Congratulations to our latest and 25th CCL graduate, Shourjya Ghosh.

• Shourjya became our 25th graduate by having a strong performance at a recent Ohio  Chess Congress, finishing tied for 1st in the U-2100 section, gaining 70 points and bringing his rating up to 2004.
  
• I’ve been playing chess since 2012, but I’ve known how to play since the age of 5. I rose from 400 to about 1700 pretty quickly, so finally achieving 2000 has been a big relief since it’s long overdue. I owe a large part of my success to CCL and all the coaches I’ve been lucky to work with, like Coach Atanas and especially Coach Goran. Outside of school and apart from chess, I enjoy playing tennis and basketball, participating in school clubs, playing viola, and watching the Cavs and the Indians. My favorite school subjects are math and biology. If I’m not doing anything productive, I’m either sleeping or I’m glued to my phone. 
• See a game that Shourjya played at his last tournament to earn this honor by CLICKING HERE.
• This Who’s Who chess list has been growing with great talent which is clearly characterized by a high value on perseverance, hard work, and passion.What is a CCL graduate?  It is an honorary degree that we give to any CCL player who has worked their way through the ranks while in CCL and has made a USCF experts rating (>= 2000).   This group is becoming a who’s who of the top young talent around. It is little surprise that the top 13 rated scholastic chess players in Ohio are all CCL graduates!!! Being a CCL  graduate entitles them to lifetime membership in CCL, based on good behavior, without the requirement of taking lessons.  They are allowed to receive email spam from me for the rest of their lives!!
• Who will be next?

CCL graduates are (in order of obtainment):

• John Hughes
• Walker Griggs
• Maggie Feng
• Rahul Ramaswamy
• Annorjan Naguleswaran
• Luke Xie
• Chris Shen
• Noah Keating-Adams
• Sam Massick
• Anagh Kulkarni
• Vikram Srivastava
• Aristo Liu
• Abhi Ramaswamy
• Jason Wang
• Ricky Wang
• Vincent Baker
• Forest Chen
• Neo Zhu
• Alex Kolay
• Xavier Paganini
• Justin Storn
• Stanley Cao
• Elton Cao
• Jasen Lai
• Shourjya Ghosh

Christopher Shen won the Barber Tournament of K-8 Champions in Norfolk, VA.  This year, the Barber Tournament included 48 players, each representing his or her home state of the United States by winning home state’s middle school championship.  After 6 rounds of competition, both top seeds Justin Wang (2330) from Texas and Christopher Shen (2303) from Ohio tied for the first place when Christopher won on tie breaks (see their individual game by CLICKING HERE).  The victory gives Christopher not only the title of National “Champion of Champions” but also $5000 college scholarship donated by the event organizer, Mr. Dewain Barber.  Additionally, the win of Barber tournament qualifies Christopher to play 2018 US Cadet Championship, a 10-top player of U16 round robin competition in the states.

Before this tournament, Christopher and Jason Wang from CCL were selected to participate a week long chess training camp in Bulgaria with the sponsorship from Foundation of Veselin Topalov and Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis, USA.  The camp was directed by a Bulgarian GM and former World Champion, GM Veselin Topalov gave simul games to six chess top juniors from the USA.

Finally, Christopher has been invited to play this year’s US Cadet Championship in Manchester, NH in the middle of August.  Christopher is a substitute of this year while he will be direct seed of next year’s edition also.

Each year, the Denker, Barber, and NGTOC tournaments take place at the same time and place of US Open.  Other CCL members who participated were Meghana Bhanuprasad, Kevin Xu, Vikram Srivastava, and Forest Chen. Meghana played in the National Girls Tournament of Champions and finished in 7th place, defeating Annie Wang (WIM, 2296 USCF rated) in second round.  In the Denker, Forest finished in 15th place and Vikram finished in 24th place.  In the Barber Kevin Xu finished in 21st place.  A strong showing by all of our CCL participants.

One of the biggest accomplishments that many chess players hope to achieve is to become a USCF Chess Master. Recently one more CCL member climbed to the top of this huge mountain, which takes an exceptional amount of hard work and commitment. CCL is very proud of:

Sam Massick

Sam drove his rating over 2200 and became a National Master by tying for 2nd place in the U-2200 section of the Chicago Class Championships.

His parents report:
Sam is a rising sophomore who has been playing chess since he was seven years old.  Reaching the master level was a primary goal of his and Coach Goran.  Goran was his primary coach for years and provided great support and encouragement.  Sam is very thankful to Coach Alan and Coach Atanas, who have helped him with his game over the past year.

The following were active members of CCL from the early parts of their chess development through getting their Master’s title.  This amazing group  includes: Walker Griggs, John Hughes, Maggie Feng, Chris Shen, Luke Xie, Noah Keating-Adams, Annorjan Naguleswaran,  Aristo Liu, Vincent Baker, Forest Chen, Jason Wang, and Sam Massick.

Aristo came in clear 1st place and took home the gold medal in the U-14 division of the Pan American Chess Championship. This year the event was held in beautiful Costa Rica (note the parrot trophy). He was only the 10th seed at the beginning of the tournament but went undefeated with a 6-3-0 score, finishing a 1/2 point ahead of 2nd place and a whole point ahead of 3rd place. He defeated the top seed who was from Columbia. You can see that game by CLICKING HERE. This result earned Aristo the FIDE Master title, personal rights for the coming World Youth Chess Championships, and personal rights for the next Pan American Youth Chess Championships. An amazing result by an incredible representative of The CCL Chess School, both in the quality of his play and in the qualify of his good sportsmanship.

Congratulations to Adeti Mohanselvan and Alina Niu for finishing in 1st place in the U-1700 and the U-1300 sections respectively.