Talk:U.S. Open Chess Championship

Need history and winners from 1967 to today

The source I used was printed in 1967. It does a pretty good job of covering the first 68 years of the tournament, but the article needs info for the last 40 years. Some of this is probably available on the internet, but I haven't checked yet. Quale 04:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Tie-breaks?

A question came up about the 1973 tournament. According to several sources, Duncan Suttles scored 10 to share first place. In fact it was a five-way tie for first which Norman Weinstein won on tie-break, even though Suttles beat him in their individual game. Chess Life & Review, October 1973, p. 556, "Record U.S. Open in Chicago: Norman Weinstein Wins on Tiebreak". Tied at 10 points were Weinstein, Suttles, Walter Browne, Greg DeFotis (Illinois), and Ruben Rodriguez (Philippines). Each earned $1080, which must be a five-way split of the total of first through fifth place prizes and accounts for more than half of the total $10,000 prize fund. Weinstein won the tiebreak, and the article comments that he faced by far the toughest competition, playing six of the seven top-ranked players in the tournament. (Aside from Weinstein, Suttles, and Browne, the only other player in the top 13 who I recognize is William Lombardy, placing 6–13 with 9½. The special prizes rewarded some players lower in the table. One of the eight players tied with Lombardy at 9½, Thomas Wozney (Ohio), collected $500 to Lombardy's $162.50 because he won the Expert 1st prize. Yasser Seirawan won the premier section with 8½ to collect $350, also out-earning Lombardy.) Suttles must certainly have been the moral victor, as he beat both Weinstein and Browne in their individual games, including a dramatic win over tournament leader Browne in the final round to claim a share of first. Since the "official" source (or at least the 2006 USCF Yearbook cited in the article lists only Weinstein as the winner I've removed Suttles from 1973. I don't know how to resolve the apparent contradiction that for some years several winners are listed (were ties not broken for those years for some reason?) and yet for others they are. I hope to add a little detail about as many of the years (a single short paragraph) as I can. Maybe that will uncover other years where there were ties that aren't reported in the list that the USCF compiled. I think it would be good in tournament winners tables to indicate which wins were on tie-break. (Ken Whyld uses an * in his tables to indicate a win on tie-break, usually giving only the name of the winner.) Unfortunately we have to be careful if we don't have complete information. It would be a mistake to mark Weinstein's win as being on tie-break unless we can mark all of the wins on tie-break. If one tie-break win is marked, the reader will naturally expect that all tie-break wins are marked. Quale (talk) 23:51, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

It appears, from the accounts in the chessgames.com U.S. Open Tournament Index, that in several years in the 1950's and 60's, trophies were awarded, and tie-breaking systems had to be applied. The 1955 and 1957 tournaments were noteworthy for disputes about ties. I do not know if 1973 was one of the years in which a trophy or other non-divisible prize was awarded. In more recent years, I do not recall seeing anything in the reports in Chess Life about ties being broken. I would be inclined to use something like Whyld's system, of listing all the tied players but marking the tie-break winner with an asterisk, if all that information were available to list. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:21, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Edits of 7 April and 19 April 2016

There is no "Vice World Champion of chess". I have edited the description of Viktor Korchnoi to not claim this title for him.

Although Korchnoi played in the 1983 tournament, and that tournament was the largest, it does not logically follow that the former caused the latter. I have edited the text to not make that claim.

What are your sources for the claim that the tournament declined in attendance and importance? To what years are you referring? Can you cite the attendance figures? It is not obvious to me from looking at the list of winners that the tournament has ever declined in importance in recent years. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

The source for the claim that the tournament declined in attendance and importance is the chessgames.com "US Open Tournament Index" (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1021137), from which it was taken almost verbatim. Since this is already in the list of references (I had put it there myself), I am removing the "citation needed" tag. I would like, however, to replace the present very sketchy treatment of the topics of tournament attendance, strength, and importance with something more substantial. Bruce leverett (talk) 18:05, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Fischer Random aka 9LX aka chess 960 - Where is GM Larry Kaufman?

In 2021 book chess board options: A Memoir of Players, Games and Engines Larry Kaufman says:

> I am a strong advocate of Fischerandom (Chess960), and in 2010 I won (on tiebreak) the first and only U.S. Open Championship of that variant, so I suppose I am technically still the official U.S. Open FRC champion.

http://www.uschess.org/results/2010/usopen/?page=STANDINGS&xsection=fischer Thewriter006 (talk) 12:41, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

@Thewriter006: That is outside of the scope of this article, which covers standard chess only, but Kaufman is mentioned at Fischer_random_chess#Tournaments. Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:19, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Why shouldn't this article cover 9LX too? Thewriter006 (talk) 13:27, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

The Denker Tournament of High School Champions, for example, is covered in a separate article. Covering this 9LX event, which happened once (in 2010) and has not been revived since, does not currently look like an urgent matter. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:14, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Gregory DeFotis

Please create an article on Greg DeFontis, this is his info per chessgames.com:

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=19260 Briaboru (talk) 18:27, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

In general, it's nice to have articles about all the U.S. Open winners, but who is going to write them? One of the first things I did when I started working on Wikipedia was to create Albert Sandrin Jr. It is not much more than a stub, but that may be the best you can do with De Fotis, unless you can dig up some significant coverage of him. I would encourage you to give it a try. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:43, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

John Daniel Bryant

Please create an article on John Bryant. This is his info per chessgames.com:

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=111017 Briaboru (talk) 18:54, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Individual articles for years

Is there any hope or desire to create individual pages for the years the Open's been played?

For instance a page for the "1st U.S. Chess Open Championship, "2nd U.S. Chess Open Championship" and so on. Briaboru (talk) 22:56, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in replying to this.

Generally, the Wikipedia criteria for when it's worthwhile to create an article are described in WP:N, which is about "notability". In a nutshell, a thing has to be famous to be in an encyclopedia. "Famous" means different things to different people, of course, and different things for different topics, but I'll make a stab at what it means for U.S. Open chess tournaments. If such a tournament was covered widely in newspapers or magazines, other than the newspapers in the city or town where it was held, and other than regular chess columns, and other than chess magazines, then one could credibly describe it as "notable". You would then be doing the world a favor if you created an article about it.

As you may have noticed, we don't even have any articles about U.S. Championship tournaments, though that is a more prestigious event in every way than the U.S. Open. We don't have articles about the early American Chess Congresses, which were in effect national championships, either. I would guess that the first American Chess Congress, won by Paul Morphy, was widely covered at the time, and perhaps also the 1958 U.S. Championship, won by Bobby Fischer. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:40, 4 July 2024 (UTC)