Lichess4545 Ledger 139

Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #139 - February 19, 2021

Season 25 arrives!

by @gingersquirrelnuts, @izzie26, @kostasvl and @lc91

No, we weren't joking, the ledger really is back! Welcome to the second edition of the New, Reasonably Good But Nowhere Near the Golden Age ledger ❤️

As the league grows to an unprecedented size, and the Slack message history diminishes accordingly 😞, we bring you the latest fresh news from all corners of our cosy community:

In this edition:

4545 league update including Round 1 statistics
LoneWolf Season 20 statistics and visualisations
Updates from our other leagues
Variant puzzles! (regular puzzles will return next week)
Plus a scintillating study from a (self-confessed) shameless self-promoter

State of the 4545 League

by @izzie26, @kostasvl, @lc91 and @Moccy

Season 25 is now underway! 46 teams are currently vying for that coveted but illusory league trophy and the competition is on! What's more, each team now has 10 boards!

Yes, with 460 participating players each week, Season 25 is by far the biggest season that the league's ever had.

The wise Moccy has unearthed a great stat to illustrate this by identifying the specific days on which the most league games had been scheduled. It turns out that last Saturday (13 February) saw the most scheduled games ever:

2021-02-13 (season 25): 77 games
2020-06-06 (season 21): 70 games
2020-11-21 (season 24): 64 games
2020-05-02 (season 21): 63 games
2020-05-16 (season 21): 63 games
2021-01-09 (season 24): 63 games
2020-05-30 (season 21): 62 games
2020-05-09 (season 21): 60 games
2020-05-23 (season 21): 59 games
2020-09-12 (season 23): 58 games

Moreover, as one astute nut-philiac ledger editor later pointed out, due to a late-starting game originally scheduled on the stroke of midnight, 78 league games were played last Saturday. Insanity!

Our resident number-whisperer lc91 also observes that of the 23 matches that took place in Round 1, six matches ended in a 5-5 draw, 11 matches (!) were decided by a mere half-point, and the biggest margin of victory was six points (8-2).

Also, remarkably, for a round that featured 230 games, there were only two forfeits and a single scheduling draw. Long may such enthusiasm continue!

Around the leagues

Chess960

By @Vegemite_Fighter

Season 14 Final Results
Congratulations to the winner eie24 with a perfect 7/7! Moistvonlipwig was runner up on 6/7, followed by Silkthewanderer third on tie-breaks on 5/7.

Season 15 has begun!
One week in, 31 competitors are feeling extremely random. Maybe they will ask to pass the fork and knife at the next dinner party. If you too want to free your inner chess iconoclast, entry into the Chess960 league is open at any point until the final round.

Rapid Battle

By @gavalanche20

The 13th edition of Rapid Battle just kicked off last week, with a grand total of 53 participants in two sections! Players will battle it out over the next six weeks to fight for the right to advance to the knockout rounds. Join us at #rapid-battle to find out more!

Correspondence League

momor reminds us that registration is always open for the Correspondence League. There are two new formats: games in the Marathon are one-day-per-move, and games in the Division are seven-days-per-move.

To find out more, join #correspondence (and see the league rules linked in the channel topic).

Book Club

By @Ecclesiastic

We're making steady progress working our way through 100 Endgames You Must Know. As of now, we've finished reading through the chapters on pieces versus pawns, and we're now starting on minor piece endgames. On Monday we'll start playing through same-colored bishop endgame positions from master games. As always, new members who want to participate are always welcome - please see #book-club.

Infinite Quest

By @Silkthewanderer

The Infinite Quest continues. In Week 6, the standings are led by the three players who have reached Level 4 already: IsaVulpes just joined moistvonlipwig and lelouch_vi_brittania. MVL and LVB face off in this round, and the winner will have a great chance of being the first to reach Level 5.

It's worth reminding everyone that Infinite Quest is a tournament that is always running. Players can join any time they want, and they can pause or resume their games each week, effectively setting their own pace to suit their availability. Every Wednesday, all active players receive a new opponent for a four-game rapid match (time control: 15+10). Winners gain XP and reach ever higher Levels. The scoring system is nonlinear, in that higher levels require increasingly more wins, so newcomers can catch up to the current leaders very quickly.

54 players have started their Quest, and there are 36 currently active players. Do you want to join in the next round? If you're interested, please check our documentation and standings, and join us in our channels #quest-herald (which is for signups and results) and #quest-tavern (which is more for general discussion).

Theme Brawl

Sit back, it's time for "Tales from the Brawl", a long-winded way for @Lou-E to tell us how they won this week and beat a 2100...

Theme Brawl's second season continues and we have got our first dethronement of the new season - adande1 overtakes VicPez, last season's winner, as the reigning all-time, all-star champion of Theme Brawl!

adande1 placed a very respectable second place in this week's Scotch Game brawl, netting them two points to chalk up on the leaderboard. Coming in third was PracticalNiceGuy...and in first place, for the first time ever, was yours truly! (Ed: Lou-E, that is) It was tight at the top, with the top three players all finishing on four points.

Game of the tournament this week was the following game, between myself and PracticalNiceGuy. Shameful self-promotion aside, I think this is a game you will enjoy!

Playing Black, I played the Classical Variation of the Scotch, a line I essayed in every game as Black, and the game turned into a tense, sharp battle in the Millennium Variation after White's novelty, 6.Bb5. From there we saw some jockeying for position as both sides developed their pieces, before a queen exchange and series of exchanges left White with a strong centre versus Black's relatively superior activity against White's uncastled king. After a few more moves and 17.O-O-O, both sides were castled queenside and thus it became a battle for the c-file, with White's two sets of doubled pawns elsewhere on the board leaving them at a disadvantage in the case of an endgame scenario. It was Black who struck first, throwing their c-pawn up the board and pushing White's king back to a deeply uncomfortable position after 30...Bb2+. White looked to be gaining counterplay after the strong defensive knight manoeuvre 32.Nd4 -> 33.Ng3 and a scary passed pawn on the d-file, but White sadly blundered in the next few moves with 36.Rxf7??, allowing 36...Re1+ and a crushing victory to follow. One final move I would like to direct your attention to is the game-winning rook sacrifice 45...Rb2+!, which according to Stockfish leads to a forced mate in 9.

Tune in next week for more tales from the Brawl and another game of the week! You can come and join us over at #theme-brawl to vote for the next opening and take part yourself. Theme Brawls are played on a Monday night and voting for the next week's brawl ends Friday 17:00 UTC.

Happy Brawling!

Variant of the Month

By @no_seigen

The second season of the Variant of the Month tournament is going to be exciting! This month, our members selected S-Chess as our variant, and we are currently on the second of three rounds. Last month's variant was King of the Hill, and we had a nice result from Ecclesiastic who scored a blowout 6/6 points.

Congrats to our top five players from last month:

Ecclesiastic (6pts)
no_seigen and ExirK (4pts each)
Zubenelgenubi and gingersquirrelnuts (3pts each)

Variant Puzzles: The puzzles below are from S-Chess, which introduces two new pieces. The hawk, represented by a combination of a knight and bishop, can move like either of those pieces. The elephant, represented by a combination of knight and rook, can move like either knight or rook.

Puzzle 1: from Ecclesiastic vs no_seigen

White has just played b4?? Find mate in 4 for Black:

Puzzle 2: from gingersquirrelnuts vs rooooks
White has played g3??. Find mate in 6 for Black:

Lichess Bundesliga Update

By @gingersquirrelnuts

This is a twice-weekly team blitz tournament played every Thursday and Sunday at 1900 UTC. To play, join the Lichess 4545 team on Lichess.

There are 17 tiers with promotion and relagation between tiers. We started the week in tier 13.

On Sunday, we narrowly missed out on a top 3 promotion slot, finishing 4th in our group. xToms was top scorer with 34 points.

On Thursday we faced a stiff fight against relegation, but were helped to the safety of 7th place by just one point, as mathijshuis heroically finished with six wins in a row and top-scored with 27 points.

Crazyhouse

Review of season 9 from @okei's blog

Season 9 of the zh team league was a shorter three-week season in anticipation of the upcoming 2021 Crazyhouse World Championship. But there were still four powerhouses in TheFinnisher, zyxon, blitzbullet and Kleerkast leading the four teams. As in previous editions of the league, board 1 played 2 games of 5+5, board 2 played 6+6 all the way down to board 7 playing 2 games of 11+11 zh. So there were 28 players in all as well as three alts who also got a match. For the second time in zh league history, we had an unbeaten team winning every game. The other three teams (Pocket Play, Okei Boomer and Zatramp) each secured one match win, separated only by tiebreaks (number of games won by each).

Congratulations to Zhumbawamba for winning the Grand Slam in Season 9 with 6/6 match points and 30/42 game points (an impressive 71.4%).

The winning team was made up of TheFinnisher, terra87, Bleichkind and jrpadhi on boards 1 to 4, Marlonc & abunickabhi sharing board 5, Zaraza and fgalla sharing board 6 and adande1 with his now legendary mate-dodging on board 7 (how is it that his opponents can never finish him off?). Congratulations to the Season 9 Champions!

Individual shout-outs go to TheFinnisher top board 1 with 5/6, terra87 and LegionDestroyer equal-top board 2 with 5/6, Bleichkind top board 3 with 5/6, okei and pepellou sharing top board 4 with 4/6, Andrey2888, new to the league, was top board 5 with 5/6, no_seigen, also new, was top board 6 with 4/6, and last but not least adande1 was top board 7 with 5/6.

As for season-wide statistics, Black won only 44% of games with the disadvantage for Black most pronounced on boards 6 and 7. On board 2, however, Black upset the odds with a 2-1 win ratio, and even on board 1, it was a tie. Crazyhouse is still not too one-sided a game, even at the highest levels, and even in slow time controls.

Full results may be found both in this Season 9 Google Sheet as well as on the zh league website.

Thanks to all the participants who helped self-organise the league this season despite some technical difficulties on the website, and to all the spectators who watched and commentated on the games live in Lichess chat.

Puzzles based on the games in Season 9 will follow as usual on this blog.

Keep playing crazyhouse, and keep your eyes on the calendar in the right sidebar for upcoming matches once the 2021 Crazyhouse World Championships get underway!

Weekly Stats

Compiled by @lc91 with lichess4545_stats_puzzles

Stats for Season 25 Round 1:

The fastest mate was white on move 14 found in Gamelink White: z0x, Black: saintex.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: ssyx, Black: teg.
The fastest resign was black on move 10 found in Gamelink White: board_13, Black: rebelme.
The biggest upset was 321 points in Gamelink White: dakillian, Black: gouldchess91.
The longest game ended with black on move 106 Gamelink White: macalda, Black: wo_cheng_si_le.
4 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: thekova, Black: mronemore.
Combined minimum ACPL was 8 in Gamelink White: thekova, Black: mronemore.
The longest think was 22 minutes 48.0 seconds on move 16 in Gamelink White: texaspete09, Black: sundancekid1019.
The most time left was 83 minutes 32.0 seconds in Gamelink White: qhov, Black: asn8745.
The most time spent was 120 minutes 55.0 seconds in Gamelink White: macalda, Black: wo_cheng_si_le.

Board	MinACPL	CombinedMinACPL
1	12 by flokithecat/junkykong GAMELINK	24 by flokithecat/junkykong GAMELINK
2	4 by thekova/mronemore GAMELINK	8 by thekova/mronemore GAMELINK
3	8 by bufferunderrun/chill5555 GAMELINK	16 by bufferunderrun/chill5555 GAMELINK
4	6 by jwwells42 GAMELINK	35 by pic1991/aerytheta GAMELINK
5	13 by oleksiial GAMELINK	50 by fakeoo/sexbucket GAMELINK
6	18 by losferalo GAMELINK	44 by macalda/wo_cheng_si_le GAMELINK
7	12 by patalanoc GAMELINK	41 by patalanoc/prendradjaja GAMELINK
8	9 by entoen GAMELINK	51 by meaot/thepaul1 GAMELINK
9	12 by chessnerdbird GAMELINK	56 by penguinsr6/goodie1857 GAMELINK
10	14 by tomato_xplosion GAMELINK	57 by rookontherim/pacmandoor GAMELINK

-PGNs-

Although the last game in Season 20 took place over a week ago, we can't publish the winners and final standings until the LoneWolf mods formally close the season. We're assured this will happen soon...so watch this space. Meanwhile, here are the customary statistical highlights for LoneWolf this season, as well as a special lupine edition of lc91's glorious opening tree visualisation!

LoneWolf Season 20 highlights:

The fastest mate was white on move 9 found in Gamelink White: sparkler7, Black: pumpedpoison.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: leebster, Black: chesspawnfork.
The fastest resign was white on move 7 found in Gamelink White: arnab_saha, Black: chloe1.
The biggest upset was 310 points in Gamelink White: j3084, Black: feraso2019.
The longest game ended with black on move 115 Gamelink White: timothyha, Black: nadjarostowa.
2 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: m0r1, Black: lc91.
Combined minimum ACPL was 12 in Gamelink White: god666, Black: sigrud, Gamelink White: chloe1, Black: plastic_pusher.
The longest think was 28 minutes 49.0 seconds on move 2 in Gamelink White: rodeo, Black: david252525.
The most time left was 53 minutes 7.0 seconds in Gamelink White: staskac, Black: knubz_the_red.
The most time spent was 78 minutes 25.0 seconds in Gamelink White: timothyha, Black: nadjarostowa.

-PGNs-

Our most accurate players were god666 (14.7 ACPL) followed by blackcat700 (21.5) and then k-night-moves (26.0).

And with five draws each, three players laid equally valid claim to the Giri Award: god666, lostearthworm and wookash_888.

Lonewolf Season 20 Opening Tree

Click on it to explore!

Across all games played in S20, White won 47.9%, Black won 40.9%, and 11.1% were draws.

Opening frequency table (to complement the opening tree)

Rank	Move	Frequency	Games (%)	Score (%)	Draw (%)	ECO
1	e4	863	57.6	53	11	B00a
2	d4	473	31.6	56	13	A40a
3	c4	84	5.6	52	12	A10
4	Nf3	38	2.5	53	5	A04
5	b3	18	1.2	50	0	A01
6	b4	6	0.4	67	0	A00p
7	f4	5	0.3	20	0	A02
8	e3	4	0.2	13	25	A00k
9	g3	3	0.2	100	0	A00t

Frequency of themes in first 20 moves of each game:

Theme	Frequency
Same-side castling	61%
Open c/d/e file	53%
White pawn on 5th, 6th, or 7th rank	51%
Only one side has the bishop pair	50%
Black pawn on 2nd, 3rd, or 4th rank	33%
Queens exchanged	19%
Opposite-side castling	11%
White has an IQP	10%
Black has an IQP	8%
Kingside pawn storm	6%

Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the ordering of these themes, and indeed the percentages themeslves, are almost identical to the numbers seen when looking at 4545 games alone - just compare this table to the one from the ledger #138!

Material remaining at the end of each game:

	♙	♝♞	♜	♜,♝♞	♛	♛,♝♞	♛,♜	♛,♜,♝♞
All games	6%	9%	7%	23%	4%	6%	6%	39%

Thanks for reading the ledger! Feel free to join #lichessledger if you would like to contribute in any way or provide any feedback. Both are highly encouraged and appreciated.

Some useful links, especially for new members: 4545 Player's Handbook / Rules / FAQs / TV / Overview / History

Massive thanks to our contributors for this edition: @Ecclesiastic, @Forhavu, @gavalanche20, @gingersquirrelnuts, @izzie26, @kostasvl, @kraaft, @lc91, @Lou-E, @Moccy, @momor, @no_seigen, @okei, @Silkthewanderer and @Vegemite_Fighter. Since the editors continue to not accept any responsibility for errors and omissions, please direct all relevant criticism this week to ChessBase!