This year qualifier was held in the Lakeview Senior Center at Irwine, CA on the weekend of June, 28-29.
14 players were chosen to compete in 4 rounds swiss tournament for the 5 places in the Finals.
Andrey Krasnov, Charles Van Buskirk and Valdis Saulespurens shared 1-3rd place with 3 points out of 4. Stephan Jones got 2.5 points and 3th place.
Dramatic fight for the last place was between Ilya Sterin and Steve Ramos. Steve had better tiebreaker and need only a draw against Elhami Ibrahim last round to get into the finals. Ilya beat Steiner and was waiting for the result of Ramos's game. Ilhami won thus letting Ilya in the finals.
Those 5 will join 3 seeded players (IM Jack Peters 2578, FM Cyrus Lakdawala 2550 and FM Levon Altounian 2550) in the South California State Championship to be held in Irwine in July.
| # | Name | USCF | FIDE | I | II | III | IV | Place | Q | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stephan Jones | 2346 | 2265 | 1 | w7 | 1 | b4 | 2 | w2 | 2= | w3 | 4-5 | Q |
| 2 | Ilya Sterin | 2330 | 2260 | = | b8 | 1= | w5 | 1= | b1 | 2= | w2 | 4-5 | Q |
| 3 | Charles Van Buskirk | 2318 | 2260 | 1 | w9 | 2 | b10 | 2= | w4 | 3 | b1 | 1-3 | Q |
| 4 | Valdis Saulespurens | 2314 | 2320 | 1 | b10 | 2 | w1 | 2= | b3 | 3 | w8 | 1-3 | Q |
| 5 | Steve Ramos | 2286 | 2235 | 1 | w11 | 1 | b2 | 2 | w9 | 2 | b7 | 6-7 | |
| 6 | Carl Wagner | 2282 | 1 | b12 | 1 | w3 | 1 | b8 | - | 9-10 | |||
| 7 | Elhami Ibrahim | 2235 | 0 | b1 | 0 | w8 | 1 | b11 | 2 | w5 | 6-7 | ||
| 8 | Andrey Krasnov | 2221 | = | w2 | 1= | b7 | 2= | w6 | 3 | b4 | 1-3 | Q | |
| 9 | Paul Steiner | 2111 | 0 | b3 | 1 | w11 | 1 | b5 | 1 | b2 | 8 | ||
| 10 | Ron Jabali | 2105 | 0 | w4 | 0 | -- | - | -- | - | ||||
| 11 | Ed Townsend | 2088 | 0 | b5 | 0 | b9 | 0 | w7 | 0 | w12 | 11 | ||
| 12 | Michael Carr | 2022 | 0 | w6 | - | -- | - | -- | 1 | b11 | 9-10 | ||