The CCL World Youth team is heading back from Greece now.  We are so proud of these amazing young chess players who represented CCL so well at this event.  A warm appreciation goes out to this team which includes:

Jason Wang

Marissa Li

Aristo Liu

Maggie Feng

Karanvir Singh

Aishwarya Singh

and team coach IM Goran Vojinovic

Congratulations to our latest and 17th CCL graduate, Forest Chen.

• Forest is the first person from Tennessee to become a CCL graduate
• Forest earned his graduation with a clear first place finish in the U-2000 section of the Nashville Open, gaining 80 rating points in the process.
• Forest is an 8th grader from Knoxville, Tennessee
• 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

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

Noah Keating-Adams
Annorjan Naguleswaran

CCL now has 7 USCF Masters with many more knocking at the door. This amazing group also includes: Walker Griggs, John Hughes, Maggie Feng, Chis Shen, and Luke Xie.

Congratulations to Coach Goran for taking sole first place at the State of Ohio Chess Championship (aka Ohio Chess Congress), coming off of winning the Indianapolis Open the previous week.  This is the 5th year in a row that a CCL player or coach became the Ohio Chess Champion/Co-champion.

2015 – Goran Vojinovic

2014 – Hans Multhopp

2013 – John Hughes

2012 – Walker Griggs

2011 – Walker Griggs

I can’t remember exactly but I believe Goran was a co-champion in 2011 and/or 2012.

We came close to a clean sweep this year.  We won every major prize, tying for just a couple of them.

Open – Goran Vojinovic – clear

U-2200 class – Luke Xie – clear

Premiere – Joe Kleban & Jacob Eismann – tie

U-1800 class – Joe Kleban – tie

U-1600 – Jacob Eismann – clear

Reserve – Stella Huang – clear

U-1200 – Dinesh Bojja – clear

You are all so incredibly amazing.  Every time that I think that you cannot do any better, you prove me wrong. This has happened countless times. When I check my pairings, I say to myself, “I hope that I don’t get paired against one of those CCL monsters.” I am sure that I am not the only one who is saying that. I believe that all of the points that I have dropped in my last few tournaments have been against one of you. Your are getting soooooo good. I can hardly wait to see where you end up in 5 to 10 years.  And never forget, “Be nice to your elders” :>)

Complete results with rating changes can be seen HERE.

Prize money results can be seen HERE.