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.

 

 

 

 

If you are a CCL graduate, CLICK HERE, for details on getting your CCL Graduate polo shirt.  The shirt will have your name and date of graduation on it.