The US Championship is forming slowly but surely. The field is 64 players, up from 56 in 2003. There will be 16 women and 48 men in the nine-round Swiss and a stunning $250,000 prize fund, still the largest in the world. The top six men and the top five women on the February, 2004 USCF rating list are automatically seeded into the Championship. Then you have the junior champion and the former champions. The rest are from the many qualifying events, usually the top opens. Players pay $75 pre-event to be eligible for qualification. This turns out to have become quite a nice earner for the championship as dozens of players in each event have paid the fee despite only a handful of slots being available. The qualification system adds many new (and hungry) faces to the usual suspects every year.
