Monday, July 16, 2012

Preregister for the Illinois Open in Oak Brook this Labor Day weekend

$64, such a deal!  GMs Nikola Mitkov and Dmitry Gurevich are among the preregistrants.  (Yury Shulman is coaching the U.S. team at the Olympiad, and Mesgen Amanov may be repeating his Board 1 appearance for Turkmenistan, so you only have to fight your way past two Grandmasters this year.)  Angelo Young and Albert Chow are among the many-time winners looking to add another title to the collection.

Here's a link.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This used to be a great tournament. It's too bad Wisconsin (and Indiana, etc.) players are no longer welcome at it.

Good luck anyhow.

Bill Brock said...

Everyone from every state is most welcome!

To the best of my recollection, the following restriction was made by the organizer without the approval of the ICA Board:

"Prizes (non-IL players eligible for max 3rd place in Overall Prizes and 2nd place prize for rating bracket prizes)"

I understand the argument for restricting 1st place to IL residents: this is the state championship title. But I've played in many state championships in IL and PA in which "foreign" GMs competed. The quality of the title was not diluted in these events.

Anonymous said...

Please don't insult my intellignce. "most welcome" and "unable to win prizes" are highly contradictory. I will not be coming to this tournament, and I will discourage others from coming. BTW, Minnesota allows 'foreigners' to compete as well. Restricting the state championship to IL players makes sense, but be honest and make it a closed tournament next year, or offer a separate trophy to IL residents.

Bill Brock said...

You and I are on the same page.

I have already taken up the matter with the ICA board, and I am advocating a return to an Open distribution of prizes for 2013.

Feel free to drop me a line ( billbrock1958@gmail.com )and I'll tell you a bit more.