The CCL Chess School

chess lessons and more, for players of all strengths and ages


Private Chess Lessons … with group activities
Jeff Shen – Business Manager  – (614) 404-0248  614chessTD@gmail.com

We recently started a new prodigious wing to CCL, led by esteemed mathematician and prodigy Dr. Harvey Friedman, who you can meet at Harvey’s Adventures.

We are now a community-driven program!!  See the community section for details.

Chess, Community, Learning

CCL Chess School on Twitter

The CCL Chess School now has their own business twitter group.  Learn what is hatwitterppening in CCL and the chess world in real time, when it occurs.  All CCL members can add their own tweets to this account.  For more information, please email Alan at acasden@insight.rr.com .

Xavier Paganini becomes CCL’s 20th graduate

Congratulations to our latest and 20th CCL graduate, Xavier Paganini.

  • Xavier became our landmark 20th graduate from CCL.  This happened a few weeks ago but is just being posted now as we were not posting CCL accomplishments in July, in honor of Goran.
  • Xavier also set a new record by becoming the quickest CCL graduate.  He did this by gaining around 200 ratings points in under 3 month!Xavier Paganini
  • Congrats to this future superstar of CCL.
  • See a strong recent annotated game of Xavier’s 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

A Memorial to IM Goran Vojinovic

IM Goran Vojinovic

March 1, 1963 – July 1, 2016

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Please come to our memorial page by clicking here.

If you know Goran, leave a memory of him on that page.

The upcoming memorial events are open to the world.

Aristo Liu becomes a National Master

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 Aristo Mastertakes an exceptional amount of hard work and commitment. CCL is very proud of:

 Aristo Liu

Aristo will be starting 8th grade in the fall.  CCL now has 8 CCL players earn their USCF Masters with many more knocking at the door. All of this players were active members of CCL from the early parts of their chess development through getting the title.  This amazing group also includes: Walker Griggs, John Hughes, Maggie Feng, Chis Shen, Luke Xie, Noah Keating-Adams, and Annorjan Naguleswaran.

The Taimanov Bible

taim_bibleCongratulations to CCL coaches, Grandmaster Ivan Ivanisevic and Grandmaster Milos Perunovic, for just having had their book The Taimanov Bible published. This book is the current authoritative word on the Taimanov/Paulsen variation of the Sicilian.

To celebrate this occasion, we are having a limited time sale on chess lessons from these esteemed grandmaster experts on the Taimanov. Learn how to play this system from the world’s top authorities, or simply use this sale to work with them on any chess topic. This is a CCL exclusive that you will not be able to find anywhere else in the world!!

… Sale is over ….