2025 Winter Open Individual Scholastic

2025 Winter Open Individual Scholastic

 

The Illinois Chess Association is happy to congratulate Bill Buklis from King Registration Dam Wilson from Wilson Chess for running our first ICA tour event for 2025. As a wonderful side event for the scholastic players, they offered a scholastic event with lower rated sections compared to the main event. The event was held from January 4, 2025. This tournament was held in Schaumburg, Illinois. There was also the main three-day event from January 3 to January 5, 2025. The main Tim Just Winter Open is presented in a second article which can be found here.

 

The tournament had three sections: Under 1200, Under 800 and Under 500. In total, there were almost 150 participants, 5 of which were ICA members. The tournament consisted of five rounds of game 25 with a 5 delay.

 

 

The Trophies, courtesy of Wilson Chess

 

Under 1200

 

We had a very exciting last round with a two-way tie for first entering the last round with a perfect 4 points out of 4 going into the last round.  Pierce Wei defeated Pratheek Gajula to end up with a perfect 5 points. We ended up with four more players going into the last round with 3 points and winning, causing a 5-way tie for second with 4 points. The four other players besides Pratheek Gajulak were Eesha Kumar, Shrinath Hariharan, Eyal Senthilkumar, and Phani Nihit Surikuchi. Pratheek ended up with second place honors on tie-brakes.

 

Picture Courtesy of Wilson Chess

 

Here are the players that finished with at least three and a half points:

Under 800

 

We had a very exciting last round.  Michael Juchems was the only player with a perfect 4 out of 4 wins going into the last round. He defeated Shivank Prathipati who started the last round with 3.5 out of 4 points. Mesen Yang also started the last round with 3.5 points and defeated Milo Soohov to come into second place. Two other players started the last round with 3.5 points and drew each other to end up with 4 points: Loga Alexander Pauley and Ansh Raina. Three other players also finished with 4 points by winning their last game: Vikram Gollapudi, Rylan Ingrum and Navya Gupta.

 

 

Picture Courtesy of Wilson Chess

 

Here are the players that finished with at least three and a half points:

 

 

Under 500

 

There was a four-way tie for first place with a perfect 4 out of 4 points going into the last round, making for an exciting finish.  Adele Mathis defeated Luc Amin and Samarth Singh defeated Wellington Zhou. Adele ended up winning first pace on tiebreaks 

 

Picture courtesy of Wilson Chess

 

Here are the players that finished with at least three and a half points:

 

 

We want to congratulate the following scholastic players that increased their ratings by at least 50 points:

 

Linked here is a complete cross-table for the event, courtesy of King Registration, and linked here is the US rating report. Following these links, you can view the full results across any sections instead of the abbreviated standings above. Linked here is a recap with many pictures and cross tables courtesy of Wilson Chess for the event. Once again, we are happy to congratulate everybody who participated and gave it their best in this tournament and to congratulate Bill Buklis along with King Registration and Dan Wilson from Wilson Chess for running the tournament so smoothly. We also want to thank the 5 Illinois Chess Association members that came out and supported the scholastic side event for our first ICA tour event for 2025.