Forces conspired to land the 2024 Rochester Open on a holiday weekend, one week after the previous Grand Prix event, but we still had a great turnout of 140 players, only a little off last year’s record attendance! 🎉
The Premier section again saw a lot of congestion at the top of the standings and a three-way tie for first between James Neal II, Okey Iwu, and Josiah Jorenby. With a second consecutive first place tie, Iwu extended his Grand Prix lead to 82 points over Kyler Weatherspoon, who also had another strong performance to claim the Top U2200 Grand Prix spot, which will be good for $220 and a spot in the 2025 Closed State Championships if he can hold on to it! 🏆️
The addition of a U700 section this year helped balance section sizes. Sam Herring led the way with a perfect 5.0, gaining 160 rating points along the way. Congratulations, Sam!
🥇 The remaining sections saw more first place ties:
U1900: Katie Lu, Fox Lana
U1500: Cole Lappi, Mathias Barents
U1100: Paulo Soto, Ian Lenzen
🔥 Official USCF Results (includes new ratings)
🧮 Spreadsheet Standings (more compact / mobile-friendly; old ratings)
Other rating highlights included Connor Fink achieving a first provisional rating of 1170 and eight players increasing their established non-provisional ratings by triple digits. Of those, four had 200+ gains, led by Paul Grant with 257. 👏 The author of this article led all rating decliners with a 94 point drop, but hey it's only a number, right?
Rochester Chess put on another top tier event this year at the Mayo Civic Center, setting us up in classy ballrooms, providing chess sets and clocks, and paying out a generous prize fund which included a $1,000 top prize. Rochester is a fine location, accessible for out of state players. The MSCA appreciates the great partnership with the club. 🙌
See the Grand Prix Scoreboard for the latest standings and stats at the halfway point of the series. We've had...
🏁 242 players
🏁 739 chess games: 614 decisive ⚔️ 125 drawn 🕊️
🏁 20 players participating in all three events 🌐🌐🌐
Chief TD Sarah Wahl ran another smooth tournament, assisted by Jackson Wahl and Jenny Bourne. 🙏
Next up for the Grand Prix: Catfish Days July 26-28 and the Roger Hale Chess Celebration August 9-11. Register today! 🚀
🛣️ 🏎️ 🏁
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