The 49th Running of the Western Open has completed, with a 5-way tie for this year’s first place between IM’s Kriventsov, Smetankin, Young, FM Stamnov, and NM Tennant. Top Expert prize went to Erik Santarius, while first place in Class A was another 5-way tie: Gary Aranovich, Patrick McElwee, Jeremy Lynch, Paul Fricano, and Mehmed Covic.

The Reserve Section was won by Rishi Sethi, who also won the trophy for top Junior, with a four-way tie for second between Jimmy Yu, Matthew Hass Laszlo Nazodi and John Bowen. Class C prizes went to Ben Rothschild and Sasha Velikanov, While Ben Anzis won Class D and Sriram Datla won Class E.

With three IM’s, seven players in all above 2200, and 14 total players above 2000, this was the strongest Western in years. Thanks to all who helped make the event what it was.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 10:27 am and is filed under Chess News, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.