On a beautiful mid-September weekend 125 chess players gathered at the Roseville Skating Center for the MSCA's Annual Northern Open Chess Tournament. The players flashed their chess skills across 4 sections in an event expertly managed by rising TD star Jack Bellinger.
Prize Winners 💵 Results 🔥
Sharing 1st Prize with 4.5/5.0 points were two of Minnesota's top collegiate players....Sammy Narayanan & Ashton Jin. Sammy and Ashton battled to a draw in Round 4 and dominated the rest of the field throughout the weekend to split the championship.
Stunning performances in the open section were turned in by Charles Wynn, who scored 4.0 points and took home the U2100 prize...and Casey Schmidt, who scored 3.5 points to claim the U2000 prize. Schmidt managed to beat National Masters Radermacher and Iwu in back-to-back rounds on the way to raising his USCF rating 101 points! Joshua Rajadurai had a great tournament as well, scoring 2.5 points in the tough open section to win the U1900 prize.
In the U1800 it was a 4-way tie for first. Michael Spear outclassed the U1400 field by a full point with his score of 4.5. In the U1000, Ethan Harrison posted the only perfect 5-0 score for the weekend. Ethan claimed the unrated prize as this was his first over-the-board USCF-rated chess tournament. He also earned a whopping 1745 provisional rating! Watch out for this talented new member of our Minnesota chess community.
Congratulations to the MSCA Board for organizing this very successful conclusion to the Summer's Grand Prix Series. And a big thanks to both Jack Bellinger & Dane Zagar for their TD work over the course of the weekend.