Team "Overrated" Victorious at Charlotte Doubles Championship: Full Recap!
Last weekend, the Charlotte Chess Center hosted a special event at the SouthPark Hilton Garden Inn: the Charlotte Doubles Championship!
This event provided a break from the monotony of "everyone-for-themselves" tournament chess. Participants registered in teams of two and received pairings as a team, rather than as individual players in the field. The team with the best results across five rounds of matches would be named the champions.
U2200 Section
A grand total of 102 players participated in the main event, forming 51 teams of two players each. No team could have an average rating over 2200, although players of any rating could participate, creating all sorts of possible team constructions. Teams were split up into two sections (U2200/Top and U1600) and competed for a $4,000 guaranteed prize fund!
In the U2200 section, teams Overrated and Co-Champions (fittingly) tied for first place with 4/5, winning $750 each. Team Overrated, consisting of NM Mark Biernacki and expert Grant Oen, came out on top in the tiebreaking procedure.
In ten total games across five rounds, only once did Overrated suffer a loss, with NM Biernacki losing in round three against FM Naveen Prabhu of Kramnik's Statisticians. Overrated was able to overcome this as Grant Oen defeated Vaisishta Tumuluri with the black pieces, drawing the match and putting the team at 2.5/3 overall heading into Sunday. The team also drew in round four against Amorchessfs (FM Kelvin Sanchez and Caton Tsao) before winning the final round 2-0 to finish the tournament with four points.
The team calling itself the Co-Champions (and finishing as such!) was made up of newly-minted NM Andrew Wu and expert Krishna Rallabandi. Although they were among the pre-tournament favorites by average rating, Co-Champions suffered a major upset in the very first round, with NM Wu drawing Garrett Allen, and Rallabandi losing as white against Jeff Brasher. Impressively, Co-Champions then won all four subsequent rounds to tie for first place, with Wu and Rallabandi scoring a remarkable 7/8 combined in those matches. Evidently, Swiss Gambits can happen in team tournaments, too!
The aforementioned Kramnik's Statisticians and Amorchessfs tied for third place with 3.5/5, alongside Double Question Marks (expert Benjamin Snodgrass and Ata Erdogan). The former two teams took home $150 each, while Snodgrass and Erdogan won $300 for having the highest score of any team with an average rating below 1900.
Other champions from the U2200 section:
- Merlin's Mad Mates (Diksha and Nishita Jaikumar) - Top Family Team
- Double Trouble (Kyle Cameron and Trishona Kumar) - Top Mixed Team
- NM Thomas Kung - Top Board One (5/5)
- Grant Oen - Top Board Two (4.5/5)
U1600 Section
Our top team in the U1600 was VanderBeast, comprised of Brayden and Hailey Van De Graaff, who netted $600 for clear first place. The team scored 4.5/5, drawing the second place Paladins (Brian Mapakamise and Walker Smith) in round two and then winning all remaining matches. Brayden Van De Graaff scored a strong 4/5 in his games, while Hailey had an especially impressive performance on board two, going undefeated and gaining over 100 points of USCF rating!
Five teams (Nemuk, Arch Bishop Squad, Tricky Knights, Black & White Cookies, and CLT Gems) split the third place prize and won $40 each, with Black & White Cookies (Oliver and Grayson Cooke) finishing as the top family team. Meanwhile, the top mixed team was ChessNation (Alexander and Alisa Joseph), finishing with 2.5/5 overall. Our remaining prizewinners:
- Zedi Knights (Luke and John Zimmer) - Top U1300 ($300)
- Grayson Cooke, Brian Mapakamise, and Rishaank Channad - Top Board One (4.5/5)
- Neil Harit - Top Board Two (4.5/5)
Complete standings, with both team and individual results, can be found on our website. For rating changes, see the USCF rating report here.
Bughouse Tournament!
Saturday evening was the night of the bughouse side event, featuring many players in the tournament and also a few visitors! Players were free to keep the same teams they had in the main event or create new ones as they pleased, with a total of 58 players and 29 teams participating across five double rounds.
Continuing his great weekend, Grant Oen was on the winning bughouse team, partnering with NM and CCC Head Coach Dominique Myers. Myers and Oen (playing under team name Girldads) only lost once in the ten total games, finishing with 9/10 and winning $100 each for clear first place.
Complete prize results from the bughouse tournament can be found at this link. If you look carefully, you might find this author's name in the standings, as well as that of a well-known Grandmaster.
A big thanks to Kelly Centrelli for the photographs in this article, and to all the players and tournament directors who made this event happen. We hope it was a fun weekend for all!
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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 Fall Open.
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NM Dennis Norman
Chess Coach - Club Journalist
