Congratulations to the grade winners:

Grade 1: Cormac Tarnasky  
Grade 2: Platon Bilyk
Grade 3: Zaid Kassas
Grade 4: Vienna Hughey
Grade 5: Loki Lai
Grade 6: Jonah Wong
Grade 7: Zongyan Yu
Grade 8: Matthew Ivanescu
Grade 9: Steven Gun
Grade 10: Aryan Ranjan-Kumar
Grade 11: Richard Bocan
Grade 12: Arshia Jafarmadar

Thanks to Cristian Ivanescu and Dustin Koperski for running the event.

Congratulations to Tymur Keleberda, who won the Northern Alberta Open with a perfect 5/5 score! He secured the win with a final round victory over Omid Malek, who was also contending. Second place was shared by Amir Mohammad Bahmani, Jonathan Wu, and Rafael Arruebarrena at 4/5.

Thanks to Mike Zeggelaar for directing.

Information is posted for the Alberta Blitz Championship and Alberta Rapid Championship, on March 8th and 9th. Registration will be done on-site.

Registration is open for the Edmonton Chess Challenge (March 1) and Calgary Chess Challenge (March 2). These events are by school grade level, 1-12. Info is linked.

Congratulation to the winners of the Edmonton Youth Championship:

U8 – Platon Bilyk (runner up: Aadhavan Suresh)
U10 – Mitchell Bean (Darrin Ma)
U12 – Isaac Sajosh (Leo Roy)
U14 – Matthew Ivanescu (Zlata Butenko)
U16 – Yuri Troitsky (Aryan Ranjan-Kumar)
U18 – Mishka Mathur (Behrad Jadidizadeh)

Thank you to Cristian Ivanescu for organizing.

Registration is open for the Northern Alberta Open, February 15-16 in Edmonton. This is a qualifying tournament for the 2025 Alberta Closed. You can find full info here.

New in 2025: the major Opens are being divided into two sections, Premier and U1700, to give players more games closer to their level.

Registration is open for the Calgary Youth Regional (February 1-2) and Edmonton Youth Regional (February 8th). Info is linked.

Information for the Schleinich Memorial Sectional, January 10-12, is available on the Calgary Chess Club website, and can be viewed here.

Players are welcome to wear jeans at ACA events.

The 2025 Schedule has been posted, and can be found in the top menu.

Note the one big change is that the Banff Centre did not offer the same November dates for 2025, so the ACA Board is investigating alternatives, which may include holding the Banff Open in October, which would then move the Alberta Open to the Labour Day weekend.

The CBC has written an article on the University of Lethbridge’s “Chess for Life” program, founded by Dr. Lance Grigg. Read about it here. Thanks to Len Steele for sharing.