In my last post I did not have any information on who won the Northern California state championship. I will now make up for my shortcomings as a reporter by telling you who won all the state championships this weekend. (Labor Day weekend is the traditional time for state championships in many states, though not all of them.)
The information is copied directly from the website PlyCount, which (I assume) gets it from the USCF. Note that there may be some Labor Day tournaments that haven’t reported yet. However, I think it’s quite impressive that so many of them have gotten their results in by the morning after the tournaments.
| Tournament | # of Players | Winners |
| Southwest Open (TX) | 281 | Ioan Chirila (2595) |
| New England Open (MA) | 162 | David Vigorito (2554), Denys Shmelov (2499), Jonathan Yedidia (2453) |
| New York State Champ. | 173 | Alexander Stripunsky (2701) |
| Florida State Champ. | 157 | Lars Bo Hanson (2640), Robert Perez (2509) |
| CalChess Champ. | 153 | Raymond Kaufman (2434), Dharim Bacus (2318) |
| Ohio Chess Congress | 118 | Goran Vojinovic (2552), Walker Griggs (2282) |
| Colorado Open | 127 | Alex Yermolinsky (2541) |
| Virginia Closed Champ. | 96 | James Schuyler (2399), Justin Burgess (2174!) |
| Oregon Open | 89 | six-way tie including Nick Raptis (2324) + 5 experts |
| Tennessee Open | 60 | Ron Burnett (2405), Peter Bereolos (2328), Nicholas Tomlin (1902!), Luke Weishaar (1842!) |
| Wisconsin Closed | 76 | Alex Betaneli (2324) |
| St. Louis District Champ. (MO) | 64 | Fidel Jimenez (2679), Priyadharshan Kannapan (2481) |
| West Virginia State Champ. | 17 | Mark Hathaway (2111), John Roush (2047) |
Note that not all of these winners are necessarily state champions. Some could be out-of-state players. Also, some states may use tiebreakers to determine the state champion, and I have no way of finding out that information.
Special kudos to Chess Lecturers David Vigorito, who tied for first in the New England Open, and Bryan Smith, who is now back in the U.S. after his two-year sojourn in Serbia and who finished a very creditable second to Alexander Stripunsky in the New York State Championship.
How about a match between Alex Betaneli (2324) and Nick Raptis (2324) for the mythical title of Oregon/Wisconsin joint champion?
Addendum: I just looked up in my Chess Life and here are the state championships held last weekend that have not reported yet: North Carolina, Southern California, Illinois, New Jersey, Oklahoma. Those are some biggies!
Also, ever-quirky Iowa had its state championship a week earlier than the others, which was jointly won by Michael Brooks (2426) and Prashantha Amarasinghe (2199!). Also, Alex Betaneli narrowly missed in his attempt to win two state championships, finishing a half point behind in Iowa before winning the Wisconsin title.
Finally, for anyone who cares, a small update of my last post: I did indeed drop 14 rating points (sigh). Cailen gained 14 rating points to move up to 1806, which is just short of his lifetime high of 1809. And Linnea got a first provisional rating of 1227, which is one point better than my first USCF rating!
