This Week at the Charlotte Chess Center: 7/8-7/14/2024

Welcome to This Week at the Charlotte Chess Center, our weekly newsletter post summarizing all CCC events in the past week. This edition will cover every tournament we hosted from July 8 to 14, 2024.

This week's recap will include every weekly tournament at both the North and South location, as well as the Sunday night online blitz arena. To find a specific tournament recap, navigate using the headings below:

Monday Action Quads (CCC North)

MAQ is a scholastic quads tournament held every Monday evening at the CCC North location. Participants are grouped into four player "quads" and play three rounds of g20+10 USCF-rated chess. A total of 21 players came to MAQ this week, split into five quads.

Congratulations to the following quad winners:

Quad A: William Jindal (3 points)

Quad B: Atharv Dubey (3 points)

Quad C: Vihaan Dhulipala (3 points)

Quad D: Hari Suram and Shaurya Nannapaneni (2 points)

Quad E (five players): Sumeet Eaga and Aaryan Nagolu (2.5 points)

All three of the perfect scorers this week achieved new peak USCF ratings in the process, with both Atharv Dubey and Vihaan Dhulipala gaining well over 100 points! View the full rating report of this week's MAQ here.

Our next Monday Action Quads will take place at the CCC North location on July 15.

Tuesday Night Action (CCC Main/South)

Tuesday Night Action is a weekly event held every Tuesday at the CCC's Main/South location. The evening starts with a lecture by CCC founder and FM Peter Giannatos, followed by one round of USCF-rated long time control chess per week.

The following players won their games this past Tuesday:

Top: Alex Chu, IM Tianqi Wang, Chase Bellamy, Anagha Sinkar, Kishan Karthigeyan, and Harshil Jagga

U1600: Aaron Vargas, Sampath Kumar, Rishaank Channad, Brent Jenkins, Temir Alimov, Deepak Vellattu, Sasmita Mohanty, Srivatsa Gundumalla, Satvick Kumar, Jeremy Huffman, and Shanmukhi Malireddy

U1300: Cole Putnam, Ira Rogers, Akrhith Chintalacheruvu, Ori Raz, Cameron Brown, Douglas Samson, and Michael Bernard

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 16.

Wednesday Action Quads (CCC Main/South)

Our Wednesday Action Quads tournament is a g20+10 USCF-rated quads event held every Wednesday evening at our Main/South location. This tournament is open to players of all ages and strengths. Just like last week, this week's WAQ was absolutely packed, as 58 players participated across 14 quads.

Our WAQ winners this week were:

Quad A: FM Donald Johnson and Andrew Wu (2 points)

Quad B: Steve Alappatt (3 points)

Quad C: Carter Zsittnik (3 points)

Quad D: Celine Atassi and Luke Zimmer (2 points)

Quad E: Eshwar Kothapalli (3 points)

Quad F: Sujan Maddipati (3 points)

Quad G: Adrian Sommerstein (2 points)

Quad H: three-way tie between Aadhav Nr, William Lobig, and Samanyu Ammasani (2 points)

Quad I: Rishaank Channad (3 points)

Quad J: Steven Libonati and Benjamin Gamayunov (2 points)

Quad K: Ritvik Kumar (2.5 points)

Quad L: Reyansh Mayank (3 points)

Quad M: Krish Konda (2.5 points)

Quad N: Ira Rogers (3 points)

Congratulations to Steve Alappatt, who crossed 2000 USCF to become an Expert for the first time! Other big gainers this week included Eshwar Kothapalli, Sujan Maddipati, Rishaank Channad, Ritvik Kumar, Reyansh Mayank, and Krish Konda, each winning their quads and tacking on at least 50 rating points in the process.

For the full results of this week's WAQ, see the USCF rating report. 

Our next Wednesday Action Quads tournament is scheduled for July 17.

Friday Action Quads (CCC Main/South)

Every Friday evening, the CCC hosts two scholastic quad events, one at each center! Friday Action Quads is our tournament at the Main/South location, and this week's edition attracted 25 participants across six quads. The following players took first place in their respective quads:

Quad A: Rishaank Channad (2 points)

Quad B: Cole Putnam (2.5 points)

Quad C: Arnav Watwe (3 points)

Quad D: Harish Chandramohan (2.5 points)

Quad E: Nolan Symons, Quinten McNear, and Sreyash Maitra (2 points)

Quad F (five players): Malhaar Zagade (3 points)

Cole Putnam, Arnav Watwe, and Harish Chandramohan each gained more than 70 rating points at this week's FAQ, with Harish Chandramohan achieving a new peak USCF rating!

For detailed results of the most recent Friday Action Quads, view the USCF crosstables.

The next Friday Action Quads will be held on July 19.

Friday Pizza Quads (CCC North)

While Friday Action Quads was underway at the CCC Main/South, the CCC North hosted its own quads event, the Friday Pizza Quads! FPQ is our newest addition to our weekly tournament schedule, with the same format as FAQ and our other scholastic quad tournaments.

Our FPQ winners this week were:

Quad A: Aaryan Sharma (3 points)

Quad B: Sumeet Eaga (2.5 points)

Quad C: Adhvik Boddupally (3 points)

Quad D (five players): Joshua Thomas (3 points)

Aaryan Sharma broke 1000 USCF for the first time, while Sumeet Eaga, Adhvik Boddupally, and Joshua Thomas each gained over 90 points for their quad-winning performances. Additionally, second-place finishers Sai Kambhammettu in Quad B and Deniz Galitsky in Quad C added over 50 rating points each.

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 19.

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. SAC is rated after each month, and the top-scoring adult and junior player in each section receives a $25 gift card to USCF sales!

Congratulations to our SAC winners this past week:

Top: Shawn Bale, Charlie Manolakis, Srivatsa Gundumalla, Chalpati Gundumalla, Shlok Kaushik, Sasmita Mohtanty, and Kishan Karthigeyan

U1300: Phaneendra Bulusu, Ishaanvii Ashwin, Arav Kumar, Shivin Ashwin, Gaurav Satwalkar, Shrinika Musuluri, Nischay Peela, Carlene Pyne, Anjali Clapp, Justin Purvis, and Santhosh Manikandan

SAC standings for the month of July can be viewed here. Our next SAC will take place on July 21 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. SAQ runs at a time control of g20+10 and is USCF-rated, with this week's edition featuring 28 players evenly split into seven sections.

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

Quad A: Gavin Chen (2.5 points)

Quad B: Steven Hook (3 points)

Quad C: Shrehit Dhiman (3 points)

Quad D: Aditi Sukumar (2.5 points)

Quad E: Akul Gowdru and Aarush Bhanja (2 points)

Quad F: Mahathi Radeev (3 points)

Quad G: Malhaar Zagade (3 points)

The rating report for this week's SAQ can be found here. The next Sunday Action Quads will be held at the CCC Main/South location on July 21.

Online Blitz Arena!

The CCC hosts an online arena every Sunday night right here on chess.com. The event is open to any members of this group, with the top five finishers receiving a free one month diamond membership to this website!

This week's big winner was Steve Alappatt, who scored 21 wins, no losses, and two draws in last night's arena. Steve narrowly took first place over second place finisher Stormy, scoring 75 points to Stormy's 72. 

One of Steve's most impressive games came against tournament regular Brayden Van De Graaff. Steve unleashed many flashy moves, starting with 16...Ba3!

Here's Steve's victory against user muk-nee, who finished in sixth place:

Winning any tournament does tend to require a degree of luck, which Steve received in this game against SacSacDraw. Black missed mate in two on move 31: can you find it?

Second place was the user Stormy, who scored the same number of wins as Steve, but with two extra losses mixed in which ultimately kept him out of the top spot. Here's his win against user 1z1q:

CCC regular Shravan Dash (username annoyingtriangle) finished a distant third place with 55 points, although he did achieve a win against Stormy late in the tournament:

Rounding out the top five were Blindfoldaccc and MissyChampion, scoring 49 and 46 points respectively. Congratulations to our top finishers!

Two puzzles from Sunday's tournament to wrap up:

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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