2009 U.S. Chess Championships

Knock me over with a feather, darlings! I read about this last night but was just too tired to post about it. Instead of an 11th hour bid coming in to save the U.S. Chess Championships, there is actually a venue AND a total prize purse of $100,000 several months in advance! The venue is none other than the fabulous new chess club that recently opened in St. Louis, Missouri: This is an abbreviated version of the article that appeared at (I think) USCF, at the St. Louis Business Journal Online, August 21, 2008: The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis has been selected by the U.S. Chess Federation to host the 2009 U.S. Championship. The championship will be held May 2009. Invitations to potential tournament participants will be issued to some of the top-rated U.S. players, top-rated women and wild card participants who will be announced later. It will be a nine-round event, using the Swiss system with one round per day and a rest day between rounds five and six. Games will be played with 40 moves in two hours, with the remaining moves in one hour. The championship will have a purse of $100,000, with $30,000 awarded to the winner, twice the amount of last year's tournament. The center, which was founded by retired investment fund manager Rex Sinquefield and opened in July, is located at 4657 Maryland Ave. in the Central West End. The three-level, 6,000-square-foot facility features DGT chessboards, wooden chess tables, LCD-screen televisions, overhead paging and an adjustable lighting system.

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With top prize at $30,000 I imagine that will attract more top GM talent.

Will a different prize structure be in place for the women players who, given the round-robin structure, will be mixed in playing against men and likely several of them end at the bottom of the results? What will make it worthwhile for any of them to play if their prizes should be lower than they earned in the 2008 U.S. Women's Championship? (I assume this will not be allowed to happen, but who knows?) How many players will be invited? What is the break-down of the prize structure?

This is a great coup for the USCF and I wonder, what is the story behind this gift from Heaven?

This is not meant to be a dis on Frank K. Berry, who single-handedly rescued the US Chess Championships after A4FC's contract terminated with USCF with the completion of the 2006 U.S. Chess Championships. Despite advertising for months in the useless Chess Life Magazine - yeah, like top corporate execs and sponsors READ it or visit Chesslife Online, lol! - only Mr. Berry put together consecutive bids for the 2007 and 2008 Men's and Women's championships. Without him, these events would most likely not have been held.

In addition to providing playing venues both years (I have no idea how much this cost; I assume it would be several thousands of dollars more), Mr. Berry also provided prizes worth $55,000 cash for the 2008 Men's Championship, with an additional prize for the Men's Champion as an instructor on a cushy cruise worth another $5,000, and $25,000 cash for the 2008 Women's Championship, for a total of $85,000. In 2007, Men's cash prizes totalled $65,000, of which $25,000 was provided by Eric Anderson of AF4C (I do not know if these funds were ever received by USCF). The Women's Championship prize fund was $25,000. So, over the course of two years, Mr. Berry provided prizes of at least $145,000 plus the cost of providing the playing venues plus the cost of the cruise package for the 2008 U.S. Chess Champion.

Thank you, Mr. Berry, for your generous sponsorship which allowed a totally disfunctional and unworthy USCF to keep the U.S. Chess Championships going for the past two years. Will Mr. Sinquefield prove to be as generous as you were - or will the entrenched bureaucrats at USCF manage to disgust him and chase him away too?