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

In the Ohio All-Girls Championship, 4 CCL girls (Stella, Emma, Victoria, Sneha) where on the top 2 boards going into the last round.  When the dust settled Stella and Emma finished on top as co-champions with 4-1 scores, while Victoria finished in a tie for 3^rd place with Abby (Abhirami).  Abby was our big point gainer at +57.  Tie-breaks, along with the 1^st place trophy, $100 scholarship, and invitation to the National Girls Championship went to Stella.  I am pretty certain that Emma is the youngest All-Girls champion in the history of Ohio.  Don’t let the young age of these girls fool you, this is a K-12 event.  The CCL girls have now fully arrived as the dominate force in girls chess in Ohio.

Maggie and Lainie tried their luck at the Cincinnati Open and the National All Girls (Chicago) respectively, being held the same weekend.  Maggie performed well in the Open section of the Cincinnati Open while Lainie came in 8^th place in the U-10 division at the National All-Girls.