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• Congratulations to our latest and 11th CCL graduate, Vikram Srivastava.
• Vikram earned his graduation at the 2014 Columbus Open and his having a great year.
• He won the Ohio Middle School Championship earlier in the year and will soon be traveling to Orlando to represent Ohio at the Barber Tournament, for the champion of champions of all state middle school champions.
• 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 requirements of taking lessons.  They are allowed to receive email spam from me for the rest of their lives!!
• 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

 Maggie at the 2014 Chicago Open

 

o   Congratulations to Maggie for this amazing result (+50 =2223) at the Chicago Open, coming in tied for 6^th and taking home $237.50 in the U-2300 section.

o   Maggie is now the 3^rd CCL student who earned the National Master while a student at CCL.   She follows in both Walker’s and John’s footsteps.

• When Maggie started in CCL her rating was around 1000, Walker’s was in the 800’s, and John was unrated.  Why can’t you be next?

o   This is an amazing accomplishment for this young lady.  I think that it will put her as the 4^th highest rated female under 21 in the USA.  And she is only 13 years old!!

 

(l-r) Jason, Vincent, Rusty, Ethan

 o   Vincent Baker and 2nd grader Jason ‘Mason’ Wang are the 2014 Ohio Elementary School Co-Champions

o   Things do not always go as planned but 1^st seed Vincent and 2^nd seed Jason left little doubt who was in charge in this tournament.  Both players sweep through the field and left everyone in their wake with perfect 5-0 scores.  Vincent won the 1^st place trophy on tie-breaks.

o   CCL players with 3.5 or more were:

• 1             Vincent Baker                    5
• 2             Jason Wang                       5
• 5             Ethan Ferkins                    4
• 8             Viktor Mishkin                  3.5
• 9             Justin ‘Rusty’ Wu              3.5
• 11           Aditya Jambhale                3.5
• 12           Lainie Massick                  3.5
• 14           Duke Wang                        3.5
• 15           Sneha Prabu                      3.5

o   Congrats to Alan Zhang for finishing 4-1 in the K-3 championship and coming in a 2 way tie for 2^nd.

 

Below is a slideshow of pictures from the tournament.

[royal cats=4]

 

o

o   This tournament was a sweep for CCL, taking all of the top 6 spots as well as spots 8 – 13.

o   Congratulations to Vikram Srivastava for coming in clear 1^st in this event.  In order to do this he had to beat the top 2 seeds in the last two round, Luke Xie and Abhi Ramaswamy.  There is an interesting story here, Vikram won the Ohio Elementary School Championship once, in his last try.  In the last round he was paired against Luke Xie, got a bad game but ended up winning.  In this, his last try at the State Middle School Championship, he won this event for the first time.  Again, he had to play Luke Xie in the last round.  Again, he got a bad game.   Again, he came back to win and win the championship.  When I was in middle school, I asked me teacher why we have to study history.  He said because history tends to repeat itself.  I have already put $100 down on Vikram to beat Luke in the last round of the 2018 Ohio High School Championship to become the State of Ohio High School Championship.

o   Vikram is going to represent Ohio at the Barber tournament while Stella represents Ohio at the All-Girls event, both during the US Open.  Too bad that no CCL player participated in the Ohio HS Championship and thus we do not have a representative at the Denker tournament.

o   Special congrats also go out to Shourjya Ghosh who came in clear 2^nd place.  Without checking, Shourjya must be up for the more improved CCL players of the past year.

o   Top 10 CCL finishers were:

• 1             Vikram Srivastava             5.5
• 2             Shourjya Ghosh                 5.0
• 3             Xie, Luke                            4.5
• 4             Abhi Ramaswamy             4.5
• 5             Vincent Baker                    4.5
• 6             Kian Souayvixay                4.5
• 8             Arvind Prasad                    4.0
• 9             Nolan Song                         4.0
• 10           Mark Malkin                       4.0

Who qualified

o  Emma                 U-8  G

o  Jason                  U-8  O

o  Chris                   U-10 O

o  Lainie                  U-10 G

o  Luke                    U-12 O

o  Meghana             U-12 G

o  Emily                   U-12 G

o  Maggie                U-14 G

o  We are still awaiting to hear about our sister and brother from Wales, Aishwarya and Karanvir