Chicago Open
Chicago Open (or CO) is a summer open tournament held annually in the Chicago metropolitan area, generally occurring in the last week of July or first week of August. Its most distinguishing features are its extremely high difficulty (often more difficult than the year's ICT or ACF Nationals) and its extremely competitive field, which usually make Chicago Open the most challenging all-subject set of the calendar year.
A true open tournament, Chicago Open attracts current college players, retired or graduated players, and, occasionally, ambitious high school (or middle school) players. Participants generally play on mixed teams not limited by school affiliation.
Because the CO field draws a field from across the continent (and sometimes the UK), it is typicaly not mirrored elsewhere. From 2005 to 2009, Berkeley hosted a small West Coast mirror called BASQUE; smaller mid-Atlantic mirrors existed at various points in the early to mid-2000s [1].
History
The first Chicago Open was held in 1999 as the successor to Virginia Open, a similar tournament held at Virginia in 1997 and 1998. After many years under the stewardship of first Andrew Yaphe and then Subash Maddipotti, its editorship has rotated based on the interest and availability of well-regarded editors and players, with each new editor or editing team approved by its predecessor. After some early house-written events, CO has established itself as a true packet-submission event, for which every participating team must write a packet.
From 1999 to 2017, every instance of CO was hosted at The University of Chicago. Due to changes in room reservation policy, the tournament moved to Northwestern University for the first time in 2018 and has been held there ever since. Jocular references to recent instances of the tournament as "Chicanston Open" or "Evanston Open" are largely discouraged.
In most years through 2015 (except 2009), the tournament was a full round-robin among all participating teams, which often lasted well into the evening. Since 2016, the event has run a shorter schedule using preliminary brackets and crossover games due to the demands of a growing field. (This did not, however, stop the 2018 iteration from going past 11 p.m., or the 2022 iteration from going slightly past midnight.)
Unusual prizes
In 2014, Andrew Hart introduced a traveling trophy, which the aim being that a member of the winning team would get to keep until the next year's CO is held. It disappeared quickly and its current whereabouts are uncertain.
In 2023, tournament director Em Gunter awarded a small stuffed Blåhaj shark to each member of the winning team.
Side events
Chicago Open typically occurs alongside several side events; these have included a roughly biennial trash tournament and subject tournaments in science, history, literature, and, more recently, a variety of arts events. Since 2011, the main tournament has stood alone on Saturday, with all side events occurring on Sunday.
Table of Champions
* Tournament held at Northwestern
† Broken stats link
Victories by Player
| Number of Victories | Players |
|---|---|
| One Win | Albert Whited (1999), Mike Angel (2001), Dave Hamilton (2001), Chris Borglum (2003), Raj Dhuwalia (2003), Seth Kendall (2003), Kelly McKenzie (2003), Paul Litvak (2004), Matt Lafer (2006), Dave Rappaport (2006), Will Turner (2006), Sudheer Potru (2007), Jonathan Magin (2008), Jerry Vinokurov (2008), Brendan Byrne (2009), Rob Carson (2009), Kevin Koai (2010), Richard Mason (2010), Dallas Simons (2010), Chris Ray (2012), Evan Adams (2014), , Jacob Reed (2016), Will Alston (2017), Shan Kothari (2018), Adam Silverman (2018), Adam S. Fine (2019), Jakob Myers (2019), Clark Smith (2019), Andrew Wang (2021), Ophir Lifshitz (2021), Nick Jensen (2022), Taylor Harvey (2022), Jonathen Settle (2022), Geoffrey Chen (2023) |
| Two Wins | Tom Waters (1998–99), R. Hentzel (2000, 2002), Emily Pike (2000, 2002), Ezequiel Berdichevsky (2001, 2005), Mike Sorice (2005, 2007), Andrew Ullsperger (2005, 2007), Andrew Hart (2009, 2011), Selene Koo (2011, 2013), John Lawrence (2012–13), Tommy Casalaspi (2014–15), Matt Jackson (2015, 2023) |
| Three Wins | Eric Hillemann (1998, 2000, 2002), Andrew Yaphe (2001, 2004, 2006), Jeff Hoppes (2004, 2011, 2013), Seth Teitler (2004, 2011, 2013), Auroni Gupta (2015, 2017, 2019), Will Nediger (2016-17, 2023) |
| Four Wins | Eric Mukherjee (2008, 2012, 2014, 2016); Jordan Brownstein (2016, 2021-23) |
| Five Wins | |
| Six Wins | Matt Weiner (2005, 2007–10, 2018), Matt Bollinger (2012, 2014–15, 2017–18, 2021) |
Trivia
To the dismay of editors who labored over finals packets, a team cleared the field at every Chicago Open from 2012 through 2017.