Belenkaya and Hilby Win Charlotte Chess Center's Spring ALTO: Full Recap!

Last weekend, the SouthPark Hilton Garden Inn played host to one of the Charlotte Chess Center's flagship tournaments: the Spring ALTO. ALTO stands for At Least Twenty One, meaning that all participants in the event were 21 years old or above!

Held from April 25-27, 2025, the 2024 Spring ALTO welcomed 118 total players including several CCC regulars and coaches, each contending for a share of the $5,000 guaranteed prize fund. The tournament was split into three sections, all USCF-rated, with the Championship and U1800 sections also FIDE-rated. Alongside the main event, the CCC also hosted a "social night" on Friday evening, with every participant receiving a free drink courtesy of club founder FM Peter Giannatos.

Championship

Our Championship section featured a lineup of 39 players, including GM Ben Finegold, IMs Craig Hilby and Levan Bregadze, WGM Dina Belenkaya, WFM (and CCC coach!) Uthra Pakkirisamy, and six USCF NMs. Each of the first four players mentioned started on 2/2, with IM Hilby (who has also played in the CCC's affiliate North American Corporate Chess League!) winning a solid game with the black pieces against Dereck Laureano:

Meanwhile, WGM Dina Belenkaya also started on 2/2, all while broadcasting her games live on Twitch and YouTube to an audience of hundreds of thousands of fans! In the third round, Dina faced off against fellow YouTuber and chess celebrity GM Ben Finegold.

After a quiet opening, the middlegame soon became very complicated with lots of pawn tension in the center. Finegold, who recently analyzed his games live (the VOD available here on his YouTube channel), said he couldn't decide between 29...Red8 and 29...Rcd8, and ultimately chose incorrectly: "As soon as I played Rcd8, I'm like, 'She takes this and takes this! What am I doing?'"

WGM Belenkaya emerged with a strong passed pawn, which eventually became her ticket to victory:

Heading into the final day, WGM Belenkaya, IM Hilby, and NM Emmanuel Carter were the only two players on 3/3. Dina found herself in a crazy endgame against IM Levan Bregadze:

GM Finegold also analyzed this endgame in his Five Minutes with Ben series shortly after the tournament. 

While all three results were possible in Dina's game, there was never any doubt in the matchup between the other two leaders. IM Hilby achieved a very comfortable position out of the opening and slowly invaded into black's kingside. It might seem risky for white to push pawns in front of his own king, but try as he might, black was never quite able to generate any meaningful counterplay.

This put WGM Belenkaya and IM Hilby each on 4/4 entering the final round, and the two players made a draw after a prolonged endgame struggle. Despite being the significantly lower-rated player, it was Dina who actually had the upper hand at many moments in the game (viewable here on chess.com), but black held on to create a tie for first place. Finishing a full point ahead of the rest of the field, the two champions took home $650 apiece!

With no player scoring 4/5, we instead had a logjam of seven(!) players tying for third with 3.5 points. Those players were the aforementioned GM Finegold and NM Carter, NMs Jonathan Kogen, Alexander Crump, Jeffrey Quirke, and Zubin Baliga, and CCC regular Patrick McCartney. All seven came away with at least $75, with NMs Baliga and Quirke splitting the U2200 prize ($175 each) and McCartney winning the U2000 prize outright ($250). 

Here's a puzzle-worthy moment from NM (and CCC coach) Alexander Crump's last game, where white had a chance to trap black's rook in the corner of the board! Understandably, white wasn't able to find this resource under heavy time pressure, and eventually Coach Alex was able to create connected passed pawns on the kingside which he converted into a win.

Another familiar face to the Charlotte Chess Center is that of Anthony (Tony) Padron, who often streams alongside GM Kayden Troff on the ChessSharkz Twitch channel.

Padron scored 3/5, tying with Andy Catlin, Xiaodong Jin, and CCC coach Jay Garrison for the U2000 prize ($25 each). Here's Tony's first round victory against Jason Turner:

Full standings of the Championship section with prize results can be viewed at this link. 

Under 1800

The U1800 section saw a three-way tie atop the standings, with Geoff Charles, Eli Eichner, and Carl Labanz each finishing on 4/5. All three players ended up with $333.33, while Jared Crawford, Sampath Kumar, and John Fontaine split the U1600 prize ($116.67 each). 

Charles lost to Eichner in round three and had to win both his games on Sunday to catch up, while the other two winners made a very exciting draw in the last round with big money on the line. 

Standings and prize results from the U1800 section can be found here. 

Under 1400

The only 5/5 in the entire tournament came from Liam Maloney in the U1400 section, who gained an unthinkable 463 USCF rating points. Maloney had played a Wednesday Action Quads event earlier in the month, but to find his last tournament prior to that, you have to go all the way back to 2008, when he was a junior player in Michigan!

Maloney came away with the $500 prize for clear first place, defeating CCC regular Charles Cameron in the final round to clinch his perfect score:

While Maloney's performance stole the show, Michael Gray also turned in a fantastic result, drawing Cameron and winning all of his other games to finish on 4.5/5. Gray earned $300 for clear second place, while Kenny Campbell and Hannah Hahn split the third place and U1200 prizes and took home $200 each. Also finishing in the money were Anatoliy Umbetov and CCC's own John Ratledge, each winning $75 as the top players rated under 1000.

Prize standings from the U1400 section can be viewed here, while the entire event standings, along with rating changes, are available at the USCF tournament crosstable page. 

Thank you all for coming out to another Charlotte Chess Center event! As always, many thanks to Kelly Centrelli for the photographs in this article, to organizer FM Peter Giannatos, and to the numerous TDs and event staff who made our Spring ALTO possible.

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NM Dennis Norman

Chess Coach - Club Journalist