Washington's 2015 final GP Report in detail

Speaking of 2015's NW GP, it was a year of complishments for many people like Your's Truly, it was the 1st year he got his name on the top finishers list(at least in the D class). Plus, he got 78 points. Not bad, considering I started late. 

However, special mention must be made to Michael R Munsey(1420). It was HIS 1st time ever being a top finisher as well. Just like me, except, he was Washington's OVERALL winner, with 229.5 points after a 15 year hiatus from chess. Michael played every single weekend, showing his dedication to winning the GP for his state. For his efforts, he wins $335.28(Lucky me I have a head start over him this year). One such tournament to mention is the Emerald City Open. While taking 2 HPBs, Munsey scored wins against Brandon Hitchcock(1168 at the time), Keith Huntzinger(1551 att) and drew against Owen Xuan(1342 att) when his own rating att was 1310. This boosted his rating to the early C Class(1401) where he was for the summer of 2015. However, this all ended when it came to the Vancouver Open in late August. Michael stumbled against David Yoshinaga(1700 att), Andy Tien(1111 att), drew to Sophie Tien(1189 att), and lost to Dave Prideaux(1112 att), stumbling his rating right back down to the D-Class after a good summer.

Like Munsey, a lot of players jumped from the D-Class to the C-Class, all of them failing to overscore the C-Class big 3(Munsey, Piper, and Richards). Two of these players are Vignesh Anand(1538), and Owen Xuan(1518). At one point of the year, they were 1st or 2nd in D. 

This led a lot of late starters, like Your's Truly who started in late May, into the D leaderboards. Brandon Jiang(1260 92pts), who started in mid-february and only played in 9 events swooped in for 1st D outtaking Sophie Tien(1321 90pts) to the 2nd after a good result from the WA Class. Sophie's rating however, did manage to jump huge to the B Class, but that was during December, so it wasn't counted.

Class B was another close class just like Class D. The top 2 contenders, Ishaan Puri(1789 110pts) and Steve Buck(1779 104.5 pts) were just 5.5 points apart. I am frankly surprised to see Steve Buck finish with only 104.5 points because he usually finishes with 200+ points. Last year, he got 1st Class A(1812 272.5 pts), his all time record. Last last year, he got 2nd Class B(1790 208pts). In 2012, he got overall with 230.5 points. Buck has been getting 200+ points since 2010, but until now.

On to the A Class. In A, some interesting things happened. A lot of players like Jason Yu moved from A to X(expert), which made Brent L Baxter(1955 173 pts) clear 1st in it, seperating himself from 2nd Class A (110 pts). However, there was a TIE between 2nd A, Naomi Bashkansky(1955) and Addison Lee(1825). Because of it, they had to SPLIT the 2nd A prize, $41.91 each.

Class X(Expert) was a fairly spread out class. Anthony He(2087) took the lead in it with 177 points being 3rd in the whole WA. And Jason Yu(2026) was 2nd X. Both He and Yu started 2015 in A. He jumped to X in late january, during SCC Quads. Yu jumped to X in July, also during SCC Quads. The other 3, Toshihiro Nagase(2022 106pts), Brendan Zhang(2010 104.5pts), and Paul R Barton(2132 87.5 pts) all started off in expert at the beginning of 2015.

Finally, MASTERS! M was the most spread out class out of them all, considering the players there didn't play much, except for Vik Pupols(2234 173pts), of course, seperating from Bill Schill(2302, 157.5pts). 

Anyways, if you were lost at some point, look at the link right here: http://www.nwchess.com/gp/class/gpbyclass_2015.htm . If you were one of the winners, Congrats! If not, thats ok, because you have 2016.