Holiday Inn-Neenah, Neenah

We did it! The 2013 US Open in Middleton was a smashing success with 514 participants. I especially want to thank the 137 Wisconsinites who participated. There were minimal issues and everyone loved the hotel and Greenway Station neighborhood. While I haven’t seen the final accounting yet, the event, which normally loses money for the USCF and who consider breaking even a good year, should make money this year.

Congratulations to Wisconsin resident GM Josh Friedel who tied for first with 8 points and won the Armageddon playoff for the title and a spot in the 2014 US Championships. Good luck Josh! I also want to congratulate Kenosha’s Scott Haubrich for winning clear first amongst the experts with 7 points.

The 2013 US Open was the first in Wisconsin since 1953. (An earlier one was in 1935.) The Convention Bureau and hotel are interested in a bid for 2018 but we’ll have to wait and see what transpires. The event is booked thru 2016 and there was talk last year of going back to Vancouver, WA for 2017 but the east coast needs to have the event there as it hasn’t been there since 2007.

Our juniors had another great year! Congratulations to Madison’s Awonder Liang who last March became the youngest master in US history and just last week he cracked the 2300 level! Congratulations to Kenosha’s Anupama Rajendra for winning the under 20 section of the 2013 Kasparov Chess Foundation’s All-Girl’s National Championships. Awonder and Anupama qualify for the 2013 World Youth in the United Arab Emirates in late December. We wish them the best of luck and if anyone wishes to donate to defray their expenses, please contact the families. Milwaukee’s Alexander Velikanov recently won the under 16 section of the North American Youth Championships.

The USCF had another very good year financially. The numbers are still being tallied but there should be a small profit in a year in which we had to sponsor our Olympiad teams and also the Woman’s World Team Championship which was moved up into the fiscal year. Hopefully we can have a profit for 2014 as we only have the men’s World Team Championship to sponsor.

The office purchased a lot of new computer equipment in the spring and has been installing it. This includes new servers and a new phone system. Hopefully productivity will increase and response times improve.

The USCF continues to wait on the IRS to make it a 501(c)3 organization. The IRS responded to us with a list of follow-up questions and now we need to wait again for their response to our answers.

The plan is to have a new rule book (6th edition) ready by next summer.

I’m currently on a committee that is making recommendations on the USCF’s website. If you have any suggestions, please get those to me. We know we need a far better search engine, for instance.

The Executive Board is close to naming a new Executive Director.

The WCA had a down year financially in 2012. This continues our good year/bad year cycle for a sixth year in a row. Later in this meeting we’ll be discussing a new way to hold this meeting.

When deciding on when to hold an event, tournament organizers need to contact the state tournament clearinghouse director Guy Hoffman to find open dates on the tournament calendar. Guy can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Following this meeting, in our next WCA Board of Director’s meeting we’ll be electing our two delegates for next year’s national meetings which will be held in St. Louis in August.

The WCA sponsors the Marshall Rohland Memorial/Wisconsin Closed Championship, the Arpad Elo Open, the William Martz Memorial/North Central Open, the Wisconsin Memorial and the Wisconsin Junior Open and Veterans Tournaments. All are open for bids from state organizers and/or tournament directors. If you are interested in more details on how to bid for these events, please contact any board member.

Congratulations to Whitefish Bay High School, Neenah and Madison West for tying for first at the State Scholastic Championships. Congratulations to Brookfield’s Wisconsin Hills Middle School for repeating as the K-8 State Team Championship and to Madison’s Glenn Stephens Elementary School for also repeating as the K-5 State Team Championship title. Last March 426 Wisconsin students participated in the State Scholastic Championships at UW-Oshkosh.

Being the host state for the US Open, our alternates in the youth invitational events were able to participate if there were an odd number of participants otherwise. Luckily all three were able to play. In the 2013 Arnold Denker Tournament of High School Champions, our alternate Alexander Velikanov finished tied for 4th with a 4-1-1 result. Our representative was Thomas Ulrich who was a half point behind and tied for 7th. In the Dewain Barber Tournament of K-8 State Champions, our representative, Awonder Liang, finished 4-2 which tied for 6th while his brother Adream was our alternate and finished 1-1-4. In the inaugural National Girls Invitational, our representative Anupama Rajendra finished 3-2-1 and our alternate Alena Huang finsished 2-2-2. So all of our youth finished with an even score or better. Congratulations to them all for their fine performance.

Congratulations to David Jin for capturing the 2012 Wisconsin Chess Tour title. Organizers desiring to have their event considered for Tour status need to contact Tour Committee Chair Guy Hoffman by November of the year before the tour. Tour standings are listed on our website www.wischess.org.

Tournament organizers are able to add calendar entries to our website calendar and we encourage them to do so. It is free advertising for their events. We have received only a couple of news stories this year and depend on the state players, organizers and TD’s to supply content. If you have an interesting game to share or wish to write up a chess tournament or event, please do so and send it to Arlen Walker or me. Arlen may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Along with mine, the terms of office of Guy Hoffman and Wade Christensen expire today. I want to thank all of the Board members for their hard work and dedication this past year.