The first Western Open, held in 1900 in Excelsior MN, was the tournament championship for the Western Chess Association. In 1935, after the Western Chess Association had renamed itself to the American Chess Federation (and renamed the tournament to the American Open) it came to Milwaukee for the first time. When the American Chess Federation and the National Chess Association merged to form the United States Chess Federation, the tournament received its current name, the US Open.

The Western Open was later reborn when the Milwaukee Chess Foundation acquired the name. The rebirth began under the name "New Western Open," later shortened to the "Western Open." After the death of Fred Cramer, who had done so much to keep the tournament going, it acquired its current designation, the Western Open Fred Cramer Memorial.

It was shaping up to be a real Cinderella story. Young Erik Santarius was standing toe-to-toe with the best in the region, and hadn’t blinked.

Round one saw the top of the tournament in no trouble at all. But then came round two, and the story began. IMs Smetankin and Young handled their opponents (Smetankin beating NM Bill Williams and Young beating Ashish Vaja) as did NM Steven Szpisjak and NM Alex Betaneli, who coached Santarius at Madison West. But their comrades at the top didn’t fare as well. FM Ruslan Ahundov, former champion of Turkmenistan, encountered Santarius. Unaware that a 300-point rating deficit should be a fatal handicap, the young man pressed the FM hard, eventually settling for a draw when Ahundov proved too tough a nut to crack completely. And NM Steven Tennant fell to Rene Glen Ancheta in a second upset.

In round three, the story gathered speed.

The 47^th Western Open seemed snakebit. Almost no publicity attempts paid off for the event, ads were lost, regional magazine publication deadlines were missed, almost nothing worked out. As a result, the turnout was the lowest in recent memory.

In the middle of all this came a late email from IM Stanislav Smetankin: would the tournament allow him to play? With an IM (almost a GM, as Smetankin holds a FIDE rating of 2485 with 2 GM norms and is looking for a third) coming, the email campaign began, and the Open section was at least not empty, with 32 players — second highest attendence since the tournament was split into two sections.

The 46^th running of the New Western Open was won by Alex Betaneli and Aleksandar Stamnov, both with scores of 4.5/5. Overall attendence was down a little from last year with 78 total entries to the event. Despite this overall drop, the Open section attendence was up 3 players from last year, while the Reserve section dropped from 54 players to 39.

This third running of the New Western Open once again saw Pal Benko and Robert Byrne fighting for the lead. They were running dead even until round 6, when they met. Benko won that encounter and went on to win the tournament with an unbeaten score of 7.5, giving up a draw in the final round to Byrne's fellow Indianan Martin Harrow, who finished even with Byrne at 6.5. Former French Champion Stephen Popel finished in a tie for 4-11 places with 6.0, his only two losses coming at the hands of Benko and Harrow.