After three rounds, seven people held perfect scores: Sarkar, GM Kaufman, FM Del Mundo, Larkins, Hamilton, Johnson and Pinkerton. FM Enkhbat lost in round 2 to Chris Johnson in a wild game. With 117 players it is really easy to wind up with multiple winners at 5-0 unless draws diminish the winners total each game.

In the fourth round, Sarkar beat Chris Johnson and Larry Larkins upset GM Larry Kaufman. It still feels funny writing GM after his lifetime as an IM but winning the World Senior Championship the previous weekend in Germany certainly qualified him as a Grandmaster. Anton Del Mundo (2007 US Open co-champ) beat Tim Hamlton, FM Dan Yeager (Denker and lots of national scholastic titles) picked off James Pinkerton to create the final round lineup. Sarkar and Del Mundo would square off on board one with 4-0 scores and Yeager would play Larkins and his perfect 4-0 score. Two Expert late entrants, having worked their way through the field at 3-0 would also be playing for a piece of the pie: Loran Bela Kis and Alejandro Fernandez.

Sarkar was clearly the man to beat in the tournament. Justin was a little underrated as #1 at 2487 as he is usually over 2500 with several GM norms.  He took down Del Mundo in 31 moves to reach perfection at 5-0 while Larkins was still playing Yeager. Yeager eventually won, moving into second place with 4.5. Fernandez joined him in the 2nd-3rd tie at 4.5 with a win over Kis.

Larkins, Yang Dai and Alex Passov took expert with 4-1. Five A players with 4-1 shared that money and they were Majur Juac, Patrick Ramsey, Tim Rogalski (loving the 11 minute drive!), John Farrell and Chris Snell.

Class B was won outright by Matt Freeman with 3.5 and Deodato Obregon took top Unrated with 3.5. This gave him a nice initial rating of 1875. Four C players scored 3-2 to share that prize: Hercules Del Mundo, Edward Lippman, Richard Li and Abhishek Penumala. Hans Li took the Top D by himself with 3, a score also reached by Krisha Korapolu who took the U1200

Darwin Li didn't win any money, but he went over 2000 in this event for the first time. Hans Li gained 80 points with his taking the Class D prize, making it a 500 point year for him. Krisha Korupolu gained 222 points in this event, moving from 1131 - 1352! Isuru Attanagoda gained 80 points. Even in the days of monthly rating supplements it cannot keep up with an active and rapidly improving scholastic player. Attanagoda was listed at 1152 but was actually rated 1356 and he is now 1436. He has gained almost 900 points this year!

Anyone who tried to make a living predicting the turnout on chess tournaments would starve to death. This tournament in Springfield had averaged 83 players over the previous four years. An increase of almost 50% almost certainly was related to the novelty of a major tournament in Loudon County and the tournament-starved players coming out in droves to support the event. The setup was for 96 players and 5 additional tables were added during registration. VCF should be having more events at the hotel, with certainly the 2009 Northern Virginia Open here and possibly another event next year. Thanks to all who came, supported the event and had a great time.

The Manager of the Sierra Hotel contacted me with some complaints of chessplayer behavior during the tournament.

• "Eating off the breakfast buffet" ( Announcements were made on both playing days and signs were up at the tournament telling players that the food was only for paying hotel guests. It is hard to understand why chessplayers would think that they were entitled to free food, essentially stealing from the hotel
• "Taking over our Bistro area seating in the evening, making our (paying) Hotel guests unable to find seating for dinner." This one is hard to manage with 117 players and having to be somewhere, but paying hotel guests have priority to Bistro seating during dinner, but this is my fault for not policing it better
• "Bringing outside food a and beverage into the hotel bistro." Common sense ought to lead one to think that outside food would not be permitted in an area that the hotel sells food!
• The noise levels and the lack of respect for the hotel (scuffing up walls, leaving trash lying around, breaking items) from the friends/family.  I don't know why players at a tournament generally feel that they can do anything they want to do, leave trash at the tables, not pick up after themselves, and for kids - to run through the hotel making noise. I had to speak to numerous kids to quiet down and to one to stop scraping the tournament window and then he starting scraping the walls
  
  "This, of course, is not encompassing all the friends/family, (majority were a pleasure!!) but there was enough concern from hotel guests to discuss their concerns with myself and other staff.  We also know that we are a smaller hotel, but I can imagine that even larger hotels would run into this problem. For future, I recommend that the players be given an acknowledgement form of general "hotel rules" that they and their families must abide by.  We will also place signage in our public and breakfast areas.

For the next event, I'll have to hand out behavioral expectations to all players and families. It will probably be our last chance, to show civilized behavior or lose the site. As her e-mail suggested, it wasn't everyone and it never is. A small minority is always capable of ruining it for everyone. I would expect parents to do a better job in policing their children and keeping them quiet and under control. Players in general seem to completely forget that when they stand in the hallway outside the playing room, that people inside are bothered by their loud talking. We simply have to do better as a group next time or a nice site will vanish!