw us paired up against many different opponents, but a few notable names were Deloitte, Qualcomm, Peloton, AIRBNB, LendingTree.com, and SIG (Season 1 champions). There were some nerves on all sides, but the team still scored some nice wins. We ended the evening with a total score of 5 out of 8 possible wins and tied for 18th out of 35th overall.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the season. The goal is to climb the leader board and break into the top 10, but the biggest goal is to have some fun and introduce new people to competitive tournament chess!
Matthew Trujillo, CFP®, is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional at Center for Financial Planning, Inc.® A frequent blog contributor on topics related to financial planning and investment, he has more than a decade of industry experience.