The three qualifier tournaments of the 2018 season have been completed and it is time to announce the 8 finalists for the 2018 USTA Open.

Each tournament awarded two players qualifying spots into the finals. From the Spring Qualifier we have NoHatCoder, who has been the dominant player this season, and fwwwwibib. Qualifiers from the Summer tournament are rabbitboy84 and SultanPepper, the current reigning Open Champion. The recently completed Fall Qualifier brought us two additional players: archvenison and orfane.

This brings us to the final two players who earned a qualification into the finals via their season points total. The seventh qualifier is Jooms, with a season total 16 points, and the final person to qualify is Answa, who totaled 10 points for the season. All season points standings can be found on the 2018 Season page. If you are a finalist you will be contacted soon.

Prizes and Sponsors

Purpleheart Box Set

The skilled and formidable players above will be competing in the 2018 USTA Open Finals beginning the week of Oct 13th. We will be streaming many of the matches – follow us @ustakorg on twitter now so you wont miss when we go live!

This year the players are competing for a selection of beautiful Tak prizes which will be awarded to the top 3 finishers.

The first place prize is the amazing Wyrmwood Purpleheart Box set, which you can get a closer look at on the Wyrmwood website. We owe a huge thank you to Wyrmwood for being a sponsor of the US Tak Association from the very beginning and allowing us to distribute their incredibly crafted Tak sets every year as prizes.

We are happy to announce we also have a new sponsor for the USTA Open this year. Andrew Cookson, maker of fine leatherwork Tak sets, has provided two leather sets for the second and third place prizes. All work is done in cow or calf leather and each has been hand tooled and stitched.

8×8 leatherwork board by Andrew Cookson

Capstone Satchel

The second place finisher will receive the above beautiful 8×8 leatherwork set (pieces and book for scale, not included) which has been mounted on wood. I appreciate the detail of blocking the 7×7 size squares to prevent you incurring the wrath of the Chandrian. Along with the board they will also receive this capstone satchel (at right), so they can carry their personal capstones in preparation for a game at any moment.

5×5 board & bag – Leaf Motif

The third place finisher will receive this awesome 5×5 leather board with the pictured matching bag; both with a “green leaf” motif. (pieces and book for scale, not included) The board is not mounted but a very stiff piece of leather which works nicely and the bag can easily hold pieces for a 5×5 game.

I again want to say thank you to our two sponsors this year, we are extremely grateful and take pride in being able to award such beautiful and unique prizes. To all the finalists I wish good luck! To all of the fans, I will look forward to watching some amazing games with you in just a few weeks. More details on streaming and scheduling will be announced soon.