Charlotte Chess Center Hosts Southeastern FIDE & Norm Events: Full Recap!
It was a chess-filled Labor Day weekend here in Charlotte, North Carolina, as the Charlotte Chess Center hosted two FIDE-rated events: the Southeastern FIDE Championship and the Labor Day Norm Invitational!
Both tournaments took place at the Southpark Hilton Garden Inn, hosting a total of 144 players coming from numerous states and countries. The field was very strong, with twenty titled players in the Norm Invitational and a minimum 1500 USCF rating requirement to play in the Southeastern FIDE Championship. This recap will cover both events, so to find a specific player or section, navigate using the headings below.
Southeastern FIDE: Championship
The Southeastern FIDE Championship was a standard-rated open event which, as you might have guessed, was also FIDE-rated! Starting on Saturday and ending on Labor Day Monday, competitors engaged in five rounds of g/90+30, with the top games broadcasted live here on chess.com via DGT. The event welcomed 124 players across three sections, each vying for a share of the $5,500 guaranteed prize fund.
The biggest winner of all at the 2025 Southeastern FIDE was GM Sergey Erenburg of Virginia, who won all five of his games to earn the $1,000 first prize.
One of Erenburg's wins came against NM Zubin Baliga, featuring a pretty queen sacrifice:
Erenburg faced titled players in all five rounds of the event, including WGM (and streamer) Dina Belenkaya, as well as NMs Prateek Mishra, Andrew Jiang, and Matthew Diao. The latter also holds the FIDE CM title and had great drawing chances against Erenburg in a rook endgame. As so often happens, the GM ultimately found a way to win.
NM Diao still finished in a tie for second place and won $266.67, alongside GMs Alonso Zapata and Razvan Preotu. To win his fourth game, Zapata performed a knight's tour!
NM Vedic Panda (who tied for first at the Carolinas Classic tournament earlier this year!) split the top U2300 prize with WIM Michelle Catherina Prince, each taking home $225 for 3.5/5.
Under 2100
Our other perfect scorer last weekend was the number one seven-year-old, not only in the United States, but the world!
Ruben Quintans recently broke Abhimanyu Mishra's record as the youngest-ever chess expert in the USCF. He now seems to have his sights set on the NM title, with his rating jumping 68 points to a new peak of 2082. Here's his round four victory against Aditya Ramkumar:
Ruben clinched first place with his last-round victory against expert (and CCC regular) Patrick McCartney. The two had actually faced off twice before at CCC's Reverse Angle events, but the stakes were much higher this time around.
Ruben's 5/5 score netted him $800 and the first place plaque, an achievement made even more impressive by the fact that no other player even scored as many as four points! Eight players ultimately tied for second place with 3.5/5: Anmay Chaudhury, Brian Zhang, Aditya Ramkumar, Vignesh Sekar, Anvay Phadke, Eshwar Kothapalli, Andrew Khariouk, and Jairaj Desai.
Under 1800
Although there wasn't a perfect scorer in the U1800, that doesn't mean there was any shortage of impressive performances! Two very talented youngsters, Siddharth Basavaraju and Sanchit Haripradeep, split the top prize with 4.5/5 and earned $600 apiece. The former played a fun sacrifice in the third round against Noshir Patel, who himself tied for third with Ramon Oropeza ($100).
While Siddharth defeated Harshil Jagga in the final round, Sanchit Haripradeep took down Aadhav Nr to create a tie for first place. Sanchit is an Elite Team student at our CCC North location, and in less than two years he's gone from unrated to his new peak of 1814 USCF!
Also finishing in the money was Matias Zapata Sanchez, who won the top U1650 prize and came away with $225.
Full standings from the 2025 Southeastern Fide Championship can be found at this link, including the USCF rating changes. Congratulations to all prizewinners!
Labor Day Norm Invitational!
Alongside the Southeastern FIDE, the Charlotte Chess Center hosted two norm tournaments last weekend. Round two of the GM Norm section immediately made headlines, as FM Gauri Shankar's live FIDE rating crossed 2400 for the first time, making him an IM-elect!
Gauri is a chess streamer and content creator, having earned 189K subscribers on his YouTube channel and 44.7K followers on Twitch. His breakthrough came in round two against GM Cristhian Arnaldo Cruz Sanchez, although he had an excellent tournament overall, only losing twice in the nine-game round robin.
Note: ratings listed below are USCF, not FIDE.
Grandmaster Luka Budisavljevic finished in first place with 7/9, which is very impressive considering that he drew each of the first three rounds. Here's his victory vs FM Donald Johnson:
Luka's precision powered him to four wins in a row to end the tournament, including his victory against the aforementioned IM-elect Gauri in the final round.
The big star in the IM Norm section was FM Rose Atwell, who earned her second IM norm with a tremendous 6.5/9 performance. Atwell gained 54(!) FIDE points and also pushed her rating over 2400 USCF for the first time.
Two of Rose's games were largely decided by the same theme: the weakness of the opponent's back rank. In the first round against FM Andrew Jing (only 13 years old!), Rose forced resignation due to threats of Re1#:
Against FM James Chirilov, a familiar presence at Charlotte Chess Center events, Rose again exploited her opponent's back-rank problems to win material.
Full results with USCF rating changes from our Labor Day Norm Invitational can be found here, with all nine rounds viewable here on chess.com.
A big thanks as always to Kelly Centrelli for providing the photographs in this recap, as well as to organizer Peter Giannatos and all the tournament directors, arbiters, and staff who helped make this event possible!
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NM Dennis Norman
Chess Coach - Club Journalist
