This Week at the Charlotte Chess Center: 7/1-7/7/2024

Welcome to This Week at the Charlotte Chess Center, our weekly newsletter recapping all CCC events from July 1-7, 2024!

This week's recap will feature every weekly tournament at both the North and South location, as well as the Sunday night online blitz arena and our Rapid and Blitz event at the CCC South location.

To find a specific tournament recap, navigate using the headings below:

Monday Action Quads (CCC North)

Our Monday Action Quads tournament is a weekly scholastic event held on Monday evenings at our CCC North location. Players are sorted into quads of four and play three rounds of g20+10 USCF-rated chess. This week's MAQ featured 17 total players across four sections, including a "small swiss" Quad D.

Congratulations to the following players for winning their respective quads:

Quad A: Adrian Sommerstein (2.5 points)

Quad B: Arjun Raja and Harsith Haris (2 points)

Quad C: Imhotep Collins (2.5 points)

Quad D ("Small Swiss"): Arthur Blakely (3 points)

Arjun Raja, Harish Haris, and Arthur Blakely each achieved new peak USCF ratings for their performances in this week's MAQ. View detailed results of MAQ here.

Our next Monday Action Quads will take place at the CCC North location on July 8.

Tuesday Night Action (CCC Main/South)

CCC's Tuesday Night Action is a weekly tournament at our Main/South location held on Tuesday evenings. Following a lecture by CCC founder and FM Peter Giannatos, players are paired into one USCF-rated game per week.

The following players won their games this past Tuesday:

Top: Alex Chu, Shawn Bale, Alex Kaelin, Lokruth Patil, Dhanush Kondabathini, and Sheerabdhi Niranjan

U1600: Shreyas Karki, Aaron Vargas, Sidney Petersen, Namish Mayank, Sampath Kumar, Brent Jenkins, Ilgin Birsan, Temir Alimov, Charles Cameron, and Rishaank Channad

U1300: Chandrashekar Patil, Brian Lara, Cole Putnam, Kalp Shah, Shobhankumar Subramanian, Avery Bradley, Viaan Bahl, AJ Hensler, Nichol Garrison, Karthick Muthuveeran, Ira James Rogers

At the end of every month, we award a $25 gift card to USCF sales to the top scoring adult and junior player in each section. Current standings can be viewed on our website.

The next Tuesday Night Action will be held at CCC's Main/South location on July 9.

Wednesday Action Quads (CCC Main/South)

Wednesday Action Quads is a g20+10 USCF-rated quads tournament held on Wednesday evenings at our Main/South location. The tournament is open to players of all ages and strengths, with 62(!) participants in this week's event.

Our WAQ winners this week were:

Quad A: IM Tianqi Wang (3 points)

Quad B: Alex Kaelin (3 points)

Quad C: Arya Sharma (2.5 points)

Quad D: Raghav Arun (2 points)

Quad E: Matthew Khariouk (3 points)

Quad F: Benjamin Raz (2.5 points)

Quad G: Varun Kolluri and Nishita Jaikumar (2.5 points)

Quad H: Nikhil Kamisetty (3 points)

Quad I: Srivatsa Gundumalla and Satvick Kumar (2 points)

Quad J: Rishaank Channad (3 points)

Quad K: Errol Restelli (2.5 points)

Quad L: Bryan Muraya (2.5 points)

Quad M: Reyansh Mayank and Moses Collins (2 points)

Quad N: Tushar Kinger (3 points)

Quad O: Pranika Bahl (3 points)

With his perfect score in Quad B, Alex Kaelin broke 2000 USCF and became an Expert for the first time! Other quad winners who achieved new peak ratings included Benjamin Raz, Varun Kolluri, Nikhil Kamisetty, Rishaank Channad, Bryan Muraya, and Pranika Bahl. For the detailed results of this week's WAQ, see the USCF rating report. 

Our next Wednesday Action Quads tournament is scheduled for July 10.

Friday Action Quads (CCC Main/South)

Every Friday evening, the CCC hosts two scholastic quad events, one at each center! Our Main/South location hosts the Friday Action Quads, which saw 21 players this week. The following players won their quads at this week's FAQ:

Quad A: Rishaank Channad (2 points)

Quad B: Druv Balamurugan (3 points)

Quad C: Nandith Nishanth (3 points)

Quad D: Henry Chandler (3 points)

Quad E (five players): Harry Lewis and Madison Malmgren (2.5 points)

Druv Balamurugan and Henry Chandler each gained over 100 points for their performances, while Nandith Nishanth also achieved a new peak USCF rating! View the complete standings of the most recent FAQ by checking out the USCF crosstables. The next Friday Action Quads will be held on July 12.

NEW Friday Pizza Quads (CCC North)

Friday Pizza Quads is our newest weekly tournament, with the same format as FAQ but instead held at the CCC North location. This week's FPQ, which hosted 20 players split into five quads, was the tenth edition of the tournament!

Congratulations to the following quad winners:

Quad A: Arav Kumar (3 points)

Quad B: Shaurya Nannapaneni and Krish Sakthivel (2.5 points)

Quad C: Arya Harsha and Karthi Palanichamy (2 points)

Quad D: Ram Mohan (2.5 points)

Quad E: Anya Jhingran (3 points)

Arav Kumar, Anya Jhingran, and Ram Mohan each achieved new peak USCF ratings with their quad-winning performances! Full results of this past FPQ can be viewed here.

Our next Friday Action Quads will take place at the CCC North location on July 12.

Rapid and Blitz! (CCC Main/South)

On Saturday, the CCC Main/South location hosted our Rapid & Blitz tournament! Players of all strengths participated in a day of quick chess, featuring a five round rapid tournament and nine rounds of blitz.

The top finisher in our rapid tournament was FM Donald Johnson, who scored 4.5/5 and won $120 for clear first place. Donald ceded a draw to Namish Kondabathini in the third round but won all his other games, including victories against several other top seeds. The four players who scored 4/5 (winning $30 each for splitting the second place prize) were Krishna Rallabandi, Rishi Jasti, Christopher Williams, and the aforementioned Namish Kondabathini.

Our remaining prize winners were Luke Louis (Top U1800), Kekoa Kuamoo (Top U1600), Anthony Deluca (Top U1400), and Kalp Shah (Top U1200). Each player took home $40, since there were no ties in any of the class prize categories!

In the blitz tournament, GM Olexandr Bortnyk swept the field, scoring a perfect 9/9. Most impressively, he defeated everyone else in the top nine of our prize standings, a thoroughly dominant performance! Bortnyk took home $200 for his clear first place finish.

FM Donald Johnson, after winning the rapid portion, finished second in the blitz with 8/9 ($100). NM Dominique Myers finished in third place and won $60, while fourth place was split between WFM Uthra Pakkirisamy, Rishi Jasti, and Christopher Williams.

Other prize winners were:

The USCF rating report for our Rapid & Blitz event can be found here. We hope to see you at the next Rapid and Blitz event on August 3!

Sunday Afternoon Classical (CCC North)

Sunday Afternoon Classical is a weekly tournament at the CCC North location, open to players of any age or strength. Just like TNA, SAC is rated after each month, and the top adult and junior player in each section at the end of the month will win a $25 gift card to USCF sales.

This week's SAC was the first of the month of July, with the following players winning their games this round:

Top: Nathan Heck, Sujan Maddipati, Hugh Conwell, and Harith Hmimda

U1300: Moses Collins, Ishaanvii Ashwin, Michael Bernard, Phaneendra Bulusu, AJ Hensler, Shaurya Nannapaneni, Axiao Yao, and Henry Yoo

SAC standings with rating results can be viewed at this link. The next SAC will take place on July 14 at the CCC North location.

Sunday Action Quads (CCC Main/South)

Our Sunday Action Quads tournament is a weekly scholastic quads event held at the CCC Main/South location every Sunday evening. Like our other quad events, SAQ runs at a time control of g20+10 and is USCF-rated. 31 players came to this weekend's SAQ, split into seven quads.

Congratulations to the following players for winning their quads this weekend:

Quad A: Dhruv Patil (3 points)

Quad B: Neev Malhotra (3 points)

Quad C: Vasanth Thirunavukkarasu (3 points)

Quad D: Druv Balamurugan (3 points)

Quad E:  Gabriel Williams and Ayaan Geda (2 points)

Quad F: Kieran Centrelli (3 points)

Quad G (seven players): Vishnu Kannan (3 points)

The rating report for this week's SAQ can be found here. Our next SAQ will be held at the CCC Main/South location on July 14.

Online Blitz Arena!

The Charlotte Chess Center hosts an online blitz arena every Sunday evening right here on chess.com. In a new twist, all top five finishers in our weekly Sunday Blitz Arena will now receive a free one-month diamond membership to this website!

Our first-place finisher was Steve Alappatt, who posted a final result of 20 wins, one draw, and one loss in the tournament. While the standings were very close between spots two and five, Steve took first place by a big margin: he scored 72 points (!) with no other player eclipsing 60. 

Here's Steve's victory against CCC regular Lokruth Patil:

Since our new prizes were announced prior to the tournament, it figures that the remaining spots in the top five would be hotly contested. Four players finished between 52 and 59 points, but NM (and CCC coach!) Dominique Myers finished with the highest score of the bunch, narrowly ahead of matthf21 and TheKidWiz, who finished third and fourth respectively. Here's his victory against fifth place finisher HugoOnTilt:

Congratulations to SteveAlappatt, matthf21, TheKidWiz, and HugoOnTilt for winning diamond memberships in our Sunday Blitz Arena!

To wrap up, here's a very fun game between two of our top finishers, showing the danger in copying the opponent's moves:

We hope to see you all in our next Sunday Blitz Arena here on chess.com.

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For upcoming tournaments, bookmark our Events Schedule. The CCC hosts nearly 8 events a week at our facilities in North and South Charlotte, along with bi-monthly major events such as the upcoming Charlotte Summer Open.

Not a member of the CCC? Join over 1000 members today!

NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist