Florida State Checkers Open was played on 8-9 of February in Hollywood, FL and united representatives from Florida, New York, Illinois, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Ohio.

6 rounds of swiss system tournament with micro-matches of 2 games in 3-move were played.

From round 1 the lead was gained by experienced Master from Illinois, NDF of the USA member Mark Sokolovsky. But in the last round he was outplayed by Grandmaster Richard Beckwith from Ohio and as a result Mark only finished third — 14 points and Bronze medal.

The Florida State Open Champion Trophy was tied between Richard and US National Checkers 2024 winner, NDF of the USA member Vadym Lapin from Florida. Both of them scored 16 points.

We would like to mention the performance of the NDF of the USA member, USA and Florida Youth Champion 15 y.o. Yevhen Bohush in the adult competition. He managed to score 11 points and played a draw 2:2 against one of the winners, Grandmaster Richard Beckwith.

The National Draughts Federation of the USA president, Coach of Yevhen — Andriy Shcherbatyuk, evaluated the performance if his student as a good result, and also satisfied with the result of his other student the NDF of the USA member Vadym Lapin in this tournament, who tied the championship title in the Open and became Florida State Champion (best result among players from Florida). “Now we are starting preparation for the Vidor Draughts Festival 2025 at the end of June in checkers. Another very interesting event in our calendar is the Miami Open 2025 International draughts Tournament that will be organized by the NDF of the USA in September and a very strong lineup of highly rated from all continents is expected to participate there. One of the most important tournaments scheduled for Vadym Lapin this year is World draughts-64 Championship (Portuguese version) where we would like to improve Vadym’s previously achieved second place winner result” Andriy says.

He also expressed gratitude to the sponsors Mr. Joe Schwartz who establish prizes for every participant, Mr. Pat Quartucci for being a guestfull host, as well as WCDF President Dr. Richard Beckwith for support.

Congratulations to the winners and best of luck in upcoming events!

Thanks for photos: Kseniia Yaremchuk, Anna Kotelnikova, Vira Klots