Lichess4545 Ledger 131

Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #131 - June 19, 2020

State of the 4545 League

by @Robzored & @BigEvo8

Well, another season of the Lichess4545 league has drawn to a close. After a tough eight-week battle, involving a record 46 teams, the team Castled Kings emerged as the champions of Season 21. Now our attention turns to Season 22 which, at the time of publication, is about to get underway next week. Below are the long awaited stats, puzzles and other content which Season 21 has generated.

End of Season Write-up

by @Tranzoo and @Glbert

Let’s look at some other numbers:

The enjoyability of the league was high, 87% gave the highest mark, which is circa 25% points higher since last time we did the survey (after season 19).

Similarly the evaluation of league organization was very high (87% of you giving the highest possible mark) and returning vets enjoyed this season more than the ones before (66% giving the best score). Both these results are an improvement over last time we took the survey.

We are certainly happy about that, hopefully it's not all downhill from here.

We also asked you for opinions about some very specific issues related to this league and here is what you told us:

87% of the players do not want the league to be split up. With that said, if the league ever gets split up, 26% of you beg us to please please put Mr. Scribbles into the other division. We will see what can be done to appease you on this matter.
79% of the players are happy with the length of the season.
59% are happy with the rules of eligibility for the league regarding rating deviation, with 36% wanting the needed rating deviation to be lowered.

To wrap us up, here are some responses to some of your comments: (editor's note, all comments are italicised and are direct quotes, and so have not been edited for grammar)

Category - Alternates:
Maybe have an alternate league? Something like a rapid swiss or something

You may be surprised to hear that #lonewolf was initially created for this exact purpose. It was too popular though, so now people don’t see it as a league for alternates anymore. If rapid is more your thing, you can check out #rapid-battle. There are other side leagues as well, I am sure I am going to forget several, so please inquire in #general.

I think its fine, messaging alternates on lichess is a good idea

Alternates can already request being messaged on lichess as well in their notification settings: https://www.lichess4545.com/team4545/notifications/

I had signed up before the season began. After the season began, I was not notified or anything, I had to join slack then ask to become an alternate.

Yes, unfortunately joining slack is a prerequisite for actually being added to the league. We are usually very clear about this in the season announcements e.g. on Reddit – but we will try to be clearer about it at the time of registration.

Category - Chesster:

I think the issue with chesster has been stability and he seems to have healed up nicely. I had sometimes issues downloading the games databes for prep via the website but I assume that would be due to lichess traffic increase maybe?

The team behind this beast of an ant is doing their best to keep him up to speed with the growth of the league. Sometimes the poor insect got overloaded - we thank you for your patience with him.
For issues with downloading games for prep, please contact us directly so we can troubleshoot.

Some people schedule their games via lichess, if a game as been scheduled, without a response in the slack convo, still count them as having responded.

Unfortunately, if people who use lichess for their scheduling conversation do not manage to schedule within 24 hours, we do not know that there was any conversation at all. Therefore we still recommend using slack.

Category - Ledger:

More frequent ledgers

This has been requested several times. We in the mod team would certainly be grateful for our ledger getting a bit more regularity, but unfortunately it is a lot of work, and the team of volunteers who create the ledger is understaffed. We want to remind everyone that you can certainly take part as an editor if you wish, join #lichessledger for more information.

Category - Rules:

Make it bullet

We have discussed this proposition extensively in the mod team, and we have come to the decision that we will not.

red card for deliberate rudeness or timing out in a league game; ban anonymous logins from spectator chat

We do not usually give red cards for this kind of behaviour, instead it can lead to being banned from the league completely. Please let the moderators know if you encounter it. For rudeness on lichess itself, you can also report your opponent to lichess moderators, who will handle it separately. Unfortunately we cannot ban anonymous logins from spectator chat, this would have to be handled on the lichess side of things as well.

Maybe lowering the grace period to 10 minutes.

We used to ask about this in our surveys, but over the course of several seasons, the idea was never terribly popular. We think the best solution would be if the game clock started ticking at the scheduled time. AFAIK, there is work being done on this, but nobody knows when it is going to be ready. Nobody, not even the people working on it.

Update prev season scores when a dude gets ban hammered. (Editor's note: this comment appears to mean update previous season scores and standings when a long-term player or veteran gets banned)

This is discussed now and then. It is difficult to draw the line though: in rare cases, we would have to change the results of seasons as long as 2 years ago. This would be very revisionist and confusing to everyone. Cheating is a real problem in online chess, and at the moment we would rather not act like it did not exist.

[...] players using a second account specifically for 45+45 get an unfair advantage in being able to prepare more effectively [...]

This is a really difficult question. First off, the league only allows one account, and only allows switching of accounts in very rare cases. That being said, it is difficult or impossible for us to establish what the main account is, so we simply consider the main account the one that played the first games in the league. More generally speaking, lichess does not allow multiple accounts (with exception of e.g. blindfold accounts), so anyone trying this strategy might have their account closed by lichess anyway.

Category - Website:

board standings, individual rankings, more stats

Board standings are available, e.g. for board 1 here: https://www.lichess4545.com/team4545/season/22/board/1/scores/
You can get to this page e.g. by clicking the board you are interested in on the rosters page.
As for more stats (which is requested frequently) please make suggestions for specific stats you would like to see.

Category - General:

the selection of alt should be done from equal or weaker pool, not the stronger one.

This is simply not feasible, since it would mean that the strongest alternates could not get any games and the weakest team players could not get any alternates. Alternates are generally at a similar level anyway.

chess.com

Yes. (Editor's note: lichess.org good, chess.com bad)

glbert best mod <3

Go away glbert, we know that this is you.

Thank you everyone again for taking part and we hope the season 22 is as enjoyable for you as season 21 was.

Side-leagues News

by @Robzored, @BigEvo8, @moistvonlipwig and @ErinYu

Lonewolf

The Lonewolf league has wrapped up its seventeenth season, and here are the results:

In the open section:

Little_Dead_Bertha

Tianmu

josip_buje

In the U1800 section:

CarlosMagnussen

noeom

Numberman768

Season 18 is currently underway and perhaps it is too early to pick a winner? The Season 17 survey has been completed and @ErinYu's analysis of the survey results can be found here.

Chess960

Season 10 of the Lichess960 League has ended and the results are as follows:

Supermaths

SycoraxCirce

FlokiTheCat

U1600 Winner: Sesquipedalism

Rapid & Blitz Battles

Season 10 of the Rapid Battle is currently underway with the Round of 16 about to begin. Sign up to the #rapid-battle slack channel for more details about future seasons.

Blitz battles have been impacted by the arrival of swiss tournaments on Lichess. Long term veterans of the league will remember the days of manually challenging each an opponent to a 3+2 game. Well, no more! Details of upcoming tournaments appear from time to time in the #blitz-battle slack channel.

Quarantine Liga

(With thanks to moistvonlipwig for providing the following.)

A few months ago the "Quarantäne-Liga" got started on lichess, a now bi-weekly two hour blitz team battle. Featuring multiple divisions with promotions and relegations it has become a major event on lichess.

We are participating with the "Lichess4545 League" team. Joining a month ago into division 11A, in our first real tournament (after one got interrupted by technical problems) we could finish first, moving to 10A. The opposition proved tougher there, nontheless we managed to place 3rd, barely enough to promote to 9C. Two more strong showings saw us getting a second and another third place, having us go through 8Ato 7C. However there the opposition proved too tough, so two ninth places saw us drop to 8A and 9B.

Our goal now is to manage to promote again, which we narrowly didn‘t manage yesterday in 9C thanks to yours truly failing to win before the tournament timer ran out. Any support to help us in the upcoming event on Sunday 18:00 UTC, https://lichess.org/tournament/itR3XCJT , is appreciated.

A big shoutout as well to Pawndercover who in the 8 official tournaments so far managed an astounding 7 first places in our teams ranking! But of course he can‘t carry the team alone so also a big thanks to all other players who joined and helped as well!

The future tournaments are always Thursday and Sunday, 18:00-20:00 UTC. You will be able to find them on our lichess team page, also we will be posting them in #general .

If you don‘t want to play yourself you can also watch me (MoistvonLipwig) stream on twitch.tv/koedem(unless I mess up my schedule and miss it).

Videos

by @thepawnslayer

@thepawnslayer has provided some great video reviews of his entertaining games this season:

Fantasy League News

by @adande1

Veteran participants got thoroughly beat in the Fantasy League for Season 21 with two out of top three winners being newcomers to Fantasy and the winner having only participated once before. Here are the winners:
Robzored 'The Pruned Minimaxers' optimized their way to win the gold with a record setting 46.5pts - a 6.5pts lead over their next closest rival! It was pbbly the first time we didn't have a nail-biting finish with Robzored dashing everyone's hope well before the last round and a complete turnaround from their season 20 performance when they'd placed in the bottom three! ( Lesson: "swing for the fences" with "risky/ dubious" strategies if you want to win!)
TaielChess '-1 to maximum, I'm going for the head!' - at least got to the neck in their first attempt at Fantasy and put all their knowledge/ insights gained by doing highlights to good use. Now we know the real reason why TaielChess spends so much time doing highlights - to do well in the Fantasy League.
NoTTwitchy 'Pawnsexuals' - I am not going to make joke about this since we are a "family friendly" league (also can't think of a good one!) but great job getting placed in top three in your first attempt!

Favorite Fantasy Team Name: moleSG 'John Bartholomew's Giant King'

We had a record 42 "real" participants and every one of them did better than the "random team" by arbitrary. The "Max Price Team (1 of 3Billion)" (thanks toni4127 for picking the 1 out of 3billion!) didn't fare well either placing in the bottom ten. However, for the time ever profligate and cheapskate managed to break into the top 10 - placing 7th and 8th respectively and with only 1pt seperating their performance - perhaps proving that openly flouting rules and/ or logic may be the way to do well in Fantasy!

Studies

by @TaielChess and @connerator (intro by @BigEvo8)

Season 21 of the Lichess4545 league saw the birth of one of the most herculean studies by @TaielChess. Initially he searched through every single game played in the round to find those of the highest quality or the most interesting/instructive. This initial project has evolved into the 4545Highlight slack channel (and lichess account) where a handful of individuals now submit and review games to put together the studies going forward. There are currently five studies in existence, listed below, with more on the way.

4545Highlight Studies:

Season 21, Week 1 -

Season 21, Week 2 -

Season 21, Week 3 -

Season 21, Week 4 -

Season 21, Week 5 -

@connerator has provided the following study, with annotations, of two of his Lonewolf games:

Weekly Stats

by @Kraaft, @RobUmbra and @Somethingpretentious

Stats for Season 17 Round 9:

The fastest mate was black on move 19 found in Gamelink White: knightofreyn, Black: webb_traverse.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: aln276, Black: stef784.
The fastest resign was black on move 7 found in Gamelink White: metalinguistic, Black: tsscfttsos.
The biggest upset was 276 points in Gamelink White: izzie26, Black: rsava.
The longest game ended with white on move 90 Gamelink White: narf64, Black: mistercoffee.
122 was the highest ACPL in Gamelink White: jbeast2882, Black: arjanschoonen.
8 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: tianmu, Black: ma1ah.
Combined maximum ACPL was 199 in Gamelink White: i8i9, Black: therealseedling.
Combined minimum ACPL was 23 in Gamelink White: cordanis1, Black: pgabrail.
The longest think was 17 minutes 56.0 seconds on move 8 in Gamelink White: nsmiller7, Black: xempcc.
The most time left was 41 minutes 31.0 seconds in Gamelink White: jessehf, Black: kungfupanda20008.
The most time spent was 68 minutes 40.0 seconds in Gamelink White: narf64, Black: mistercoffee.

-PGNs-

Overall Season 21:

The fastest mate was black on move 8 found in Gamelink White: thatoneguy1475, Black: macalda.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: tianmu, Black: speedcobra.
The fastest resign was black on move 8 found in Gamelink White: thatoneguy1475, Black: n8-the-gr8, Gamelink White: synapz, Black: sgis.
The biggest upset was 380 points in Gamelink White: kani501, Black: lechuckforpresident.
The longest game ended with black on move 130 Gamelink White: houdinicismedicis, Black: wildgoosechess.
The longest think was 39 minutes 18.0 seconds on move 16 in Gamelink White: wo_cheng_si_le, Black: seius.
The most time left was 80 minutes 28.0 seconds in Gamelink White: janetheus, Black: shuure.
The most time spent was 133 minutes 35.0 seconds in Gamelink White: houdinicismedicis, Black: wildgoosechess.

Board	MinACPL	MaxACPL	CombinedMinACPL	CombinedMaxACPL
1	5 by makeareason/tianmu GAMELINK	115 by aln276 GAMELINK	10 by makeareason/tianmu GAMELINK	156 by yago666/bloodyfox GAMELINK
2	5 by rezoons/smerring GAMELINK	98 by sailingisfun GAMELINK 98 by relativeimpact GAMELINK	10 by rezoons/smerring GAMELINK	192 by wo_schrodinger/sailingisfun GAMELINK
3	5 by dealswarlock GAMELINK 5 by mathijshuis GAMELINK	148 by cnrtr GAMELINK	14 by merkava777/queen_blunder GAMELINK 14 by landmoose/bigevo8 GAMELINK	267 by urjah/cnrtr GAMELINK
4	9 by dracoxvitae GAMELINK 9 by eltahiramin GAMELINK 9 by seius GAMELINK	158 by herzog51 GAMELINK	28 by colwem/superfighter GAMELINK	258 by sarahwynn/herzog51 GAMELINK
5	5 by synapz GAMELINK	140 by musicrafter12 GAMELINK	32 by n8-the-gr8/j3084 GAMELINK	230 by forhavu/musicrafter12 GAMELINK
6	8 by skymoney GAMELINK	155 by daveeleanor GAMELINK 155 by mmgoo GAMELINK	29 by adrienb96/izzie26 GAMELINK	283 by daveeleanor/sswaroop93 GAMELINK
7	8 by wvdk88 GAMELINK	168 by kimchi4lyfe GAMELINK	38 by ssyx/mynameismund GAMELINK	292 by upgoerfive/kimchi4lyfe GAMELINK
8	5 by meeklydim GAMELINK	194 by cj_zimmermann GAMELINK	37 by dcamp/shaunferry GAMELINK	358 by cj_zimmermann/jasonterry GAMELINK

-PGNs-

AWARDS (You only qualify if you played 5 games.)

Accuracy King: with an average of 15 ACPL, josip_buje and erinyu.
Fast Finisher: with an average gamelength of 43 ply/22 moves, macalda.
Marathon Man: with an average gamelength of 122 ply/61 moves, ssyx.
Giri Award: 5 draws, slackwyrm and bufferunderrun.
Biggest rating gain: with 224 rating points, pawnsac101.
Biggest rating loss: with 111 rating points, cecilpurdy.
Fun fact: The most popular opening played was:

A45 Indian Game (56 played)
D02 Queen's Pawn Game (43 played)
C01 French, Exchange Variation (27 played)

MEDALS To see how you stack up: (B1 - B2 - B3 - B4 - B5 - B6 - B7 - B8)

	Gold		Silver		Bronze
Board 1	josip_buje	2621	ghans81	2565	okoros	2454
Board 2	dumbaccount69	2487	Theknugdorf	2322	Aleksandr88_62	2289
Board 3	TurnOnTheLights	2443	mathijshuis	2320	k-night-moves	2293
Board 4	marcelluspye	2245	scarff	2230	Tonuka	2188
Board 5	mixxanber	2184	Numberman768	2166	SunGoddess	2088
Board 6	nermin_dedovic	2145	mekumcu	2119	Wo_Cheng_Si_Le	2036
Board 7	WightUnderscore	2464	ssyx	1881	Monolith4861	1878
Board 8	callzumen	2233	JMHWSM	1965	Pe-lle	1818

Database Analysis of Team4545 #21

                   Games     1-0     =-=     0-1    Score
-----------------------------------------------------------
 All report games   1420     652     215     553    53.4%
-----------------------------------------------------------

Average Rating and Performance

White rating: 1876; White performance: 1897 (53% vs 1876)
Black rating: 1876; Black performance: 1855 (47% vs 1876)

Frequency of Themes in the First 20 moves of each game

   Same-side castling:             64%    White Isolated Queen Pawn:      11%
   Opposite castling:              11%    Black Isolated Queen Pawn:      10%
   Kingside pawn storm:            18%    White Pawn on 5/6/7th rank:     49%
   Queens exchanged:               48%    Black Pawn on 2/3/4th rank:     34%
   Only one side has Bishop pair:   8%    Open c/d/e file:                55%

Opening Move

    Move   ECO       Frequency    Score  AvElo Perf AvYear %Draws
 1: e4     B00a      711: 50.0%   54.9%  1855  1892         14%
 2: d4     A40a      511: 35.9%   53.1%  1896  1914         15%
 3: c4     A10        92:  6.4%   43.4%  1849  1807         17%
 4: Nf3    A04        64:  4.5%   57.0%  1948  1994         23%
 5: b3     A01        15:  1.0%   60.0%  1920  1974          0%
 6: f4     A02        11:  0.7%   50.0%  1949  1937         27%
 7: g3     A00t        7:  0.4%   42.8%  2019                0%
 8: e3     A00k        5:  0.3%   30.0%  1563               20%
 9: Nc3    A00l        4:  0.2%   50.0%  2131               50%
_______________________________________________________________
TOTAL:              1420:100.0%   53.4%  1875  1896         15%

See the stats page for win percentages for each board by color and ratings distribution.

Chess Puzzles

by @forhavu, @kraaft & @moistvonlipwig

Click on the images for the solution.


Robzored (1881) - Schackmacke (1939) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	krisolis (2080) - lumenian (2124) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.	gokuba (1838) - Lugr (1766) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.	Tsatsa64 (1855) - Thepawnslayer (1834) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.
krispl (1979) - toni4127 (2012) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	krispl (1979) - toni4127 (2012) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	oddskill (1705) - lakinwecker (1761) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.	smerlijn (1894) - electricbutter (1918) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.
Unavitadistenti (1672) - Toffeeman (1669) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.	ENESM (1878) - nimzonglsh (1988) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	Rskyoz (1433) - asn8745 (1474) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.

Fr4nco61 (1881) - rediban (2047) Gamelink. ⚫ Black to play.	terriblebackin (1718) - jcarmody (1532) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.	Rylor3000 (1689) - thesitarhero (1362) Gamelink. ⚪ White to play.
Shared by the community (can contain imperfect puzzles.)
ChessPatzerSwan (1954) - Isachess (2004) Gamelink. - ◯ White to play.

Chessboard images provided by apronus.

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 @Robzored @BigEvo8 @Tranzoo @Glbert @moistvonlipwig @ErinYu @thepawnslayer @adande1 @TaielChess @connerator @Kraaft @RobUmbra @Somethingpretentious @kostasvl and @forhavu