Congratulations to Ryan Pronk from Forest, VA who won the VA Open, and also continues his fifth year run as the Virginia State Champion.  Impressive!! The only player to win a game from Ryan was Buck Smith who had a win apiece in 1st round of the tournament.

Congratulations to IM John Webster, Bobby Gerringer, Buck Smith, and Bill Salot as placing 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. I would like to mention there appears to be zenith improvement on Buck Smith's performance.

Mr. Buck Smith opened our pre-tournament business meeting with prayer. We had a moment of silence for our recently deceased players: Bill Stanley 93 from Greensboro, NC died 6/29/2015; George Murphy 99 from Youngstown, NC died 6/20/2015; and Roger Creech 84 form Ayden, NC died 8/28/2014; L.W. Newson 93 form Winston-Salem, NC died 4/1/2015; and H.O. Baldree 98 from Farmville, NC died 2/14/2015.

Buck welcomed seventeen VA & NC players to the 98th Annual Old Dominion Checker Association's Virginia State Open, and mentioned their appreciation for the eleven NC players who support and participate in the VA Open. 

Virginia has used the Super 8 hotel in Bedford, VA for twelve straight years, this being the thirteenth year which we booked 15 rooms and the playing room in January of 2015 for 9/18 - 9/19. The hotel was sold in the 2nd quarter of this year and management did not honor our arrangements which we didn't realize until Jeff Webster was told there was no reservations for a checker tournament for these dates when he called August 26th. They first said there were no record of our reservations or confirmations, but later said the room confirmations were reserved under JR Smith but no playing room. The price went up from $60 to $99 without the playing room. Due to the essence of time, we decided to move the tournament to the Econo Lodge in Burlington, NC since we anticipate a good number of NC players were planning to attend and the Econo Lodge was happy to accommodate our checker tournament on short notice from our prior NC tournament business.

Players were welcomed to Econo Lodge Hotel by a nice office desktop display announcing "The  98th Annual Old Dominion Checker Association Virginia State Open Tournament"  and the Tournament schedule posted on playing room wall.

In the business meeting it was mentioned that Ryan Pronk has set up a social media “Twitter” account to increase more checker playing awareness. https://twitter.com/ODCACheckers and Travis Weddle created/published and maintains their vacheckers.org site which is dedicated to the beginner checker players. He also announced he would be live streaming some of today's games on USTREAM: www.ustream.tv/channel. As it turn out the hotel’s WiFi was unreliable and dropped connections quite frequently, but we managed to get some good portions of Ryan vs Weddle in the 5th round.

Buck Smith, President of ODCA, covered the Virginia Tournament Schedule and Rules which allow only one repair if necessary in the final (eight) round and the bye is awarded to the lowest point player as 3 points when an odd number of players make up a bracket or division. Buck said we would be played a single class of modified Swiss (1 repair if necessary).

Ryan Pronk has been working for a while on trying to secure a sponsor/donation for this year’s VA tournament. We appreciate his success in getting a donation through a connection at work. A co-worker's wife works for Kroger Company (a corporate retail food chain - NYSE: KR), and when she learned more about Virginia checkers, and saw a social media presence and NC & VA Checkers website, she wanted to gift us a generous amount of money. She told Ryan that even though the food will be from Kroger, it's not official and it's not something they can write off on their taxes or anything. So all-in-all, it's just a friendly goodwill gesture on her part.

We are also grateful for the $300 donation Joe McDaniel gave us. Ryan used the Kroger money to buy veggie, meat, & fruit party trays for the tournament food spread and McDaniel's gift to supplement the prize fund. All players signed a “Thank You Cards” for both donations.

Total prize fund was from the $20 entry fees (17x$20=$340) plus the $300 from Joe McDaniel, totaling $640 for the cash prize fund. 

We also appreciate Gayle Smith who brought an assortment of cheese and crackers, drinks and bottle water. Mike Ross brought a dish of honey cube squares prepared by his wife Judy, and a bag of his organically grown muscadines & scuppernongs.

Joe Healy a 1st time checker tournament player brought his nice Crisloid checkerboard & checkers which Travis used in his video streaming.

Buck Smith, recognized Ryan Pronk as the 2015 Virginia State Champion to be entered into the Virginia State Champion Winners Roster. This is Ryan's 5th VA State Championship in a row. He also recognized the other players who finished high in the tournament.

Ratings are from ACF: Before and After Ratings are the results of a player's rating before this tournament and after it is recalculated from this score-sheet by ACF rating processor, Joe Moore.

"T" separates player's opponent from player's game points: Draw is 1, Win is 2 points, Bye is 3, and Forfeit is 4.

We appreciate Buck Smith for directing this VA State Checker Tournament and Ryan Pronk & Travis Weddle for assisting him.

Happy Birthday to Bill Salot! He will be 86 years young on Sunday, September 20th, 2015 and our oldest player at the tournament, and the youngest player would be Ryan Pronk who turn 29 February 10th, and Mike Ross who just celebrated his 62nd birthday on September 15th.

Congratulations! Buck and Barbara, who will celebrate their 59th Anniversary on Wednesday, September 23rd. Barbara, Gayle, and Carolyn were some of the wives who attend or visited us.

There was a supply of official boards & checker sets, and 3-Move decks available for sale (same as ACF store without shipping.) We also had our ACF Promo Brochure leaflet hand-out available for new players.

The next four checker tournaments were announced: Saturday, September 26, “Mayberry Days” in Mount Airy, NC; Illinois 101 October 3rd & 4th in Marion, IL; Kentucky Open, October 10th & 11th in Richmond, KY; and District 3/PA Open, Grove City, PA.

We are sadden to hear about Rocky Swift's Dad, Burt Swift who died Saturday, September 20th. We send Rocky & Family our deepest sympathy and prayers. Rocky is one of our newest players who attended our NC State Open in May. 

This VA tournament is always a pleasure to attend, its great to compete with the Virginians, top quality checker players. Most everyone enjoyed a nice lunch or dinner with checker friends.