The Midwest Open Team Chess Festival (MOTCF) is in Dayton, Ohio this March 11-12, 2017.  This tournament is highly recommended fro students rated around 1400 and above.  If you want to play on a CCL team at this event, please CLICK HERE!

Everyone give Maggie a high 5 as she received an invitation to play in the 2017 Woman’s Championship. Maggie is the first CCL member who has made it to either the US Men’s or Woman’s adult championship. And Maggie is only in 10th grade!

Maggie will be competing in this tournament which is held from March 27th to April 11th. I will be watching live video coverage of this event and rooting her on. I wish Goran could join me, it was his goal for Maggie and he would have been so proud.

Congratulations to our latest and 23nd CCL graduate, Elton Cao.

• Elton became our 23rd graduate by having a strong performance at a recent Dayton Tournament, gaining 87 points and bringing his rating up to 2019.
  
• I was very proud of Elton last summer.  He was having a horrible tournament in a round robin event and wanted to drop out.  I explained to him why it is not considered good sportsmanship to drop out of a round robin tournament.  He accepted my explanation and toughed it out.  It is so good to see his toughness get rewarded by now becoming a USCF expert.
• See a a game that Elton 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 entitles them to lifetime membership in CCL, based on good behavior, without the requirement of taking lessons (although most still do).  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

Although CCL did not win a National Grade Level Championship this year, we did have a number of strong finishes.  Listed below are the CCL players who finished in, or in a tie, for the top 25 in their grade.

Name	Grade	Finish
Lingaadyakssh Venkataraja Eli Dropic	1 1	10 24
Benjamin Yin	3	9
Arthur Xu	4	6
Dae San Kim	4	18
Elton Cao	7	12
Aryan Balyan	7	3
Dakshin Pisini	7	12
Justin Storn	8	9
Aristo Liu	8	2
Kevin Xi	8	22
Anagh Kulkarni	10	4
Jasen Lai	11	22

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:

Jason Wang

Jason is one of the great success stories in CCL, starting as an unrated player and becoming a USCF master in 5th grade, earlier this year he almost won the World Youth Championship for his age group.  In the photo above, he is seen defeating a 2300 player, Yuri Barnakov, in route to tying for 1st in this weekend’s Pawn Storm tournament.  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, and Jason Wang.