On January 10th at the St. Peter & Paul Elementary School in Grangeville, 30 players showed up to test their strategic and concentration skills against each other via the ancientgame of chess.
Many players helped me set up, and soon we began registrations, only to discover that, for some reason, running our new software on laptops exposed many bugs which made using it difficult.
By the end of the second round, we realized we would have to conduct the tournament by hand.
Luckily, my son, Jonathan Staab, who is a wiz-kid with AI, and our helper, Jim Wilcock, who is a handyman with a spreadsheet, were able to build, on-the-fly, sufficient reports and tools to continue the tournament!
After 6 rounds of intense and fun chess (and much sweating the details on my part), the final standings were determined.
But this was only half of our problems, because the reason I had developed the tool I did for managing chess tournaments was so I could give out LOTS of prizes. 
This turned out to be just as hard a problem to solve as was the one of continuing the tournament.
Again, with the help of our intrepid crew and my wife, Kim, who organized and laid out all the prizes we had to give away, we managed to figure out roughly who gets what.
I want to thank Freedom Northwest Credit Union for their generous gift of $1000 and for all of those community-minded donors who put money into our donation jars placed in many businesses around the area, to give me the resources needed to make this tournament a huge success!
Every player received at least one prize, and many, more than one. I will never forget Nikolai Dieseldorff jumping for joy as he received his medal and prizes for 3rd place in the Grade 1 subsection.  He was obsessed with getting prizes and had been asking me all through the tournament, "When do we get our prizes?" It was like having 50-odd people together for Christmas, unwrapping the gifts!
Lots of cash ($640) was given out to adults, out-of-towners, and, of course, the kids. Prizes also included 27 medals, candy, and small fun goodies like fidget toys, goup balls, and electronic scratch pads for all ages.
The tournament nearly didn't happen, as getting the bugs out of my tool was just going too slowly.  I had little time to market the tournament as I was heads-down fixing bugs.  Luckily, in the last month or so, AI came to the rescue, and I anticipate that within a month or so, I will have it completed and working to help me run more tournaments in our area.
Finishing this 3-year software project will then free me up to spend more time teaching chess to kids and adults in our area.
Below is a table of the top winners.  A detailed chart of all winners and prizes will be published soon on my website.
Sanford Staab - The Chess Guy
https://SandyTheChessGuy.com
SUMMARY OF CHAMPIONS
Overall Champion: Wyatt Belisle (6.0 points, perfect score!)
Student Champion: Wyatt Belisle (6.0 points)
Adults Champion: Hannah Hicks (4.0 points)
Out of Town Adults: Jonathan Staab (4.5 points)
Grade Champions:
Grade 1: Vernon Staab (2.0 points)
Grade 2: Richard Stevens (3.0 points)
Grade 4: Ronan Dieseldorff (1.0 points)
Grade 5: Tobias Wiltse (3.0 points)
Grade 6: Gabriel Frei (3.0 points)
Grade 7: Kael Dieseldorff (4.0 points)
Grade 8: Levi VanBrunt (4.5 points)
Grade 9: Tucker Brown (4.5 points)
Grade 10: Wyatt Belisle (6.0 points)
Grade 11: Steven Sloat (4.5 points)
Grade 12: Quinten Ledeboer (4.0 points)
Grouped Section Champions:
Grades 1-3: Richard Stevens (3.0 points)
Grades 4-6: Tobias Wiltse & Gabriel Frei (3.0 points - tie)
Grades 7-9: Levi VanBrunt & Tucker Brown (4.5 points - tie)
Grades 10-12: Wyatt Belisle (6.0 points)