2011 State Closed Championship
“There’s something in the water of Wausau”
Written by Benjamin Corcoran

First of all, I want to welcome the new board members of the WCA, Matt Conant and Robin Grochowski. Matt Conant is a strong chess expert from Green Bay. Robin Grochowski is a strong tournament chess player, a tournament director, and tournament organizer from Milwaukee.

This was one exciting tournament with a total of forthy-eight players. Twenty-one in the Open, nineteen in the Reserve, eight in the Scholastic, and one house player (me) that got beat up a lot during the tournament. Seven of the twenty-one players in the Premier section were experts, and were ready to do some battle to acquire the title of State Champ!

It was an all out win in the Scholastic section with Leo Ma achieving a perfect score of five! I want to thank Chief TD Dennis Kosterman for staying on top of the section and making sure that all conflicts (none) were resolved! Interestingly in one of the early rounds, someone signed out one of the analog clocks. A few minutes later, the two opponent’s came back to the TD table, because neither of them could figure out how to operate it. This is surely a sign that the digital age has arrived!

The Reserve section was quite interesting throughout the tournament. Nothing too crazy in the first round but the second round produced 3 upsets from Myaskovsky, Smith, and Pahl. Talking about upsets, the upset of the tournament came from Loren Anderson in round three with an upset of over 700 points. The player to watch out for in the Reserve section was Dmitry Myaskovsky. Dmitry Myaskovsky was on a roll going into the fifth round with a perfect score up to that point only to lose to Yuanqi Cai. Dmitry Myaskovsky came back in the 6th round to clinch the Reserve Trophy with a score of 5 out of 6.

Fact, in the Premier section, Ernesto Lizarendo got to play 4 out of the 5 WCA board members. Many battles took place in the Open section as only 15 games were drawn including 5 in the last round. The person to watch out for was expert David Jin. David Jin scored 4 wins, 2 draws, and no losses in 6 rounds. The highlights of David’s tournament were the win against Kelly Borman and draws against Tomas Ulrich and Dane
Mattson.

So I say congrats to David Jin on making history in Wisconsin chess by becoming the 2011 State Champ! Also, congrats to Dmitry Myaskovsky on almost having a perfect record in clinching the Reserve section of the state championship. Not to forget that Leo Ma won the Scholastic section on a high note.