Lichess4545 Ledger 129

Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #129 - April 8, 2020

State of the 4545 League

by @Robzored

The Guarded Hedgehogs

Cultured and Sophisticated Chess Deities

The Hateful 8x8

Season 20 has come to a close and a big thank you to everyone who participated! The Guarded Hedgehogs stand on top with a fantastic 7-1-0 record, having held their #1 spot for most of the competition. In fact, their 42 game points is the highest every scored by any team in league history!

The fight for Second and Third went all the way to the 8^th round, with at least 5 teams in contention, but in the end it was Cultured and Sophisticated Chess Deities and The Hateful 8x8 respectively, the latter having an undefeated season.

Here is a link to the season summary

As many of you know, due to the extremely large influx of new players and the increased amounts of free time many people find themselves with, Season 21 has been moved up with team rosters coming out 4/6/20. This is shaping up to be our largest season yet with 44 teams! A big thanks to our mods for accelerating the proceedings and helping us get through these troubled times. I’m sure you’ll agree that things being what they are, we can overlook all their backroom dealings and match fixings this time.

Side-leagues News

by @kostasvl and @Robzored

Round 6 of the Lone Wolf tournament has just wrapped up, with @blindmoose leading the open section by half a point, and @Broda123 on top of the U1800 section. The standings are still very much in flux, and it will be exciting to see who finishes on top!

Much like the 4545 league, our lonewolf league has seen a huge number of new players. Notably, we have been seeing more and more beginners join the league as a way to improve their chess. Obviously we couldn’t be happier with this development: lonewolf is a great way to get long-form games in without the stress of being on a team.

Here's a summary of this season's fantasy tournament, written by those in charge:

The fantasy league for Season 20 had 27 real participants and every one of them did better than the bot 'cheapskate'. Thanks to all for playing and congrats to the winners:
darubaru 'Banana' outpeeled everyone else for the Gold
Isachess 'Scorched-Sea Strategy' worked out better than whatever he'd used last season when he'd only managed a Bronze!
mathijshuis: 'The Swindlers' managed to swindle the Bronze on tiebreak away from Brundd whose greed with 'I need more Money' cost him the spot!
Favorite Fantasy Team Name: erinyu 'SP Rigged the 4545 League'
Special mention to Kvltvr_Wvltvr 'U Can't Touch This' for placing in top 5 again (and swindling me on tiebreak from what would have been my best ever finish in fantasy!! ) after having won the last season. Only a handful have managed to display such consistency in performance across seasons back to back!
While bot 'profligate' managed to slightly improve over its performance by climbing 11 spots up from second last place last season (despite openly flouting price caps), 'cheapskate' showed remarkable consistency by securing the last spot again this season! In short, everyone should be proud of their performance!

For those interested in having a little more madness in their chess, there is also a crazyhouse league available, a wrap up of their last few seasons can be found here! Ben Finegold often says he imagines he was playing crazyhouse when he's trying to imagine ideal squares for pieces, so why not join up? Maybe it'll even improve your standard chess!

More side leagues? You bet ya! We've got a round robin side tournament with info from their showrunners:

Series season 10 has started Mar 30th, it is a 90+30 8 player round robin tournament. This season has had the largest number of participates with a total of 70 players (I wonder why), with ratings ranging from 2313 to 1396. The surplus of new players meant 3 new groups were created. But because so many strong players joined the CM groups were lopsided in rating we held a vote of different ideas of what to do and option B was chosen. Even if you aren't participating I would recommend checking the spreadsheet or #series-games occasionally to see if there are any games going on!

Players Guide

by @timothyha

Timothyha wrote a wonderful list of tips for playing in this league, and should be a good resource for all the new players we've added in the last few weeks.

Before the games

Scheduling: @chesster will create a chat in Slack for you and your opponent. Click on the opponent’s name to understand the time zone difference between you and them. Choose an appropriate time (please allocate 2-3 hours for the game, usually the games last that much). If there’s any issue with the scheduling, please immediately contact the captain.
Preparation: using the link on top of team’s channel you can go to the current pairings’ page and click on opponent’s name to get to their Lichess profile, or download their game archive of the colour they’ll play against you. Try to evaluate or style and/or choose an opening/defence where they’ve performed the worst or haven’t played much lately.
Warm-up: this is personal, but probably don’t play too much blitz before the game, as that gets you into a different rhythm than 45+45. Try Lichess puzzles instead, as they make your chess neurons wake up and there’s no ticking clock that makes you rush. Many games in the League are decided with simple tactics and not strategy, especially on lower boards.

During the games

Time control is 45+45, so it’s much slower than blitz or rapid. When I first started, I was playing at the speed I would usually play for 25+5 OTB rapid, so the opening phase wasn’t very accurate and my opponents capitalised on that. Also the 45 second increment is very big, so usually it’s hard to get your opponents into a time scramble.
Chat box: it can be used to say hello to your opponent, and “gg” (good game) after the game. Other than that probably there’s no use to talk during the game.
Whispering: this function is very helpful. If you start the message in the chat box with “/w” (type / and w and watch the text turn green - this is important), then whatever you type after that will be seen ONLY to spectators (not even to you during the game). For example, “/w I think here 14.d4 is a good move, but my opponent is trying something on the kingside, too”. This would help spectators follow your thought processes and suggest things that could be helpful in the post-mortem analysis. They’d also be “in the spirit” with you during the game, but this can’t be easily proven :-) Please also remember that you have to type /w first, otherwise the message intended for spectators will be seen in the chat box by your opponent instead.

After the games

Post-mortem: tell the opponent that you’re going to Spectators’ room and refresh the game page. You will see the full list of messages that accumulated during the game, from both of you when you whispered and from spectators (during the game you see their names, by the way, so you’d know teammates are with you). The discussion may continue here, where you can kill your opponent verbally even if you lost. But usually the League players are friendly and nice, wishing luck in the next round, etc.
Computer analysis: you can click the Computer analysis button to get a nice graph of ups and downs in the game and check where you went wrong - for all phases of the game, opening, middlegame and endgame.
Discuss your game in the team channel to get comments, advice, etc.

Team play

Games are individual, where everyone plays for their own best result. But many matches are decided on 1-2 boards, as players are evenly matched by rating. So a draw is good. Do not push for a win in a “dead drawn” position, unless the match situation or tournament standings require that.
Calendar of teammates’ games is available - you can download it into your calendar on Google and/or other devices and watch the games at your leisure. A link to the game is posted into the team channel when it starts, and the results are posted when it’s over.

How Good are we at Fantasy Chess? An Objective Analysis

by @toni4127

You may not like it, but Toni4127 shows us what peak fantasy chess looks like

How good are we at picking optimal fantasy teams? For those that weren’t aware that #fantasy exists, the rules are simple. Basically,

Draft a player from each board, before the start of the season
The higher rated they are, the more expensive
Your picks can’t exceed a $16000 price threshold
Every game they win or draw goes toward your score total
Whoever scores the highest at the end of the season wins!

I bruteforced all of the possible score combinations for every combination of players in the #fantasy prices table for season 20. It turns out, if you picked a team completely at random on average you’d score ~27 points, or 27 wins. (But wait - there are 8 players who play 8 rounds… 64 total games… shouldn’t the average be around 32? Luckily for the alts, sometimes players don’t play.) The fig below shows the distribution of possible scores vs how many team combinations achieved those scores.

Zooming in on the low end… if you had absolutely rotten luck and drafted players who either quit the season early or watched too much Simon Williams, you could have a total season score as low as 2.0.

However, on the high end, there are 5 unique teams that max out at an impressive 52.0 combined points. If you drafted stockfish to play on all 8 boards, and trusted it to show up for its games, it would only net you 64 points... 52 is surprisingly close! The season winner (darubaru) scored a 38, which is pretty high up there on that distribution plot. It’s more than 2-sigma above the mean! Most of the fantasy players that participated also beat out the 26.8 mean-score.

An example of one of these OP teams:

price: $15932

combinedScore: 52

Playernames:

TenThousandHours (6.5 / $2227)
ginoux (5.5 / $1894)
Razorneck (7.5 / $2370)
mcastellani18 (7.0 / $2093)
Val1313 (6.5 / $1835)
Lupo_Jones (7.0 / $1958)
erv123 (5.0 / $1178)
Bafetimbi_Gomis (7.0 / $2377)'

Thanks for reading!

Study

by @TaielChess

This week TaielChess offers us three seperate studies from both the 4545 and lonewolf leagues. I really cannot understate just how many games he has to comb through to make these, but we really appreciate it

4545 Week 8

Lonewolf Open Rounds 3-4

Lonewolf U1800 Rounds 3-4

Chess For You

by @johnfrancis

Here's a section that's been on hiatus for many seasons, returned like the phoenix.

COVIDATES 2K20

The candidates tournament…..Perhaps the most important tournament in a chess player’s career.The door that leads you to the ultimate dream of any chess player….a chance to fight for the crown.The FIDE candidates tournament was officially opened at the Ekaterinburg Expo Congress Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia.(much to Radjabov’s dismay!!).Going into the tournament,Fabiano Caruana and Ding Liren were the clear favourites.”It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future." This well known quote definitely applies to the candidates.

Who would have thought that after 7 rounds ,Ian Nepomniachtchi(the bunned warrior..yep that’s what I call him) will lead the tournament with Maxim breathing down his neck.The clash of the favourites, was a treat for the chess fans.Caruana blitzed out the first 17 moves while Ding had to burn lots of time making key decisions.Caruana’s play involving sacrificing two pawns ,wasn’t enough to scare the Chinese number 1 player.

A first glance at this position and you already feel anxious about white’s position.Even with the two pawn’s up,the king on f2 looks extremely vulnerable and the queen on f5 is not at the best square.

Another game that caught my eye was the game between Kirill Aleseenko and Anish Giri in round 6.The game lasted for 98 moves with Anish Giri winning with the black pieces in the end as Kirill was under time pressure(Don’t worry Anish,we are with you.You tried your best for a draw but ended up with a win...)

Now with the candidates postponed,who knows ...the players we see now will not be the players we see once the tournament resumes.Maxim played like a beast with just 2 weeks of preparation.With enough time in his hands….well….

I would like to end this section by sharing my viewpoint on this whole Radjabov situation. I personally think that FIDE should apologize to Teimour Radjabov as well as give him a spot in next candidates tournament.Or, another solution would be to make it a 16-game round robin, where Radjabov must play one game against each of the other 8 candidates before the tournament resumes normally with Round 9.What do you guys think…..

Videos

by @okei

Another week another crazyhouse video by our own okei. In the following video he recaps season 6 of the crazyhouse team league.

Stats

by @Kraaft, @RobUmbra and @Somethingpretentious

Season 20 overall:

The fastest mate was white on move 15 found in Gamelink White: jsettle1, Black: reodor.
The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: gerasimospap21, Black: zuizuiz.
The fastest resign was white on move 8 found in Gamelink White: roso97, Black: badplayer_cm.
The biggest upset was 402 points in Gamelink White: smutje41, Black: dcamp.
The longest game ended with black on move 103 Gamelink White: upgoerfive, Black: nathanj439.
The longest think was 37 minutes 4.0 seconds on move 11 in Gamelink White: barbarausbielefeld, Black: reodor.
The most time left was 83 minutes 8.0 seconds in Gamelink White: furrykef, Black: reodor.
The most time spent was 123 minutes 34.0 seconds in Gamelink White: jrjrjr4, Black: wookash_888.

Board	MinACPL	MaxACPL	CombinedMinACPL	CombinedMaxACPL
1	5 by tomek188 GAMELINK	137 by roso97 GAMELINK	12 by krsto/narf64 GAMELINK	188 by tenthousandhours/makeareason GAMELINK
2	8 by reyferoz GAMELINK	131 by tadch GAMELINK	17 by reyferoz/grizzzly1000 GAMELINK	241 by floum/tadch GAMELINK
3	8 by queen_blunder GAMELINK	120 by blackcat700 GAMELINK	19 by razorneck/ginoux GAMELINK	204 by blackcat700/rezoons GAMELINK
4	4 by mcastellani18 GAMELINK	117 by jwwells42 GAMELINK	26 by marcos_paulo/escabeche GAMELINK 26 by kajom/nsmiller7 GAMELINK	193 by fallowseed/jwwells42 GAMELINK
5	3 by fischersofmen GAMELINK	130 by cid772 GAMELINK 130 by tsatsa64 GAMELINK	19 by sgis/netherfiel GAMELINK	229 by tonuka/tsatsa64 GAMELINK
6	9 by wightunderscore GAMELINK	130 by cid772 GAMELINK	36 by leo2dipikke/cannonbait GAMELINK	226 by matrix75/lupo_jones GAMELINK
7	2 by samhagen GAMELINK	150 by tenken GAMELINK	30 by piecepeace/kostasvl GAMELINK	223 by lucagaglia73/tenken GAMELINK
8	9 by joeymellberg GAMELINK 9 by rsava GAMELINK	183 by boomer34 GAMELINK	43 by victorcourcelle/rsava GAMELINK	299 by boomer34/asn8745 GAMELINK

-PGNs-

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

Accuracy King: with an average of 22 ACPL, timothyha, razorneck and mcastellani18.
Fast Finisher: with an average gamelength of 46 ply/23 moves, boomer34.
Marathon Man: with an average gamelength of 124 ply/62 moves, timothyha.
Giri Award: 4 draws, reyferoz, thrillchester, arbisto and timothyha.
Biggest rating gain: with 413 rating points, kungfupanda20008.
Biggest rating loss: with 81 rating points, robzored.
Fun fact: The most popular opening played was:

B01 Scandinavian Defense (32 played)
D02 Queen's Pawn Game (25 played)
A45 Indian Game (21 played)

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

	Gold		Silver		Bronze
Board 1	SpeedCobra	3015	Tianmu	2642	TenThousandHours	2474
Board 2	Razorneck	2445	Lanoc	2256	ginoux	2236
Board 3	MoiRon	2170	Silkthewanderer	2169	HoudinicisMedicis	2132
Board 4	Tommelskinke	2285	mcastellani18	2235	Marcos_Paulo	2077
Board 5	Tranzoo	2114	FischersOfMen	2109	sgis	1985
Board 6	Lupo_Jones	2087	H0tblackDesiat0	2002	dmsa_or	1941
Board 7	Lalaze	2448	closure3	1995	Proxava	1931
Board 8	JoeyMellberg	2314	Bafetimbi_Gomis	1870	BarbarAusBielefeld	1659

Database Analysis of Team4545 #20

                   Games     1-0     =-=     0-1    Score
-----------------------------------------------------------
 All report games    831     369     126     336    51.9%
-----------------------------------------------------------

Average Rating and Performance

White rating: 1872; White performance: 1888 (52% vs 1874)
Black rating: 1874; Black performance: 1858 (48% vs 1872)

Frequency of Themes in the First 20 moves of each game

   Same-side castling:             61%    White Isolated Queen Pawn:       9%
   Opposite castling:              10%    Black Isolated Queen Pawn:       6%
   Kingside pawn storm:            18%    White Pawn on 5/6/7th rank:     55%
   Queens exchanged:               48%    Black Pawn on 2/3/4th rank:     31%
   Only one side has Bishop pair:   7%    Open c/d/e file:                55%

Opening Move

    Move   ECO       Frequency    Score  AvElo Perf AvYear %Draws
 1: e4     B00a      455: 54.7%   51.4%  1846  1859         13%
 2: d4     A40a      257: 30.9%   52.1%  1894  1902         18%
 3: Nf3    A04        51:  6.1%   55.8%  1939  1985         14%
 4: c4     A10        39:  4.6%   50.0%  1891  1908         18%
 5: b3     A01        13:  1.5%   50.0%  1993  1987         23%
 6: f4     A02        11:  1.3%   77.2%  1998  2177          9%
 7: e3     A00k        4:  0.4%   25.0%  1578               50%
 8: a3     A00f        1:  0.1%    0.0%  1990                0%
_______________________________________________________________
TOTAL:               831:100.0%   51.9%  1872  1888         15%

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

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 @johnfrancis, @kostasvl, @kraaft, @okei, @RobUmbra, @Robzored, @Somethingpretentious, @TaielChess, @timothyha and @toni4127.