CCL Coach and IM Goran Vojinovic seldom fails to impress as he has won almost every major Ohio tournament that he has played in.  This time he tied for 1st with GM Bryan Smith.   Following close behind with 4.0 were CCL players Walker Griggs, John Hughes, and Maggie Feng.  They got $300 each for being part of a 5 way tie for 3rd place.  A shout goes out to Blake Baumgartner for a nice draw against GM Sergey Kudrin.

Jason Lai ran away with the money, with a perfect score, in the Premier Section (U-1800).  He was reward with $600 for his efforts.  Also taking home some of the money in that section was: Kian Souayvixay and Sujan Rachuri for tying for 2nd place,  Joshua George for tying for 1st in the U-1600 class prize, and David Carroll for bring home the upset prize.

Another very fine showing by CCL at a major Ohio Open.

Congratulations to our latest and 15th CCL graduate, Ricky Wang.

• Ricky earned his CCL graduation at the World Open, in Virginia
• Check out one of his World Open games at https://cclchess.com/ccl-games/
• He became first CCL graduate from outside of Ohio
• Ricky is going into 7th grade and lives in Buffalo Grove, Illinois
• 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

While CCL Coach IM Goran Vojinovic was coming in clear first in the Open section of Gem City, student Joe Kleban took clear 1st in the Premier section.  For Goran, it was the usual domination of Ohio chess that we always see.  For Joe, it was a long overdue showing of his great chess talents.  We also saw a CCL future/current star when 3rd grader Jason Wang came in tied for 5th place in the Open section beating two former state champion in the process, USCF masters Carl Boor and John Bidwell.