2025 Caveman Chess Festival: America’s Pastime

Organized and run by FM Kevin Bachler and his wife Deborah, the 2025 Caveman Chess Festival had something for everyone. Festivities kicked off Sunday, July 20, with a chess camp that attracted campers ages 7 to 76. Along with grandmasters Boris Avrukh, Dmitry Gurevich, and Yury Shulman, I was an instructor.

From Friday, July 25, through Sunday, July 27, nine tournaments — including three national championship events — took place simultaneously at the Hilton Northbrook hotel in suburban Chicago. Pairings and standings are available here.

2025 U.S. Senior Open

On the first day of the 2025 U.S. Senior Open, news broke that GM Alex Fishbein won a playoff to become the 2025 U.S. Senior Champion. Fishbein had qualified for the 2025 U.S. Senior Championship by winning the 2024 U.S. Senior Open.

Jesse Kraai (L) shakes hands with Julio Morella before their fight for the U.S. Senior Open crown (Photo by Alexey Root)

GM Jesse Kraai finished in second place (behind GM Vladimir Akopian) at the 2024 U.S. Senior Championship, but did not compete this year. By winning the 2025 U.S. Senior Open, Kraai has qualified for the 2026 U.S. Senior Championship. He finished a half-point ahead of the field, after his last-round victory over Cuban FM Julio Morella put him at a 5½/6 finish.

With a 5/6 score, good for a tie for second and third places, were GM Nikola Mitkov and IM Mark Ginsburg. In round 3, as White, Ginsburg offered my husband IM Doug Root a draw on move 9. After Doug refused, they played until move 65 when the game was drawn. Then Ginsburg took a half-point bye and went to the Chicago White Sox versus Chicago Cubs baseball game. The latter team won, 6–1.

While Ginsburg was watching America’s pastime, Doug played another 64 moves in round 4. His game finished so late that Doug and I missed the dinner arranged for the players at the hotel’s restaurant. We ate at a gas station Subway instead.

The next morning, in round 5, Doug lost to Morella after being stuck with a difficult position out of the opening.

In contrast, Ginsburg didn’t lose any games. Perhaps breaks from chess and scoring well are compatible, as Ginsburg finished higher in the standings than both Roots. He certainly seemed rested as he methodically ground out the win in his final game:

Women’s Prizes

Repeating our participation in the 2024 U.S. Senior Open were WCM Natasha Christiansen, Carla Naylor, and me. For the 2025 U.S. Senior Open, Christiansen and Naylor experienced travel delays as ORD (Chicago O’Hare) was shut down intermittently on Thursday, July 24. After circling ORD, Christiansen’s flight diverted to Milwaukee for refueling. Naylor’s original flight was canceled, and she didn’t make it to the hotel until late on Thursday night.

I didn’t even know it was raining, because I was teaching chess campers in a small windowless hotel meeting room. After my teaching duties ended, friends came by to wish me a happy 60th birthday. Late afternoon, Mikhail Korenman and I socialized near the hotel bar. He gave me an update on his chess work with the Cook County Jail. At 6:30 p.m., Andi and Brad Rosen (parents of IM Eric Rosen) and I went out to dinner at Big Bowl Lincolnshire. Andi works for Eric, who is a well-known chess streamer.

Perhaps related to our different Thursday experiences, my Friday results were better than those of Christiansen and Naylor. They lost their first two rounds while I won my round 1 game against Joseph Ross and then drew FM Gregory Markzon in round 2.

After my loss to Bill Brock in round 5 (see above), Christiansen and I each had two points. I thought we might be paired, as I was due Black and she was due White. Instead, our boards were next to each other. After about a dozen moves, she offered a draw to her opponent. Immediately after her draw offer was accepted, I offered my opponent a draw, as my tiebreaks meant that I earned the qualifying spot for the 2026 U.S. Senior Women’s Championship. Christiansen and I split the top two cash prizes for women, which were $500 and $400, earning $450 each. Naylor took the remaining $300 women’s prize.

I did a postmortem with my last-round opponent, Menachem Hemi Fein. Provisionally rated 1371, after 10 US Chess rated games, Fein scored 3/6 at the U.S. Senior Open, an expert-level performance. As a child in Israel in the 1970s, he had a rating of around 1900.

Menachem Hemi Fein, the author's last-round opponent, served as a lovely reminder of why we always go over our games with our opponents. (Photo by Alexey Root)

Fein’s parents are Holocaust survivors. His father’s memoir Boy with a Violin: A Story of Survival was published in English translation by Indiana University Press in 2022. Besides the violin, his father also played chess until he was 95 years old. He is 96 now.

Quick draws are frowned upon as unsporting, and my draw offer to Fein was on move 15. But I am glad I made that offer, as our postmortem gave us a chance to review the moves of our game and to learn about each other’s lives.

U.S. Junior Open

My quick last-round draw also allowed me to kick into high gear for my reporting for this article. Since games were not broadcast, I photographed scoresheets as they were deposited in baskets. I also corralled players and their parents for brief interviews, including the father of IM Evan Park. Earlier in July, they drove from Pittsburgh to St. Louis, where Evan finished last in the U.S. Junior. Then they drove from St. Louis to Chicago, for the U.S. Junior Open.

After winning the U.S. Junior Open, Evan and his father drove to Middleton, WI, site of the U.S. Open. Evan will represent Pennsylvania in the 41st Annual GM Arnold Denker National Tournament of High School State Champions. The Denker is one of several invitationals held in conjunction with the U.S. Open.

Evan Park (L) held Luka Budisavljevic to a draw to clinch a share of the U.S. Junior Open crown (Photo by Alexey Root)

Park drew his last-round game against the only grandmaster in this year’s U.S. Junior Open, Luka Budisavljevic (see the end of the article for the first portion of this game).

Down to the wire! Jason Liang (L) kept pushing against Jesse Ren to eventually win a tough endgame (Photo by Alexey Root)

Equaling Park’s score was IM Jason Liang, who won his sixth-round game after one mistake from his opponent turned a drawn rook-and-pawn endgame into a theoretical win:

Either Park or Liang has earned a qualifying spot for the 2026 U.S. Junior Championship, likely to be held at the Saint Louis Chess Club. This report will be updated when tiebreaks for the qualifying spot are determined.

U.S. Blind Open Championship

The U.S. Blind Open Championship had two entrants, who played a match. Jessica Lauser defeated Rohan Shardha 2–0. Before 2025, Lauser had won the championship six times, in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2024. In 2023, Lauser finished third. She is now a seven-time U.S. Blind Champion.

After completing their match, Lauser and Shardha joined the reserve section of the Medior, aimed primarily at players over age 21 as of 1/1/2025 or under age 50 as of 7/25/2025. They played their games, against sighted players, in the same hotel meeting room where I had taught campers. That separate room allowed for accommodations such as assistants to take notation.

The rest of the games for the Medior took place in a ballroom, which comfortably fit over 400 players from all nine Caveman Chess Festival tournaments. Finishing first in the Medior Open was GM Praveen Balakrishnan. He won his final game to finish with 5½/6. There was another GM in this section, Awonder Liang, but he played in only rounds 3 and round 4, joining late after leaving the Trophée Dole 2025 in Aix en Provence early.

Chartered Bus

Like IM Evan Park and his father, and many others associated with the Caveman Chess Festival, I am now in Middleton, WI, for the U.S. Open. Nineteen of us took a chartered bus from the Hilton Northbrook to the Madison Marriott West. Next year, Kevin Bachler also plans to offer a chartered bus from the 2026 Caveman Chess Festival to the 2026 U.S. Open (Grand Rapids, MI). This year’s bus ride was pleasant and efficient, as was the entire 2025 Caveman Chess Festival.

More Games

Editor's note: It's always a joy to share games from tournaments that do not broadcast games online. Thanks to our reporter's diligent work, we have a few more games to share.

First, the sixth-round win of the Medior Open champ:

Next, Liang's draw against Budisavljevic:

A hard-fought draw against the 2024 Barber champion:

Another game of Doug's, this one a nice endgame win:

Upset alert! In the Senior Open, Gianluca Montalti of New Jersey took down GM Dmitry Gurevich in style:

Finally, we have two partial games from Park. First is the first 40 moves of a game against FM Donald Johnson:

Second, we have the scoresheet of his entire draw against Budisavljevic. If you can tell me what's happening after Black's 16th move, feel free to email me ([email protected]). Here are the first 16 moves:

I'll email Evan after he's done with the Denker to see if we can get the rest of his game against Johnson as well as the rest of this game.