Lichess4545 Ledger 097

Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #097 - April 26, 2019

State of the 4545 League

by @kostasvl

Hello reader! We hope you're enjoying the small break before the start of the new 4545 league season. Registrations will open on Monday and if you want to be notified when that happens type your e-mail in this form.

[Team] Astaneh's reviews will be tomorrow Saturday 27th April at 1700 UTC. Be sure to tune in. Donation pool https://www.paypal.com/pools/c/8eaQNAJYJ9

Survey Summary

by @Isachess

End-of-Season Survey

I'll be going over the end-of-season survey for 4545 Team League Season 16. First of all, all of the responses are helpful for running the league, so give us more feedback. 74% of the respondents were were veterans, but only 8% of the respondents had been alts at any time this season.

72% of them found the league "very enjoyable," with 97% rating at least a 4. For an average of 4.69. This is the same percentage as last season for enjoyability. Even more people found the league as well organized: Almost 82% gave it a 5, and 98% gave it at least a 4. Which is also the similar to last season review. Organization had an average rating of 4.8.

So changing the league to 8 boards didn't change the enjoyability or the organization of the league to most players.

Veterans compared this season favorably towards the previous season, but were more nuanced in how much better. With 46% giving it a 5 and ~25% giving it a 4 or a 3 respectively. 5s is down 6%, with 4s up 6% from last season. So it basically equivalent to last year because 6% is ~3 votes, meaning 8 boards haven't affected veterans' enjoyment of the season.

Chart

On to the part of the survey that people actually care about--Best Team Name! Stop googling! Zher0 chance Erin is a girl, okei?! is a clear winner. There have been creative names based on league members before, but never have they been combined like this before. More Zero Than Alpha, and Snow White and the Seven Najdorfs tied for second place.

An interesting side note is that Stop googling!'s team was in the running for 1st place all the way until the end, and last season's winner got second, so maybe doing well in the season correlates to winning the real team battle.

Side-leagues News

by @kostasvl

In the Open section of LoneWolf, NM @ChristopherChabris is tied for first with @SpeedCobra and @swornt having a score of 4.5/5 each. The board 1 game of the week is NM @ChristopherChabris vs @swornt. For detailed standings click here.

In the U1800 section, @asdarqw is leading with a perfect 5/5 score followed by @mathijshuis and @Jmvanaclocha who have 4.5/5 each. Board 1 game of the week is @asdarqw vs @mathijshuis. For detailed standings click here.

In 960 league after 4 rounds @Somethingpretentious is (Or maybe was first) with a perfect score of 4/4. The bot of the league @Vetinari_Computer is (Or again was) following with 3.5/4. The board 1 game of the week was BOT @Vetinari_Computer vs @Somethingpretentious and the game resulted in a win for white. For detailed standings click here.

The 6th season of Series ended. Congratulations to the players that promote to the next higher group for the 7th season. Note that the 2 top finishers of each group rank a group up. Top players in each group:

Masters: Moistvonlipwig placed first, which also makes hin the Series winner, Grizzzly1000 got second, and lenguyenthanh was third.
Candidate Masters: ChessPatzerFrance placed first, Krsto got second, and ma1ah was third.
Group C: IsaVulpes placed first, Finneri got second, and jg777 was third.
Group D: Matrix47 placed first, asian42 got second, and Tranzoo was third.
Group E: Jwwells42 placed first, izzie26 got second, and raitonvsfuuton was third.
Group F: Numberman768 placed first, Drotciv got second, and Mekumcu was third.

To stay informed about the start of the new season join the #series-general channel.

The 5th Season of the Rapid battle has started and the first games are already played. This season there are exactly 32 participants. There are 2 divisions, each including 4 pools. Each pool has 4 players and from each pool 2 players promote to the elimination stage. Late-joiners can also be approved as long as they register as soon as possible and request so in #rapid-battle or by sending a direct message to @kostasvl.

Registration for Season 5 of the ZH-er0 league is about to close with 48 participants signed up already. Sign up here. It is a team crazyhouse league. Kudos to colwem for the hours he has spent setting up the crazyhouse team league website so that one day it can integrate with chesster and lichess4545. okei has written a recap of Season 4 at https://zhchess.blogspot.com/2019/04/season-4-of-zh-ero-league-was-team.html where you can also find lots of crazyhouse puzzles ranging from easy to very difficult. There is also a practice against the computer study on lichess where you can try these puzzles against the computer and an answers study with full variations as well as a recap video okei did spoiling most of the puzzles and analysing a few games.

For the practice study click here. For the full-explained study click here.

Video recap

The official April simul hosted by @mn8 went well. Certainly I’m sure he thinks so. Canadian National Master mn8 went +9 =2 -1. Congratulations to @Tactix47 for being the sole victor and coincidentally perfectly predicting both the total number of people that would play and the final score in the pre simul poll! To date that’s the first time we’ve had a “grand slam”. Kudos also go to @RealRobbert and @Brunnd for drawing.

Interview

by @adande1 and @kostasvl with @okei

Our featured player this week is a crazyhouse powerhouse, having won (alone or jointly) all four seasons of the crazyhouse (ZH) league. okei helps organise the ZH-er0 league as he likes to call it along with Zher0 who founded it, colwem who is programming the new ZH team league website, kostasvl the master-organiser & variants legend FischyVishy. The fourth season of the ZH league saw a transition to a team-based league for the first time, and attracted some of best ZH talent on lichess, including four of the top 10 active players. okei was board 2 for “Finnish Them” which won Season 4. He was also part of the team “Caruana Leaked Our Prep” that came in second place in Season 15 of the classical Lichess4545 League.

Tell us a little something about yourself. How long have you been playing chess?

I used to play a lot as a kid. When I was about 12, I played Kasparov in a team of 4 from our junior school, and we were in the newspapers the following day because of all the sixty or so teams of 4, us four schoolchildren had managed to last the longest number of moves. Of course, Kasparov had won on every board except for against a team of four international masters who had managed to hold him to a draw. We weren’t entirely happy with our feat however. We had lost at the end of the day. Both my junior and my secondary school team were the best in the UK. But I started to lose interest in chess, partly in favour of more “important” studies, and partly because I had stopped feeling that I was improving. As the years went on, I slipped down the boards as more talented youngsters joined in the first year and were already touching 2000 FIDE. Computer engines were more fallible and there were days few and far between when one could beat them with a scintillating attack. But I took a break from chess for twenty or so years until I rediscovered chess along with all the amazing variants on lichess at the beginning of 2017.

What is the story behind your username – how did you come up with it?

I stole the name from a café I went to on my last day in Graz, Austria for a maths conference back in 2003. I liked that it is pronounced ok, but spelled uniquely so available as a username . I still teach and study mathematics, but somehow my focus has been distracted by poetry, philosophy, religion, law and most recently chess. At heart, I am still a distracted mathematician.

Please answer some fun facts below

Favorite ZH opening as White: d4 d5 While e4 is supposed to be theoretically better, it is also theoretical. While I love theoretical motifs, I’m not a big fan of theoretical lines. The problem with memorised lines is they don’t improve one’s understanding. The problem by contrast with motifs without memorising lines, is that in chess precision and move order matters. d4 is slightly less sharp, so one can rely on motifs more reliably. I like to joke that e4 is exposing one’s king. It seems AlphaZero agrees though. The best way to learn a new game is not from the opening though, but from the endgame! And since the pieces keep getting reintroduced in crazyhouse, the crazyhouse endgame is when there is forced mate and it’s your job to find it! It’s definitely a skill worth improving!

Favorite ZH opening as Black against 1.e4: Nf6 Nc3 Nc6 d4 d5 Crazyhouse is a minefield as Black, because the moment I play any seriously strong player, any opening as Black is likely to be refuted straight out of the opening. This is why we insist on 2-game matches in our league. Strong players face the same difficulties. And yet in TheFinnisher versus Mugwort, both players won their game as Black. So there is hope.

Favorite chess icon/ inspiration: JannLee

Most memorable achievement (preferably chess related): I just hit 2200 crazyhouse this week! That feels like a big achievement.

Most memorable failure (preferably chess related): Failure is constant in chess. It’s hardly memorable. I really play this game for those moments when I take down a good player and it’s a work of art. It’s so much rarer in chess than in crazyhouse.

Most memorable game and/or opponent: I am incredibly proud of this Lichess4545 game with Itzal, soon after I had learnt of the exploits of AlphaZero with its focus on piece activity over material. Most memorable crazyhouse game was beating Yasser Seirawan on my birthday. I live streamed it also! It turns out Antic who is a top 50 player who also participates in the zh league also only beat Yasser only once so far, and also on his birthday! Yasser is one of the greats of the game! My most recent memorable game was beating ciw in crazyhouse by playing Rg6+ Kxh7 QxRh1+ QxQh1 R@g7+ Kh8 0-0-0+ followed by the rook taking all the blockers to end up on g8 below the other two rooks on g7 and g6 mating the king on h8.

What drew you to crazyhouse especially?

Crazyhouse is like an accelerated form of chess, no draws and all-out aggression. And the world’s best player in JannLee was streaming several hours a week so I would be playing 50% chess and 50% crazyhouse at that time. But the difference with crazyhouse is that I could feel myself getting better all the time. I could feel the improvement, and that is so rewarding. Chess is so hard. It comes, but much more slowly. Within 6 months or so, I had hit 1900zh and I was following the 2017 Crazyhouse World Championship which JannLee would go on to win. I participated in the ZH Summer League in 2017 organised by FischyVishy as bottom board or reserve. That was a fantastic experience. Board 3 of my team was KyleLegion who was a great mentor and still a great star of the game. Engines are good at tactics and forcing lines which determine their evaluations, but I was amazed how he could assess a position assuming no immediate tactics, and intuitively tell who was better. In crazyhouse, it is not always so easy! And calculating forcing lines is necessary in order to be sure. But this intuition is important and engines can’t teach that.

What is the history of your participation in the various leagues in the community?

I only discovered about the lichess4545 league because of a certain famous member getting banned for engine use. It was a very sad incident because he was a respected member of the community and especially of the crazyhouse community, making instructive crazyhouse content. This is something I was inspired to do myself. Since joining Lichess4545, I helped Zher0 found the crazyhouse league, as well as participating in blitz-battles, rapid-battles, correspondence and most recently blindfold cup. I’ve also played the odd game of lone-wolf, but never could get my teeth into an individual competition in classical chess. I love the team aspect of Lichess4545 and I feel motivated to do well for my team.

In 2018, I helped FischyVishy organise the Crazyhouse World Championship (CWC), and I also founded the only dedicated crazyhouse blog with a calendar of upcoming crazyhouse matches and events, updates after each round, usually in the form of puzzle blogs, other instructive crazyhouse content, and indeed recaps of the first three ZH-er0 leagues organised here by Zher0. The recap of the recently finished fourth season will be out shortly.

In 2018, I also started streaming (mainly crazyhouse) on Twitch, then exporting the best stuff to http://www.youtube.com/c/okeizh I have almost 9 days of streams now.

Can you point us to any videos in particular which people might be interested in?

If you just want standard chess, I have a playlist of chess study videos and I recommend the “Geometry of Chess” video especially, mainly about geometry in endgames.

If you are interested in learning crazyhouse, you might like the playlist I made dedicated to that. If there is one video I recommend, it is the first video in that playlist about identifying weaknesses in the opening. I made it in one night, and immediately afterwards broke 2100 zh on lichess.

The majority of my streams are commentary videos on crazyhouse world championship action, many of which can be found here, often in collaboration with much stronger players.

I also have several hours of anarchic hand and brain and such like in a Crazyhouse Fun Videos playlist if you like that kind of thing.

Talk about your performance and the biggest factors behind your success in the ZH League.

I turned up! And I got lucky! I tied FischyVishy in the first season of the league, but only because he skipped a match. He was by far the better player and beat me 2-0 in our head-to-head. In the second season, I tied with Antic 1-1 in our head-to-head, but again he skipped a match or two later in the season. In the third season, I won all my games, so decided to recruit some competition. I thought it was so funny the contrast with FICS where I was organising and streaming bughouse every Friday and there I am the lowest rated active player and the next lowest is 500 points stronger than me. It’s true I am worse at bughouse than at crazyhouse, but the patterns are the same. Bughouse is crazyhouse on speed (time is a commodity to get the pieces you need, not to be used for thinking) and you depend on your partner. So I know all these top players, including opperwezen, the current crazyhouse world champion, so I decided it was time to put myself back in my place and get the strong guys in. This season I won 2/6 on board 2, and this was pretty decent winning one of my two games against Antic and one of my two games against PawnInTraining who subbed in as an alt, both of them easily top 100 active players on lichess. But also what helps me is that the time control is slightly slower than the pace at which crazyhouse is usually played. But the reason we won was all down to TheFinnisher with 4/6 on board 1 who did a lot to build our team, asian42 on board 5 also scored 4/6 improving a lot through the season, while ErinYu & colwem both scored 3/6. Put that way, I was the weak link in a great team!

What chess resources (books, applications, websites etc.) do you use regularly and how have these helped you?

I do quite a lot of puzzles on lichess. I hit 10,000 puzzles last week. I got 26 first time, and a peak of 32 in Puzzle Rush. I am currently reading Gallagher, “365 Ways to Checkmate”. But I guess I need to improve my strategic thinking. I am dipping into Matthew Sadler, “Game Changer” although I have it as an e-book and it’s slightly hard to read casually without being able to move the pieces on a chessboard. Part of me wishes I could contribute to these projects breaking ground in AI, but I’m more of a pure mathematician. As for how these resources help me, I believe even standard chess puzzles will help improve your calculation, your vision and therefore your crazyhouse, and vice versa, crazyhouse will improve your tactical vision in chess, although you need to have separate chess and crazyhouse modes as the openings, piece values and attacking possibilities are very different. For those interested in taking up crazyhouse, do check out my beginner’s guide on my blog and lots more resources there.

It looks like you got some strong ZH players and famous streamers from lichess to participate. How did you manage to attract such top talent?

I messaged Mugwort, JKtheBullfrog and RapidVariants on lichess and I am friends with TheFinnisher on the House Variants Discord where all the strong variants players hang out. Because it was just a test season, I didn’t advertise it publicly, but just messaged well known members of the crazyhouse community so we could create some balanced teams. Pepellou from Spain is a fairly new crazyhouse player, but he is full of enthusiasm for the game and he streamed all his matches, some in the early hours of the morning after a long day at work. He has a great personality as well as great choice of music, so his streams are really fun and relaxing.

How are teams selected in the ZH league?

Well this is still up for discussion for this season. Last season, we got the board 1s to choose their board 2s (in reverse order of strength) and board 2s choosing board 3s in a selection procedure so teams would be both balanced but also cohesive. This does mean that the strongest board 1 would likely get the strongest board 3 and 5 (and weakest board 2 and 4), and because the team size of 5 is odd, the strongest board 1 would be at a slight advantage. But then it’s not such a bad thing that the best player in the league has a slight advantage. It was impossible to use the automatic selection as in lichess4545 because crazyhouse ratings fluctuate wildly. Letting teams choose themselves on the other hand could lead to great disparities of strength. We are considering whether to implement the same procedure as last time, or some kind of auctioning system in the new league. Players must register here, and the first week of the season will be implementing some form of team selection procedure.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share with the community?

The crazyhouse community has really found its home on lichess and we are living in a golden age, so enjoy it while it lasts! I hope it will last forever, but when you look at bughouse which was thriving on FICS and within a few short years has all but died out, it’s a warning that this is something special that we should nurture. All the best players of the game are here on our website and now a lot of them are here with us on Slack. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to be on a team with them, and to learn from watching their games. For my own part, I hope I can provide this community with instructive content, puzzles and streams to help build the base. But you can go to links below and watch JannLee, Mugwort, and since last weekend Kleerkast streaming crazyhouse and explaining their thinking:

Thanks for taking the time and hope you have all the success in growing the team based ZH league with another strong season!

Weekly Stats

by @kraaft, @RobUmbra and @Somethingpretentious

Stats for Season 14 Round 5:

The fastest mate was black on move 17 found in Gamelink White: furrykef, Black: halloway.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: slappybagowen, Black: dhnl.
The fastest resign was white on move 8 found in Gamelink White: mad_shaving, Black: iqb.
The biggest upset was 304 points in Gamelink White: grumpar, Black: shuure.
The longest game ended with black on move 91 Gamelink White: grizzzly1000, Black: panqueca.
160 was the highest ACPL in Gamelink White: rebelme, Black: halfhr.
4 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: garfield1980, Black: seius.
Combined maximum ACPL was 282 in Gamelink White: rebelme, Black: halfhr.
Combined minimum ACPL was 17 in Gamelink White: marcolom, Black: pgt1.
The longest think was 13 minutes 14.0 seconds on move 10 in Gamelink White: kostasvl, Black: gm1224.
The most time left was 45 minutes 52.0 seconds in Gamelink White: atur, Black: comus.
The most time spent was 74 minutes 26.0 seconds in Gamelink White: grizzzly1000, Black: panqueca.

-PGNs-

Overall season 59:

The fastest mate was black on move 13 found in Gamelink White: halloway, Black: tsatsa64.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: hicetnunc, Black: kostasvl.
The fastest resign was white on move 14 found in Gamelink White: isachess, Black: lapetitemort.
The biggest upset was 312 points in Gamelink White: lapetitemort, Black: halloway.
The longest game ended with black on move 93 Gamelink White: tsatsa64, Black: forhavu.
151 was the highest ACPL in Gamelink White: forhavu, Black: mmgoo.
6 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: mmgoo, Black: tsatsa64.
Combined maximum ACPL was 286 in Gamelink White: forhavu, Black: mmgoo.
Combined minimum ACPL was 40 in Gamelink White: mmgoo, Black: tsatsa64.
The longest think was 1 minutes 28.0 seconds on move 27 in Gamelink White: hicetnunc, Black: kostasvl.
The most time left was 3 minutes 7.0 seconds in Gamelink White: moha369, Black: isachess.
The most time spent was 5 minutes 52.0 seconds in Gamelink White: tsatsa64, Black: forhavu.

-PGNs-

#series

Overall season 6:

The fastest mate was white on move 16 found in Gamelink White: numberman768, Black: mekumcu.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: krsto, Black: chesspatzerfrance.
The fastest resign was black on move 8 found in Gamelink White: chesspatzerfrance, Black: rampichino, Gamelink White: asian42, Black: pepepibote.
The biggest upset was 253 points in Gamelink White: grzybozbur, Black: mn8.
The longest game ended with white on move 84 Gamelink White: tcgrif, Black: krsto.
154 was the highest ACPL in Gamelink White: asian42, Black: pepepibote.
4 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: jg777, Black: isavulpes.
Combined maximum ACPL was 226 in Gamelink White: psymar2, Black: h0tblackdesiat0.
Combined minimum ACPL was 23 in Gamelink White: jg777, Black: isavulpes.
The longest think was 40 minutes 55.0 seconds on move 12 in Gamelink White: brundd, Black: kostasvl.
The most time left was 99 minutes 53.0 seconds in Gamelink White: jg777, Black: finneri.
The most time spent was 118 minutes 39.0 seconds in Gamelink White: grizzzly1000, Black: david252525.

-PGNs-

AWARDS

Accuracy King: with an average of 18 ACPL, moistvonlipwig.
Fast Finisher: with an average gamelength of 48 ply, jg777.
Marathon Man: with an average gamelength of 99 ply, david252525 and kostasvl.
Giri Award: 2 draws, psymar, grzybozbur, krsto and grizzzly1000.
Biggest rating gain: with 126 rating points, mekumcu.
Biggest rating loss: with 66 rating points, jessehf.
Fun fact: The most popular opening played was D02 Queen's Pawn Game.

Database Analysis of series #6


                   Games     1-0     =-=     0-1    Score
-----------------------------------------------------------
 All report games     79      36       9      34    51.2%
-----------------------------------------------------------

Average Rating and Performance

White rating: 1827 (79 games); White performance: 1839 (51% vs 1832)
Black rating: 1832 (79 games); Black performance: 1820 (49% vs 1827)

Frequency of Themes in the First 20 moves of each game

Same-side castling: 58% White Isolated Queen Pawn: 13%
Opposite castling: 11% Black Isolated Queen Pawn: 4%
Kingside pawn storm: 20% White Pawn on 5/6/7th rank: 54%
Queens exchanged: 44% Black Pawn on 2/3/4th rank: 42%
Only one side has Bishop pair: 6% Open c/d/e file: 53%

Opening Move


    Move   ECO       Frequency    Score  AvElo Perf AvYear %Draws
 1: e4     B00a       37: 46.8%   54.0%  1794  1813         11%
 2: d4     A40a       29: 36.7%   51.7%  1888  1887          7%
 3: c4     A10         6:  7.5%   58.3%  1824               50%
 4: Nf3    A04         5:  6.3%   40.0%  1762                0%
 5: g3     A00t        2:  2.5%    0.0%  1690                0%
_______________________________________________________________
TOTAL:                79:100.0%   51.2%  1826  1838         11%

See the google sheet page for more information.

Chess Puzzles

by @forhavu, @kraaft and @okei

Click on the images for the solution.


Sesquipedalism (1881) - iobates (2002) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	grumpar (1684) - Shuure (1380) Gamelink. ◯ White to play.	Rosinsvinet (1751) - Mahmut69 (1812) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	auroach (1630) - gjant (1700) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.
kostasvl (1740) - GM1224 (1488) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	mathijshuis (1773) - mbielec (1725) Gamelink. ◯ White to play.	Whizzz (1780) - LazyPeon (1931) Gamelink. ◯ White to play.

mmgoo (1494) - halloway (1515) Gamelink. ◯ White to play.	mmgoo (1494) - halloway (1515) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	hicetnunc (1853) - mmgoo (1512) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	phantom567459 (1650) - mmgoo (1500) Gamelink. ◯ White to play.
phantom567459 (1650) - hicetnunc (1856) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.

Chessboard images provided by lenik terenin.

Please feel free to join #lichessledger on slack if you would like to contribute towards the ledger in any way, or provide any feedback. Both are highly encouraged and appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Thanks to @adande1, @forhavu, @Isachess @kostasvl, @kraaft, @okei, @RobUmbra and @Somethingpretentious.