Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #142 - March 14, 2021

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

 

To no one's surprise, the ledger opens with another exclusive:

Rocking the boat: the 4545 league takes to the waves!

Hot on the heels of the announcement that this month’s Magnus Carlsen Invitational will be “space themed”, the 4545 mods have announced that Round 9 of the current season will have a nautical theme!

For one week, players will be required to use a custom board theme with new piece icons, featuring the captain (king), mermaid (queen), lighthouse (rook), seagull (bishop), seahorsey (knight), and rainbow trout (pawn). The “summon mods” command will be temporarily replaced with “arr, come on board, cap’n”. Lou-E has also announced that the Theme Brawl for that week will be replaced with a Pirate Brawl...complete with cutlasses. 

That's not all. Team captains will be required to don the garb of ship’s captains for the whole week. If judges can wear fancy dress to work every day, our proud team captains aren't in a position to complain. If they're ever questioned on their dubious wardrobe choices, they could claim to be "really into those Napoleonic naval battle renactments that span whole weeks and require you to remain in character throughout." Or they could just turn off their cameras - no one wants to see those fake bookshelves anyway. Regardless, on this the mods are as unbending as a 'berg: any captain not suitably attired will be forced to walk the plank...or their team will be cast away from the standings.

In another major innovation, games will randomly be deemed to have encountered "choppy waters", after which all remaining pieces are liable to shift one square in a random direction from time to time. When this happens, any piece on the edge of the board will "fall overboard" and be lost forever. Conditions on the rim will be truly grim. According to one conveniently anonymous mod, this shake up is "just what the tired chess meta needs after 1,500 years of stagnation." Now, even the most circumspect of players can entertain wild ideas, like sacrificing multiple pieces in the opening in the hope that a virtual wave washes away a premature concentration of enemy forces. The Age of Scribbles has arrived.

As for why these changes are being made, the mods deny it has anything to do with giving themselves an advantage due to already living on a massive yacht. Yet they say that their own pieces can't be subject to so-called choppy waters, as super-yachts are super-stable, apparently.

 

This week, we have:

• An update from of the 4545 league at the halfway point of Season 25
• News from around the community
• Stunning news from Theme Brawl of an apparent refutation to the French - don't miss the latest Tale from the Brawl.
• The League Championship launches! Say hi to our newest community initiative.       
• The latest instalment of drchessdad's 4545 odyssey
• Puzzles (lovlas couldn't solve'em...can you?) 
• Weekly stats
• More stats: inspired by a reader request, izzie26 takes on Daft Punk (sort of)

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State of the 4545 League

We're up to the halfway point of the season. Doesn't time fly? The big match in the fourth round was the top of the table clash between The Knights Who Say Ni-dorf and Run van Foreest Run. Both teams started the week on perfect records, having won their first three matches, and in a closely fought contest that went down to the last game, it was Run van Foreest Run who emerged victorious, winning 6-4 - helped by a clean sweep of the top four boards. All the results from Round 4 can be seen here.

So Run van Foreest Run now lead the league by a single point, with three teams chasing them: A Farewell to Pawns, Take take take resign and The Opposition. This week, these four teams are all locked in mortal combat, with RvFR and AFtP paired against each other, and TTTR playing The Opposition.

12 players in the field have four wins from the first rounds; hats off to Sigrud, lovlas, starbaker, nonowho, wilfj, liboy, RaisinBranCrunch, Wo_Cheng_Si_Le, Karpyan, Felipekaox, ipr and simopippa.

But how many of our hitherto flawless champions will survive the remainder of the season unscathed? It ain't easy to be perfect in this league, and we in Ledger Towers have our doubts. Especially about a certain quotable Norwegian. Sure, he's done it before. But that was in Season 11, an event that can be reliably dated to the early Triassic period. The world is a different place now, and chess is a different game. Vertical castling is no longer a thing.

No, the editors boldly declare that lovlas will soon meet his match. (And if he doesn't...well, good thing we're the editors).  

Find full details of week 5 pairings here. 

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Around the leagues

 

We're three rounds into Season 21.

In the Open section, no fewer than 37 players have perfect records after two rounds. Among them, amirkhaled21 deserves particular credit for their giant-killing exploits after defeating opponents rated 200 points higher in each of their games so far. 

In the U1800 section, 24 players have perfect records. Special shout out to first-time participant raffimeister (1518).

Pairings for Round 3 can be found here: Open / U1800

By @Vegemite_Fighter

The Race! [Which two man electronica band had a hit tune with that title in 1988?]

After four rounds of sanity-stretching, brain-fogging and mind-melting battle, Grzybozbur and MoistvonLipwig share the lead on 4/4 points. In the under 1600 category, Tranzoo leads on ¾ points. 

Chess960 news on Lichess! Team revival!
The Team Chess960 went quiet for awhile. But now it is starting tournaments once again! The first will be the chess960 Kickoff Arena, an Arena event on 15 March that will be open to anyone and will have a 5+0 time control. I have spoken to Goobta who is bringing back these events. As a coder Goobta is doing a lot of ELO analysis to make more events for people’s playing strengths. May the team Chess960 have many exciting events for you in the future!

This week’s chess960 Tip: in the starting position, are any of your pawns undefended? For instance, consider this starting position:

The pawns on g2 and g7 are both not defended by any piece. They are also easily attacked by a queen if White moves the b2 pawn or if Black moves the b7 pawn. Both sides should keep an eye on this. For instance, putting a knight onto f3 or f6 would be useful at some point to block out the queen. Or even a knight on e3 or e6 to protect the pawn. Sometimes such loose pawns can allow a quick checkmate in three or four moves.

 

Infinite Quest

By @Silkthewanderer

After a respectable streak of seven victories, finally fate has caught up to MoistvonLipwig. Fate in this case being eie24, who avenged their previous defeat and notched a 2.5-0.5 victory that elevated them to Level 5 and gave both players shared lead of the Quest. In close pursuit, however, is a trio of players who all have a chance to join them on Level 5, provided they can win their next match*: lelouch_vi_brittania will take on eie24 while IsaVulpes and rampichino face off against each other.
*IsaVulpes requiring "just" a win with any margin, the other two requiring a win without tiebreak.

Other interesting matches can be found throughout the table. jwwells42 and amanlikekennyken have a duel where a winner (if not needing tiebreaks) will earn elevation from Level 3 to Level 4 as a reward. AlexGaul and mathijshuis clash in a battle of the recently arrived 2200+ heavyweights on their way up the ranks. And some of the new players with a relatively high rating get to prove themselves on the higher boards immediately; most notably Scarff, who will try to achieve the near-unthinkable, and deliver a second defeat in successive weeks to MoistvonLipwig. (Sorry MVL, the editors are crossing all their appendages in support of the underdog).  

Featured player of the week: PracticalNiceGuy

PracticalNiceGuy reached Level 3 with victories in the first two weeks. Their progress since then has been slower, thanks to a tough slate of opponents and short pauses (dotted lines) following defeats. After a scrappy 3.5-2.5 win last week, now they have a good opportunity to reach Level 4 with just one more victory against Zubenelgenubi who just cracked Level 4 themselves - another match worth following.

Infinite Quest is perpetually ongoing with new pairings for a four-game Rapid (15+10) match issued every Wednesday. Winners gain XP and reach ever higher Levels. Scoring is nonlinear; higher levels require more wins so newcomers can catch up very quickly. Of the 70 players that have started their Quest, 40 are currently active. Players can join, pause or resume any time they want. If you are interested, check our documentation and  standings or join us in our channels #quest-herald (signups / results) and #quest-tavern (general discussion).

Theme Brawl

By @Lou-E (sans cutlass, malheureusement)

Another week, friends, and another Theme Brawl took place over at #theme-brawl. And, this week, a dethronement. After winning this week and on a significant upwards trajectory over the last few weeks, PracticalNiceGuy takes the top spot not just for the season, but for the entire history of Theme Brawl as a whole. Wow! Coming in second and third respectively were Lou-E (me!) and Tranzoo. Anyway, with that out of the way...

  Nc3 French Refuted! French Theory in Tatters!  

That's right folks, it's time for Tales from the Brawl! Unfortunately I am super busy this week, so it'll only be a short one - but I'm nonetheless incredibly excited to to inform you all that the Paulsen Variation of the French has, in fact, been refuted right here in our very own side league. That's right, Tranzoo's provocative 'Winawer-No-Winawer' variation has officially been deployed, and with a 100% win rate - 1.e4 players hate him! DESTROY the Paulsen French with this UNSTOPPABLE response to Nc3! Paulsen French REFUTED??????! etc. etc. Feast your eyes on this masterclass - Tranzoo's immortal, no doubt - in this incredible new variation, which starts 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 (The Winawer Variation) - this was the starting position of the tournament - here adande1 chose 1. Ne2 (but White could just as easily go a3, or e5, or Nf3; it doesn't matter, it still loses by force) and Tranzoo uncorked his sensational 1...Bf8!! (The Winawer-No-Winawer Variation). With this high-class redeployment, Black undevelops their bishop with the intent of redeveloping it somewhere else - meaning that they get to develop the bishop twice, which must be good!

 

 

In all seriousness though, the funny thing is that after White's 2. e5 the position is actually equal according to the engine. As I said, I haven't got the time this week to annotate the game properly, but Black responded with the thematic c5 break and after White went for a sort of semi-KIA idea 3.g3!?, the engine actually evaluates a slight advantage for Black! A better approach after 1...Bf8 is to play 2.Be3, developing another piece (now three, to Black's zero) and preventing c5. From here Black should not stop building their initiative until Black is resolutely crushed. But, 2. e5 c5 3. g3 it was and unfortunately heading into the middlegame White managed to blunder a couple of pawns (intimidated by the sheer power of the opening? Who knows). It was plain sailing from there for Black, except for one moment after 29. Re1, where all Black has got to do is play...well, literally anything else, but Black blundered badly with 29...Qd2?? I'll leave White's next move as an exercise to the reader. Luckily for Black, White missed this in some time pressure and instead played 30. Qe6?? and it was curtains from that point on.

Another game of interest to you might be mojomoe vs adande1 (again on the losing side - sorry adande1!), and since this is a miniature I think I can probably do some back-of-an-envelope annotations for this one. We once again start the game from the position after 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4, but this time White chooses 1.e5 - the Advance Winawer - as their weapon of choice. Black responds 1...c5 - natural, thematic and good. 2. a3 Bxc3+ bxc3 and we have entered into a somewhat positional variation which will be won by the player with the greatest strategic understanding after a tense 70-move slog...right?

Both sides deployed their minor pieces and Black grabbed some space with 5...c4 - natural enough, but probably with some suboptimal ideas in mind given that there is nothing in particular happening on that side of the board. Stockfish really doesn't like it, but but Stockfish is a big dumb nerd anyway. 6. Be2 is the retreat, whereupon Black follows up with Nc6. A few more natural-looking moves and we arrive at the position after 9...Bd7, where both sides have committed somewhat modest deployments of their forces, with Black having a greater share of the queenside while White has the kingside. All else being equal, this would be fine for Black - but the crucial detail is that White's king is on the kingside, while languishing on the queenside are nothing more than a couple of White's loose pawns and a rook. White seizes this opportunity and initiates a classical-style kingside attack with 10. Ng5. Black responds with h6 and while it is entirely possible to retreat back to f3, with the claim that your provocative knight excursion has induced a weakness which can later be exploited - perhaps with the common sacrifice Bxh6 after Black castles? But White goes in guns-blazing with the obviously unsound - but quite frightening - 11. Nxf7?. From here, 11...Kxf7 12. Bh5+ g6 13. Qf3+ Kg7 14. Qf6+ and there are only two moves available to Black - one loses, one wins. Unfortunately for Black, they choose the latter. 14...Kh7 15. Qf7#, and and White takes the gold in this exciting miniature.

Until next time, friends!

Theme Brawl is a five-round Swiss competition using the "From Position" functionality of Lichess to battle it out in a different opening each week, one that's suggested and chosen democratically by members of Theme Brawl. Come and join us over at #theme-brawl to vote for the next opening and take part yourself. Brawls are played on a Monday night and voting for the next week’s Brawl ends Friday 17:00 UTC. If you’re interested, further information can be found in the rules document, or you can just message Lou-E directly with any queries you might have. Happy Brawling!

 

League Championship

What's this? Something new? As football/soccer's Champions League are talking about stealing chess' beloved Swiss system, @Tomato_Xplosion has been devising a way of staying one step ahead. And you can sign up to play now!

After a long process of refinement and ruminating over ideas, the League Championship has finally launched! 

Enjoy a long time control tournament - encompassing games in 45+45, 60+30 and 90+30 - that combines a single-elimination structure with the Swiss system, making for intense matches typical of elimination tournaments yet allowing every player to play in every round. Everyone starts in the "knockout", and after a match loss, they are put in the Swiss group. Therefore, the "knockout" group shrinks as it becomes closer to determining the champion - think of the Australian Open, but where those who lose a match are put in a growing Swiss tennis match. The difference is that here it's possible - given a great performance in the Swiss - to make it back to the knockout!

The single elimination branch ("knockout") involves matches that last two weeks, while the Swiss group has a separate round every week. However, the two sections are run at the same time: most players will start in the elimination branch (early sign-ups are prioritized ), and stay there until they lose a match and then afterwards play in the Swiss group.The Championship will likely run for about 13 to 14 weeks, including a rest week, but the exact duration may vary depending on the number of participating players. If all goes well, games should begin within a week!

Sign up here! Read the league rules here, and make sure to join the #league-championship-general channel in Slack to find out more!

 

Variant of the Month

By @gingersquirrelnuts

Februrary's variant was S-Chess, which was invented by the legendary Yasser Seirawan and his friend Bruce Harper in 2007. It's just like chess, but with the addition of an elephant (rook plus knight) and hawk (bishop plus knight) in the opening. These new pieces are placed on the first rank as traditional pieces are developed. Most games tend to bear a striking similarity to regular chess, but the new pieces make tactics and mating attacks far more dramatic and occasionally mindblowing.

Congratulations to the top three:

1. H0tblackDesiat0
2. Lupo_Jones
3. no_seigen

So good they played it twice

So onto March, and when it came to deciding on a variant we pretty much unanimously decided that like any good show, we were left wanting more, and more we shall have. Our next tournament will be S-Chess 2: The Yasser Returns. But we've made a slight change to the format, so instead of a trio of two-leg games, we'll be playing one 20+20 game each week. There's still time to sign up and see what the fuss is about!

If you are interested in joining our S-Chess tournament (six rounds, Swiss format, one game per week, 20+20 time control) with the first round starting Monday 15 March, please fill out this signup form: https://forms.gle/hEo386qhB152xFQ89 and join us at #variant-of-the-month! 

 

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 Lichess4545 League team on Lichess.

There are 17 tiers with promotion and relegation between tiers. We started the week having been becalmed in Tier 13 for three weeks.

But on Sunday, we finally achieved promotion to Tier 12. Never mind that it was our sixth attempt...we achieved promotion in imperious style by topping the table. jessehf became our 11th (!!) different top scorer in as many competitions, leading the way with a massive 43 points and a monster tournament performance rating of 2419!

On Thursday, we occupied one of the promotion places for most of the tournament, but we faded in the home stretch and finished a respectable 5th place. NLance broke the string of different top scorers, leading the team with 34 points. In Tier 12, one more player's score counts for the team, so strength in depth is all the more important. In other words, we need all the help we can get, so please join in!! That said, we did do magnificently in terms of participation: Timvier was our 5th best player, but no less than 7 (S-E-V-E-N) others were within four points. 

 

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Stats Corner

By @lc91 and @izzie26; weekly stats compiled using lichess4545_stats_puzzles
 

 

Weekly stats for Season 25 Round 4:

• The fastest mate was white on move 20 found in Gamelink White: justintanas, Black: igotsunshine.
• The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: kostasvl, Black: onaznam.
• The biggest upset was 147 points in Gamelink White: god666, Black: hnorbi96.
• The longest game ended with white on move 88 Gamelink White: adande1, Black: losferalo.
• 6 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: chessnerdbird, Black: asingh11, Gamelink White: rehbein, Black: ljump12.
• Combined minimum ACPL was 16 in Gamelink White: kostasvl, Black: onaznam.
• The longest think was 29 minutes 53.0 seconds on move 34 in Gamelink White: shrekmated, Black: toddletales.
• The most time left was 81 minutes 10.0 seconds in Gamelink White: dingoe12, Black: houcharlie.
• The most time spent by a single player was 103 minutes 12.0 seconds in Gamelink White: adande1, Black: losferalo.

Board	MinACPL	CombinedMinACPL
1	9 by yeyq GAMELINK	26 by coachjohn/yeyq GAMELINK
2	14 by drchessdad GAMELINK	30 by drchessdad/m0r1 GAMELINK
3	14 by dj-logan GAMELINK	37 by cosxdx/mike_132 GAMELINK
4	7 by xtoms GAMELINK	38 by knightfury21/jwwells42 GAMELINK
5	8 by wo_cheng_si_le GAMELINK	39 by garadas/alen111 GAMELINK
6	17 by plastic_pusher GAMELINK 17 by chewbakatherookie GAMELINK 17 by bisit GAMELINK 17 by pedropablo72 GAMELINK	35 by aphla/plastic_pusher GAMELINK
7	8 by kostasvl/onaznam GAMELINK	16 by kostasvl/onaznam GAMELINK
8	6 by chessnerdbird GAMELINK	48 by momor/brandrokid GAMELINK
9	6 by rehbein GAMELINK	44 by jumpjazz/passedpawn22 GAMELINK
10	11 by malbin GAMELINK	29 by lvdr/rsava GAMELINK

-PGNs-

 

Weekly stats for Season 21 Round 2:

• The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: mfeeney88, Black: jubka.
• The fastest resign was found in Gamelink White: glacialcomet, Black: jthechessb.
• Combined minimum ACPL was 18 in Gamelink White: ginoux, Black: garadas.
• The longest think was 21 minutes 10.0 seconds on move 9 in Gamelink White: pjjackson, Black: antazhi8.
• The most time left was 46 minutes 23.0 seconds in Gamelink White: humansponge, Black: heinie.
• The most time spent by a player was 68 minutes 5.0 seconds in Gamelink White: uczen-369, Black: playlionchess.

-PGNs-

 

Debunking Daft Punk

Work it harder, make it better
Do it faster, makes us stronger
More than ever, hour after hour
Work is never over

 

Who doesn't love getting a letter? Well, certain letters. Not letters from faceless bureaucrats - hellooo Mr. HSBC, ever heard of email?

It's different though when another person bothers to write to you about something they care about...and think you will care about.

Now, being inveterate misanthropes, there's not that much that we editors actually care about...apart that is from receiving our regular "support grant" in return for oddly selective and one-sided coverage of mod scandals. (Recent accusations concerning an "invisible contract" are of course utterly specious. If only our benefactors had access to such wondrous weapons of kleptocracy as the Sovereign Grant; instead, they're forced to flaunt their corruption in plain sight).

So it must be said that Jebotto caught us in a good mood this week.

They write "A thought for the ledger - if it's not much trouble - I would be curious to see the average centipawn loss for all the games on each board. Pretty sure it should be lowest on board one and increasing through board 10 with enough data, although it could vary some from week to week. Just curious how my average centipawn loss stacks up to other players in my tier. Not sure if it's easy to write a script to do that or if it's more involved."

It turns out that this question has been studied before, by the inimitable ErinYu, who published a pioneering analysis using Season 15 data in Ledger #88.

Do those findings still hold true? What else might one glean from the numbers? Let's dive in and see!

After figuring out how to tease the required information from the Lichess API - and provoking several cease-and-desist notices in the process - I managed to reproduce the analysis for Season 24.  

The left-hand chart below shows the true average centipawn loss per board (not the average ACPL, which would be a less precise measure, as it would ignore the number of moves per game).

The right-hand chart shows the percentage of blunders (in red) and the combined percentage of mistakes and inaccuracies (in orange). 

 

   

In terms of findings, these charts aren't exactly ground-breaking. News flash: higher boards are associated with less accurate play. 

There's also another way to look at these numbers. Instead of looking at all games played per board, I looked at all players who had played at least four games in the season, calculated their season ACPLs, and plotted those against their average board numbers across the season. The resulting chart below indicates that the distributions of player accuracy shift slightly upwards for higher boards, but it's also worth pointing out that the distributions per board are quite broad, and that these numbers nevertheless have the capacity to mislead: for example, some of the lower season ACPLs observed on higher boards may be influenced by the higher ACPLs on those boards. In other words, it's easier to get a lower ACPL when your opponent blunders egregiously :)

 

 

If you're wondering whether the numbers this season are any different, let me put you at ease. The charts below show the data for Season 25 through the first four rounds. The overall trends are roughly the same as for Season 24 - although shout out to my Board 6 comrades for doing their best to disrupt the trend! 

 

So how exactly are Daft Punk connected with all this? Darling, it's called creative license...no, all will be revealed next week. Honest.

Thanks for reading. Before I sign off though, please note this is all rather cursory analysis that would doubtless benefit from more time and scrutiny, so caveat lector. That said, I'd love to hear your ideas and suggestions!  

To be continued...

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Reader Submissions

By @drchessdad

Again, thanks to drchessdad for sharing his study on his latest 4545 encounter, this time against M0r1. 

 

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Puzzles

Created by you, compiled by @izzie26

The puzzles apologise for going soft last week. That won't happen again.

This week's set is guaranteed to pose a far greater challenge. Drawn from a equal mix of 4545 and LoneWolf games, they feature a plethora of comely ideas but the solutions require unerring accuracy, vision, and no small measure of courage.

In fact only one of these was solved over the board (so to speak) - all the credit goes to superbohemio, not least for downing a titled player.

Everyone else came up short...yes, even tactical juggernauts like MrScribbles and lovlas. And if they couldn't solve these...frankly my dears, you don't stand a chance.

Let me know how you get on.

Stars indicate relative level of difficulty. Click on each image to open the original puzzle.

Vacuum_Cleaner (2148) - iongler (2137) ⭐ | 🐺 S8 R6 | 16 Oct 2017 | link		superbohemio (2007) - ChristopherChabris (2252) ⭐⭐ | 🐺 S16 R6 | 13 Nov 2019 | link
pollygetiks (1768) - Suicune (1752) ⭐⭐⭐ | S12 R2 | 20 May 2018 | link		Sbstyn (1628) - MrScribbles (1753) ⭐⭐⭐ | 🐺 S18 R2 | 16 Jul 2020 | link
brunolift (1606) - SedNomini (1672) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | S23 R4 | 26 Sep 2020 | link		nsmiller7 (1817) - kip1981 (1924) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | 🐺 S12 R9 | 14 Oct 2018 | link
giorus (1708) - izzie26 (1798) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | S23 R5 | 10 Oct 2020 | link		madatadam (2089) - lovlas (2361) ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | S6 R9 | 12 Jan 2017 | link

 

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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

Lichess4545 Ledger #142 © 2021 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Thanks to everyone who contributed this week: @drchessdad, @gingersquirrelnuts, @izzie26, @kostasvl, @lc91, @Lou-E, @Silkthewanderer, @Tomato_Xplosion, and @Vegemite_Fighter.

The editors claim they aren't responsible for any errors and omissions.

So rather than complain - and meet the spam filter - you should go read Cecilia D'Anastasio's article in Wired about the whole GothamChess vs Dewa_Kipas affair: A Bird-Feed Seller Beat a Chess Master Online. Then It Got Ugly.

Our favourite line: "He likes the Caro-Kann Defense, the Sicilian Defense, and Gambit. He began to play against Shredder, he says, when he got an iPhone 3GS. He believes character and memorization are key to high-level chess play, but tempo, or pressuring your opponents in an optimal number of moves, is the most important. “I mastered the tempo, and when you master the tempo, it doesn’t matter who your opponent is." Words to live by.