A tightly bunched field topped the standings at the 2016 Illinois Open completed Sept. 5 at the Crowne Plaza, Deerfield. Illinois-based Grandmasters Vlad Georgiev and Dmitry Gurevich both finished with 5.5/6 to go down in history as co-champions.

Both players will be cashing $1200 checks for their efforts.

David Peng was the common ingredient in denying both GM's perfect scores; David drew GM Gurevich in the fourth round and GM Georgiev in the final round.

David finished with 5.0/6, tying with Angelo Young and Hugo Padilla for third place.

Pending re-rate, it looks like Aydin Turgut has achieved a Master rating of 2200 from the event. Aydin finished with 4.0, tying with eight others for the best score of players who started the event with a published rating of Under 2200.

Aydin's only losses came at the hand of a pair of 2300's: George Li and Pete Karagianis. He achieved the same score as proud poppa, Dr. Tansel Turgut.

Matthew Stevens -- who himself is now only 11 points shy of 2200, and Vincent Do -- 19 rating points shy of masterdom, also achieved 4.0's as did Nicholas Bartochowski and Matthew's Whitney Young teammate, Akhil Kalghatgi.

Also with 4.0's for Under 2200's were Wisconsin's Avinash Rajendra and Derek Paitrick, and ICA Board Members David Franklin and Bill Brock.

3.5 is what it took to earn top U2000 honors and that score group included Mohammad Khan and juniors Edward Zhang, Eric Starkman, Brian Gong and Adam Bareket.

Iowa's Anish Lodh was the clear winner of the Reserve for players rated Under 1800, finishing 5.5/6. Anish collected $900 for his Reserve championship, defeating Adam Chambers in the final round.

Chambers in turn tied for second place with provisionally-rated Nathan Xu and Bill Qian of Kansas, all with 5.0's.

Eli Elder was the difference maker in this event, handing Anish a draw in the fourth round after defeating Nathan in the third round. Alas, a loss to Hiro Higuchi in the penultimate round placed Eli in a lower prize category, but was merely a small blip in an impressive tournament.

According to the US Chess crosstables 186 participated in the event included a couple side-game sections.

$9400 in prize money was awarded along with $600 in Amazon gift cards for ICA members sticking around for the later rounds. The complete prize distribution has now been added to this site's ICA Tournament tab: http://www.il-chess.org/ica-tournaments.

The event marked the eighth stop on the 2016 Illinois Chess Tour with October's Midwest Class Championship (Wheeling) and November 20's Illinois Class Championships (Lisle) still remaining.