Six Norms Earned in Charlotte Norm Invitational

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The Charlotte Chess Center’s 29th GM/IM Norm Invitational ended with six players earning norms, including two who earned the coveted FIDE Master (FM) title in the process. Of the six ten-player Round Robins, three were designed to make it possible to achieve GM norms. Despite this, IM Justus Williams was the only player to earn a GM norm, with five more earning IM norms. 

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GM Titas Stremavicius and GM Razvan Preotu deprived any of the norm-seekers from achieving the goal of a GM norm in the A section. FM Jakub Fus had a strong performance which earned him his final IM norm.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

An interesting rook and pawn endgame occurred in this section in round five between IM Siddharth Jagadeesh and IM Denys Shmelov.

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IM Justus Williams was on fire in the GM B section and earned his first GM norm at 6.5/9. 

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

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FM Max Gedajlovic was very close to earning a GM norm but ran into a wall against GM Vladimir Georgiev, who won the section in the process, in the final round.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

Gedajlovic should be pleased with his overall result earning his second IM norm. Here is an example of his quality play from earlier in the event.

This group also featured some highly notable endgames from GM Alder Escobar Forero.

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The IM D section had no players coming away with a norm. This was in no small part to IM Tamas Petenyi who had an undefeated result finishing with 6/9.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

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It is rare for a section to have more than one player making a norm, and yet the IM E group had three finishing at the top with 7/9! Among them were a pair of Texans, Harshid Kunka and Grayson Rorrer, who each earned their first IM norm in the same event where they became FMs.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

FM Liam Putnam also earned his first IM norm in this section. As you can see in the accompanying puzzle pack, he just barely missed out on winning the section outright, as well.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

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The most dominating performance of the event belongs to the winner of the IM F section, GM Gabor Nagy. There were no norms earned in this section as the veterans were in top form.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

While these tournaments are often dominated by talented juniors, we would like to take a moment to highlight the most veteran player in the event: IM Nikolay Andrianov. Andrianov has a lengthy and storied career, which includes wins against GMs Garry Kasparov and David Bronstein.

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courtesy Charlotte Chess Center

As soon as the norm tournaments ended, the US Masters and the NC Open began! Readers can check out all the action from the event here.

We leave the reader with selected tactics from the event.