Lichess4545 Ledger 011

Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #011 - January 9, 2017

State of the League

Welcome to season 6! Week one of the team league has already concluded and and Lonewolf #6 is starting up today. Hello to all the new members and I'm glad you've decided to spend some time with the Lichess4545 community.

There are still a few notes about the end of season 5 to cover.

Final Congratulations!

Congrats to the season 5 winning team, Blunder-Mifflin. Also, great job to those who won medals on their respective boards and all the other awardswinners from the team league (See links on season 5 summary page). Also congrats to winners of Lonewolf #5, @renatoperu.

Season 5 Youtube Review by Christof Sielecki aka ChessExplained

Thanks to all who participated in the process and especially those who donated to cover the expense of the review. Overall, we had 20 members who submitted nominations for a total of 18 games. 6 games were chosen (one for each board) by a committee led by @JPTriton.

The 6 chosen games have already been sent to CE and his review will be shared once he gets it out. Congrats to those who were chosen.

Board 1: hetraie vs Atrophied 0-1 Gamelink
Board 2: quirked vs GnarlyGoat 1/2-1/2 Gamelink
Board 3: isaypotato vs revoof 0-1 Gamelink
Board 4: scarff vs Prune2000 1/2-1/2 Gamelink
Board 5: lakinwecker vs MadLoKi 0-1 Gamelink
Board 6: endrawes0 vs skillet 0-1 Gamelink

Season 5 Survey Results

Thanks to all those who filled out the survey. It definitely helps with how the league evolves moving forward.

For both enjoyability and organization of the previous season 90% of respondents rated the season as a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1-5
Most members wanted to keep the teams at 6 boards (77%)
A majority of members indicated that if they were an alternate in season 6 they would like to play against other alternates
- We have 3 extra options for you! First is the Lonewolf #6 tournament. There is also the Ladder league. See the slack channel #ladder for more details. Finally, there will be a #blitz-battle tournament. See below for more details.
Alternate situation: We also got good feedback about the alternate system. 51.8% of respondents wanted to keep the current system.
- Over the offseason, cyanfish and lakinwecker have done a large overhaul to @chesster and the lichess4545 website to make it easier to handle the way alternates are contacted and recruited to play games.

Thank you to all those who suggested improvements for @chesster and for the website. All those comments have been looked at by the folks who are working on those things specifically. There are already a couple of new options from chesster to get reminders about pairings, and when your game is scheduled (see here for more details). We hope to highlight more of these features in depth in future issues.

Finally, thanks for all the encouraging feedback from the survey! All the mods appreciate it. A quick note on the season 6 moderator team: endrawes0, MrLegilimens, petruchio, and angborxley are not active moderators, but remain a part of the moderator team (they just won't respond to DM's or summons). They still have input in the moderator's decisions throughout the season. Thus, please welcome @somethingprentious as the newest moderator for Lichess4545.

Blitz Battle

Lakinwecker is organizing this tournament: Hey all, We're planning on holding an 8 round blitz (3+2) Swiss Tournament on Jan 21 at 19:00 UTC (all rounds played back to back) . Think of it as similar to the Titled Tuesday events only with more blunders. It's only open to members of this slack. Join #blitz-battle if you're interested - I'll make more announcements there.

Stats from Week 1: Thanks to somethingpretentious for his work to automate the process of coming up with these stats. It is much appreciated!

Biggest upset: 210 point difference makeareason 2155 beats CM VNeustroev 2365 Gamelink
Lowest ACPL game: 6 ACPL TIE
- Sazik in win vs oddskill Gamelink
- ramz_mihailov in draw vs JPTriton Gamelink
Lowest combined ACPL game: 13 combined ACPL JPTriton vs ramz_mihailov Gamelink
Highest ACPL game: 106 ACPL ianremsen in draw vs endrawes0 Gamelink
Highest combined ACPL game: 207 combined ACPL ianremsen vs endrawes0 Gamelink
Longest game: Reached move 72 JPTriton vs ramz_mihailov Gamelink
Shortest game: Ends on move 11 Sazik vs oddskill Gamelink
Quickest mate: Mate on move 11 by Sazik against oddskill Gamelink

Finally as always feel free to join #lichessledger on slack if you want to help or contribute in any way to this newsletter.

Chess For You

The game of chess is better known throughout the world now than any other aesthetic human invention. It is the first thing and the only thing thus far to gain admittance into the poets 'parliament of man, the federation of the world.' It is the first language to spread around the globe, none the less expressive for dispensing with words, and none the less intelligible for it is unerring appeal to reason and mental concentration, rather than to the diplomacy of the tongue. The communion of two minds at chess is not subject to the limits of language or nationality. Some knowledge for so universal a pastime should be regarded as a necessary accomplishment to all.

From Cook's Synopsis of Chess Openings (1884), page 145.

Chess Puzzle

From a round 1 45+45 game on board 1: badplayer_CM vs ghdef457. White just played fxe4. Black to move. How does black end the game here?

For the answer see gamelink.

Gamelink

Thanks to @seb32, @somethingpretentious, and @lakinwecker for their contributions. Thanks to @petruchio for his help in editing this issue.