The Harvard Chess Team lost the championship title to Yale in a series of close matches at the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship.

The team placed third out of 38 teams, after Yale and the University teams, after Yale and the University of Toronto. Harvard won six of eight games at the four-day tournament, which was held over winter break in Columbus, Ohio.

Last year, Harvard tied with the University of Chicago for first place out of 53 teams in the tournament, the main intercollegiate chess competition.

"We were a little disappointed, of course," co-captain Chris F. Chabris '88 said. "At least we had chances to win against Yale and Toronto and lost by only one game," he said adding, "But we didn't make those chances."

Co-captain Chris N. Avery '88 said that despite the loss of first place, Harvard's showing this year and last signaled a "resurgence" in the team's performance. In recent years, the chess team has finished lower than fifth place, he said.

Although most teams tend to win because of the strengths of their top-ranked players, the Harvard team has good players at all levels, Avery said.

Team members attributed the loss in part to weather conditions and holiday traffic that prevented one of their strongest players from getting to Columbus. Second-seeded Girome S. Bono '88, a senior master--the highest national rank--spent two days waiting at Logan Airport to fly to the match site.

The chessmen said they met their main competition--Yale and Toronto--earlier in the tournament than they had expected. By the time Bono arrived, the Yale match had already begun. He was only able to play four instead of the normal six games, all of which he won.

First board player Danny H. Edelman '91, a senior master and a FIDE master--the third highest international rank--defeated Yale's Patrick Wolff, who stands one step higher on the international scale at international master. Harvard lost one game and tied another, so the match depended on Chabris.

"We were both under big time pressure--two minutes for the last 20 moves," Chabris said, adding that he resigned because he was clearly losing. "We only lost by one point, so we weren't really demoralized, but we were out of the running for first place," the national master-ranked player said.

Harvard's James R. Hamilton '88 and Avery finished with the best record for alternate players in the tournament at 4-1. Hamilton won two critical games, each lasting more than seven hours, against the University of Minnesota and the University of Arkansas repectively.

"Danny [Edelman] afterwards showed me a way I could've won much earlier in the match," Hamilton said, referring to his game against Minnesota. "In the middle of the game he was smiling and I couldn't figure it out. I moved the rook to the wrong space and he was just smiling more because of what I'd missed," he said. "I had been sitting there for six hours and my brain was fried."

The tournament team is the highest ranked of five Harvard teams that compete in the Boston Metropolitan League. It currently stands at 2-0 in league matches.