6 players are tied for 1st at the 2009 US Open. There are 5 qualifying spots available for the US Championships. I believe that GMs Lenderman, Kudrin, Yermonlinsky, Kraai, and Gurevich earned the 5 spots since IM Stopa is a foreign player from Poland.
IM Gergely Antal of Texas Tech University tied for 7th with 7 points since he was not able to score a full point against one of the top seeds, GM Becerra of Miami. He has to settle for only one national title, the US Tournament of College Champions.
Top 10 finishers:
No. Ttl Name St Rate Pts
1-6 IM Lenderman, Alex NY 2638 7.5
GM Kudrin, Sergey CT 2602 7.5
GM Yermolinsky, Alex SD 2584 7.5
IM Stopa, Jacek TX 2565 7.5
GM Kraai, Jesse CA 2552 7.5
GM Gurevich, Dmitry IL 2523 7.5
7-17 GM Shabalov, Alexande PA 2624 7.0
GM Becerra, Julio J FL 2616 7.0
IM Finegold, Benjamin P MI 2603 7.0
GM Kosteniuk, Alexandra FL 2574 7.0
GM Mitkov, Nikola IL 2554 7.0
IM Ippolito, Dean J NJ 2535 7.0
IM Antal, Gergely TX 2495 7.0 (Texas Tech)
IM Fernandez, Daniel TX 2468 7.0
Molner, Mackenzie S NJ 2446 7.0
Holt, Conrad KS 2315 7.0
Homa, Seth MI 2302 7.0
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Go Knight Raiders!
Good for the 5 qualifiers, because I believe all 5 came close to qualifying last year and were edged out. Sorry for Ben Finegold who maybe would have been better off playing in round 9.
I think Lendermen should have won.
He was the only player of the six that tied that had seven wins!
I know in the end the scores were the same, but I like to see players
go for the win instead of the draw.
Using most wins as the tie breaking method would encourage gambling on wins instead of settling for draws.
Ira