If you’d like to learn more about our last tournament, including tournament results, photos, and sponsor details, check out our article, A Knight to Remember, which was also published in the July, 2025 issue of NW Chess magazine.

This time our tournament is Saturday, May 16th, from 9am-5pm at McMinnville High School, where we’ve reserved several rooms comfortably seat up to 100 players.

Tickets are $20, and there’s no fee at all to current McMinnville Chess Club members at any level (monthly, annual, lifetime, and family). We also have a scholarship program and a discount code for anyone who asks. No one will ever be turned away.

Thanks so much, and we look forward to seeing you at our event!

– The McMinnville Chess Tournament organizing team:

• Christefano Reyes, Tournament Director
• Scott Christensen, Assistant Tournament Director
• John Burroughs
• Chris Starr
• Mike Terrill
• Roger Mitchell

• The results
• Thanks to Evergreen Museum
• Thanks to our sponsors
• To the future

At the Evergreen Museum this month, our rated and unrated tournament attracted 23 participants and 45 total attendees (including family, parents, and spouses). It was a remarkable event made better by everyone’s presence and participation, and the excitement and intensity of an organized tournament was palpable. After the tournament, many participants and their families from the area enjoyed the various attractions that McMinnville has to offer, and many later visited the businesses who sponsored our event and contributed to the tournament’s prizes.

The tournament featured 4 sections: Adult Rated, Adult Unrated, Youth Rated, and Youth Unrated. By far, our most popular section was Youth Unrated, and we had youth participants from McMinnville and surrounding cities, including Amity, Eugene, Hillsboro, Salem, and Tigard. This was a solid sign for us that McMinnville Chess Club is fulfilling our mission of supporting and promoting youth chess.

Of note, however, was that our Youth Rated section was our smallest section, which is a good indication of where to focus our ongoing efforts. The future of chess is in our young players, and we hope our Youth Unrated players continue on to become rated players.

To that end, our tournament directors, Mike Terrill and Christefano Reyes respectively organize the Duniway Middle School chess club, and the McMinnville High School and Memorial Elementary School chess clubs. We also published an article last year on How to get a free US Chess membership to help get more players into rated tournaments.

In the Adult Rated section, we were pleased to host rated players ranging from the 1500s to the 2000s — including a National Master, Faris Gabbara, who traveled from out of state (Michigan) and a Candidate Master, Preston Polasek (former winner of the Oregon Open) — and who all in the best way modeled proper etiquette and chess professionalism to our younger and less experienced players.

Regardless of everyone’s rating, tournaments like this one uniquely provided all our participants with fun and exciting opportunities to make new friends, challenge old rivals, and play others with different backgrounds, ages, chess skill, and tournament experience levels.

The results

Ben Crane, another McMinnville Chess Club member, played strongly and won 1st Place in the Adult Unrated section.

Tyson Woodward, a very promising youth player from Amity, Oregon, enjoyed 1st Place in the Youth Unrated section.

This wasn’t the first tournament we’ve held, but it was our first rated tournament with US Chess. We enlisted help from Dave Murray, fellow tournament director and the president of the Portland Chess Club, and he was as gracious as he was helpful. In less than an hour, our tournament results processed successfully and players began receiving emails that their recent tournament performances had been rated.

Thanks to Evergreen Museum

We’ve found an ideal venue and partnership with Evergreen Museum, and we’re grateful for the excellent facilities and much appreciated on-site support on the day of our event. We especially want to thank Evergreen’s Stephanie Upmeyer and Lee Ngo for their help making our event a resounding success. We’re already planning our next tournament at Evergreen Museum, where we’ll be building on the success of this May, 2025 tournament.

Our tournament was larger than expected, and we used the 301 + 302 classrooms used by the Museum’s STEAM program and expanded into an additional “Skills Room” (also known as a “Skittles Room”) in room 300 for players to decompress during rounds, study their games, and have the space to talk and play away from the tournament area.

Of course, we also brought the McMinnville Chess Library, a curated collection of books, chess sets, and other equipment, and accepted several new donations of books and chess sets from a few of our club members. Items in this chess library are available to members to check out, and we bring this mobile library to all of our official events for both members and guests alike to browse and enjoy.

We had water, coffee, and tea from Flag & Wire at the event and a sponsored lunch at Stickmen Brewing Company after the tournament, but we didn’t offer snacks or food (next time!). Evergreen Museum came to the rescue once again with their full-service Aviator Cafe, which opened later in the morning and provided hungry players with wraps, salads, cookies, and other treats.

Our attendees were also delighted to find that May 10th was the Star Wars Day celebration at Evergreen Museum, and they enjoyed opportunities to meet, hang out with, and take photos with fans and characters from the Star Wars universe.

It was a visually stunning and interactive cultural phenomenon to be surrounded by Jedis, Jawas, Rebel Alliance Pilots, Mandalorians, and even Darth Vader himself — and it was understandably a challenge getting some of our youth players back into the tournament on time for each round!

Thanks to our sponsors

We are immensely grateful to our sponsors who contributed to our prize pool and for making this tournament a lot more fun

Jason from Noble Knights Chocolate Company arrived at the tournament with dozens of milk chocolate and dark chocolate chess pieces for our winners and youth players. Brehan from Crawford Wellness provided valuable volunteer support, and Jocela provided yoga class passes as prizes.

Flag & Wire was our generous coffee and tea sponsor, and a group of us met at the coffee shop in the early morning to fuel up and get ready for the day, and then Joseph from Knight Shuttle picked us up in their luxury van (emblazoned with a Knight on the side!) to take us to the Museum.

After the tournament, Knight Shuttle picked us up and took us to Stickmen Brewing Company for a sponsored lunch, and after Sandy took great care of us with amazing salads, drinks, and wood-fired pizzas, several of us stayed and played blitz chess for a few more hours, which finally gave our weary but happy tournament directors a chance to play.

• EMPWR Nutrition – Venue Sponsor
• Stickmen Brewing Company – After Party Sponsor
• Flag & Wire – Coffee & Tea Sponsor
• Knight Shuttle – Transportation Sponsor
• Noble Knights Chocolate Company – Chocolate Sponsor
• Crawford Wellness – Wellness Sponsor
• Oregon Stationers – Print Sponsor
• J&W CARSTAR – Prize Sponsor
• Hopscotch Toys – Prize Sponsor
• good food mac – Prize Sponsor
• Vortex Records – Prize Sponsor
• The Velvet Monkey Tea Shop – Prize Sponsor
• Troon Vineyard – Prize Sponsor
• Chess Zendo – Prize Sponsor

It’s impossible to express how much our sponsors showed their support and enthusiasm. While it’s certainly possible to put on a fun, successful event without many (if any) sponsors, our attendees could feel the momentous support and positive encouragement from our local business community. With their continuous help, McMinnville has quickly become a center of chess activity, rated play, and scholastic chess in the Willamette Valley.

To the future

With this tournament just behind us, we’ve made new friends, learned valuable lessons, and already plan two more tournaments at Evergreen Museum in 2025 alone. To join us and to hear about upcoming events before anyone else, subscribe to our email and SMS newsletter below.

Of course, we also have numerous monthly club meetings (every Wednesday night at Mac Market and Saturday afternoons at Harvest Fresh Grocery & Deli), occasional chess popups around town (including this month’s popups at Troon Vineyard and Mac Plaza), and World Chess Day on Sunday, July 20th. 

To help our club continue to grow and fulfill our mission to bring more chess to more youth players and adult players alike, check out our Donate page to learn how to volunteer your time, contribute to the McMinnville Chess Library, and become a sponsor of the club — or better yet, become a member today.

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