Lichess4545 Ledger 143

Lichess4545 Ledger

Issue #143 | 28 March 2021

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

Ledger Says

The ledger team have been busy over the past fortnight...playing Puzzle Racer!

While most reviews of Lichess's latest feature have been positive, some eyebrows have been raised at the prominence given to cars, given the urgency of the global climate emergency.

Don't worry though - we've been assured that there are greener ideas in the…err…pipeline.

Horsey Racer: The ultimate adaptation of Puzzle Racer. Solve puzzles as drunk old men gamble on the outcome and cheer you on. Features Horsey Steeplechase mode, in which the penalty for failing one in every five puzzles is to fall, drop out of the race, and get taken to the glue factory (non-kid mode only).
Wacky Racer: Dick Dastardly and Muttley occasionally appear on screen with some fiendishly difficult variant puzzles. Can you avoid their bombs in atomic or dodge their evil crazyhouse traps?
Cycle Racer: This is based on sprints in cycling where it’s easiest to shelter behind your opponents and time your sprint so that you hit the front at the last possible moment. The players in the lead get the hardest puzzles. Can you sit back and shock your opponents with an ultrabullet in the last few seconds?
Snail Racer: For the slow chess lovers. A 45 minute puzzle race with 45 seconds' increment for each super-tough puzzle solved.
Rat Racer: A representation of the depressing trudgery that capitalism imposes on most of us. No matter how hard you try, or how quickly you solve your puzzles, you'll never get anywhere near the leaders.
Yacht Racer: For the 4545 mods...no plebs permitted.

The Lichess mods have asked us to point out that all the cars depicted in Puzzle Racer are state of the art zero-emissions vehicles. (Greta, go protest outside Danny Rensch’s house instead.)

As there was no ledger last week, we have a insanely content-packed edition for you this week:

A double portion of the usual updates from around the community: Chess960, Rapid Battle, Infinite Quest, Theme Brawl, Book Club, and Bundesliga
The latest from the 4545 league, as Season 25 enters the home stretch
Two weeks' worth of weekly 4545 and LoneWolf statistics
The latest Tale from the Brawl
A stirring report from the latest Blitz Battle by Tranzoo
The first appearance of new weekly dashboards for LoneWolf and 4545!

State of the 4545 League

With two rounds to go, we're getting into the business end of Season 25.

The Opposition lead the way on 11 match points, but The Knights Who Say Ni-dorf and Hoosier Daddy? are only a single point behind.

Even better, while Hoosier Daddy? have already secured victory in their Round 7 match, the top-of-the-table clash between The Opposition and TKWSND is currently tied at 4.5-4.5, with the final game scheduled to start tonight (Sunday 28 March) at 20:00 UTC. Not one to be missed!

Summary dashboards - by izzie26

We're happy to introduce a new feature this week: summary dashboards capturing all the action, results and trends in both the 4545 and LoneWolf leagues!

Note that some aspects of these are still under construction - especially for the 4545 dashboards - hence the "placeholder" labels below.

We hope you find these an interesting and useful addition to the ledger. As always, all comments and suggestions are welcome through the usual channels.

Round 6 dashboard (click on the image to enlarge)

Round 5 dashboard

In other news, a special shout out goes out to longtime league regular and Board 1 juggernaut NM Christopher Chabris for making their third guest turn on the Perpetual Chess podcast, this time reviewing the books Attacking the Strongpoint (Zaitsev) and Secrets of Practical Chess (Nunn).

Catch the episode here: https://www.perpetualchesspod.com/new-blog/2021/3/19/book-recap-attacking-the-strongpoint-by-gm-igor-zaitsev-and-secrets-of-practical-chess-by-gm-john-nunn

Also, if you haven't heard them before, make sure to listen to Chris's previous guest appearances too: Episode 95 (October 2018) and Episode 187 (July 2020).

Around the leagues

Round 4 Dashboard - Open section

Round 4 Dashboard - U1800 section

Round 3 Dashboard - Open section

Round 3 Dashboard - U1800 section

Latest pairings and results: Open / U1800

By @Vegemite_Fighter

Round 5

After five rounds, an outright leader has emerged for the first time! MoistvonLipwig has an unblemished score of five points out of five. In the under 1600 category Tranzoo stands alone on four points. Vegemite_Fighter is second on 2.5 in the under 1600 class. The prospect of someone close behind with a jar of yeast will motivate Tranzoo to new heights of Chess960 excellence.

Philosophy Corner

In Chess960, it makes no sense to call something the kingside or the queenside. After all, the male regent has a random place at the battle so what is on either side of him changes from game to game. That would be academic until we castle.
You can’t castle kingside or queenside. Moreover the queen’s start point is also random. How do we describe castling on both sides of the board? Let’s brain storm some ideas.

Left and right? I don’t see this as a 24 carat gold success.
East and West? Are we playing Go? Are we playing songs by The Pet Shop Boys where we describe West End Kings?
Uptown and Downtown? Billy Joel may be amused.
Mercury and Pluto? Well, our destiny is to reach the stars.
Long or short? Respectable in normal rules. But longness and shortness varies too much in the 960 universe. I will resist all Nigel Short jokes.

Let’s give an example. This is Grzybozbur vs MoistvonLipwig from Round 5, with Black to move. White has already castled. Black can do the same. I would call it long castling but it falls a little short. Note that the king and rook are required to both not have moved from their random start squares. Only then is castling legal. As we all know. Mechanically, settings vary in Lichess but most people touch the king onto the rook to do it., which can differ from the usual practice in standard chess.

Round 6

The penultimate round has passed. Let’s be different and give the under 1600 standings first: Tranzoo is leading on 4/6 with four wins and two losses. Who's chasing them? Prentice_sloth, Int and Lupo_Jones are on 3/6. Tranzoo will need a good final round to leave them in the dust! In the chase for the overall title, after six rounds MoistvonLipwig is leading with a perfect 6/6 points. Grzybozbur is second with five points.

Your chess960 correspondent thanks the players who answered my request for games or studies to feature in this space - they'll start to appear from next week onwards!

This week is a perfunctory south of France update. I mean figuratively...as in the doldrums that becalm sailors. Next week? Extravaganza!

Rapid Battle

By @gavalanche20

It's crunch time over at #rapid-battle, with only a week remaining in the group stage phase of the tournament, with players making a final push to qualify for the playoffs!

Notable performances so far in the Open section include arian13862007, who has finished their games with an impressive 11/12 score, and euler24, who has achieved the same score in an extremely tight Group C in which the top three seeds are only separated by a half-point each (at the time of writing).

In the U1800 section, Lupo_Jones appears to be a big favourite for the playoffs after scoring 9/10 in the group stage, while fourth-seed Moccy has surprised (some) with a group-leading 6/10 score in U1800 Group A.

A special shoutout goes to last season's U1800 alumni playing in the Open section; as it stands, five out of seven of them are on pace to make the playoffs!

The playoffs officially begin on Tuesday, March 21st, so check us out at #rapid-battle and #rapid-battle-games to tune in to the knockout matches as they are posted, and for more information on upcoming seasons!

Rapid Battle is a 15+10 tournament with Open and U1800 sections that comprises a round-robin group stage followed by a single-elimination format knockout stage. The tournament structure is similar to the football/soccer World Cup. Players are first assigned into small groups where they play two rapid games against each other, with the best-performing players in each group qualifying to a knockout stage featuring 4-game matches, decided by blitz tiebreaks where required. Rapid Battle is now in its 13th season - see the latest standings here.

Blitz Battle

By @Tranzoo

Although wildly irregular, Blitz Battle is a staple of the 4545 family - indeed, almost a hundred Blitz Battle events have taken place.

On Saturday 13 March, we inched ever closer to that magical milestone with Blitz Battle 97, which featured the most exciting finish in recent history!

It was really a two-horse race for the crown in this eight-round Swiss tournament; after seven rounds, two players sat on 6.5 points, with the mutual draw between them being the only game either player hadn’t won by that point.

In one corner sat mathijshuis, ready to defend their crown after winning Blitz Battle 96. If they could manage to do that, they would become only the sixth player in Blitz Battle history to win back-to-back contests.

But in the other corner, there sat a player with their own long and fascinating history – sahkal - who in ancient times played in Blitz Battle 2 (!!!) and finished in second place. Indeed, in previous Blitz Battles, sahkal had somehow managed to twice finish in third place and was runners-up in four events - how gut-wrenching! (The editors wonder if SedNomini isn’t the only Bills fan in the league 😏) Was this going to be sakhal's moment to taste glory?!

In Round 8, they had to fight gokuba - who had a very strong showing - while mathijshuis had a match-up against PracticalNiceGuy. At the outset of the round, the tie-breaks favoured mathijshuis, so if both contenders won their games, they would successfully defend their crown.

Rising to the challenge, sahkal was able to finish off their contest against gokuba first, after the Polish overachiever gifted their queen away. sahkal won in just 19 moves. But now their work for the day was done, and all eyes turned to the action unfolding on the top board.

The headline showdown between PracticalNiceGuy and mathijshuis turned out to be the longest game of the round, with the two warriors continuing to slug it out long after the other games in the round had ended. The stakes were high for PNG as well: a win would propel them to a podium position.

The decisive game was a wild one, featuring blunders by both players. In the end, mathijshuis found themselves in severe time pressure - while PNG still had a minute on the clock - and blundered away a winning position with just four seconds remaining. See the position below - after Qf6, there is no defence.

Thus PNG was able to find the win, no doubt kicking off exuberant celebrations in the sahkal household, as finally the longtime (and by that we mean really loooooooongtime) Blitz Battle veteran was able to bring home the bacon for the first time. 🎉

In conclusion, congratulations to all the medallists in Blitz Battle 97:

sahkal
mathijshuis
PracticalNiceGuy

Special mention also to gokuba who had the strongest showing of all players rated under 1800.

What’s next for Blitz Battle? There have been rumours of a special April Fools Blitz Battle...with a twist.

Stay tuned to hear more about that twist...and learn about future Blitz Battles by joining the #blitz-battle channel today.

Infinite Quest

By @Silkthewanderer

Week 9

We welcome two new players into the group of joint leaders at the exalted heights of Level 5: IsaVulpes and Lelouch_vi_brittania won their respective Week 9 matches to join eie24 and MoistVonLipwig. Among the frontrunners, the biggest clash in this round will be the match between IsaVulpes and MVL for a first indication who should be a favourite to be first reach Level 6.

For the purpose of reaching a higher level, most of the interesting matches can be found in the lower half of the table where some of the new arrivals aim to start their Quests well. On boards 10 and 11, we have cathode-ray-jepsen vs scarff and ztraynor vs Robert1462. All these players are in their second week and will try to set off their Quest on a good trajectory. Two players in a somewhat different situation are rooooks and Chewbacca_Defense, who are both returning from a break, but find themselves immediately paired against each other. Who will be the more rusty on their return?

Featured Player of the week: Grizzzly1000

While players' Quests may take a multitude of paths, it's never too late to start catching up to the leaders. A salutary example of this being Grizzzly1000, who only completed their first match in Week 5, but since then has had a strong winning streak, only having to survive one major scare - against Joehan. Our ursine friend is now on the cusp of reaching Level 5 and joining the Quest frontrunners; all they need is one more win (without needing tiebreaks) against a newly signed up player...checks notes...aah, it's only ErinYu.

Yeah, that's definitely a match to follow this week.

Week 10

In the Infinite Quest, the standings have somewhat settled down for the moment. The first three boards are currently occupied by the four existing Level 5 players and two recently arrived 2300+ players who were fast-tracked to the top boards for a tougher challenge in exchange for quicker XP gains. I am particularly excited for the rematch between MoistvonLipwig and Lelouch_Vi_Brittania where LlvB can avenge his Week 6 defeat. Another interesting pairing will be nytik's very first match, which happens to be a TCL derby against none other than IsaVulpes.

While the frontrunners clash with each other, the rest of the pack gets a chance to catch up. One player to watch is AlexGaul who won their first three matches and has just entered Level 4, and is looking to extend their streak. In the same place, APDent42 deserves a shout out for only losing on tiebreaks to AlexGaul despite facing a rapid rating deficit of over 300 points. Another mention should go to the fight between izcms02 and Timvier who are very evenly matched in terms of rating and are both playing for the chance to go from Level 3 to Level 4.

Featured Player of the Week: Zubenelgenubi

Zubenelgenubi is one of the most active Quest players, not just because of perfect attendance but also because of their steady contribution to the discussions in the Tavern. After some back and forth, they did manage to reach Level 4 in Week 8, but that was followed by two losses against tough opponents. Now would be a very good time for them to catch a break...but alas, Zubenelgenubi is instead paired against AlexGaul who as mentioned before is on a hot streak - Quest pairings can be unabashedly cruel.

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 76 players that have started their Quest, 36 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

Hello readers!

Last week was fought in the Queen's Gambit Accepted (QGA) and we saw the return of a Theme Brawl stalwart in VicPez. And, whaddaya know, he won again. He’s back, baby!

So what does this mean for the standings? Well…not much, really. PracticalNiceGuy is still well in the lead in both the overall and season leaderboards, however in the overall leaderboard VicPez leapfrogs adande1 and some handsome chessman by the name of Lou-E to take his rightful place in the top two.

Will the enfant terrible (that’s ‘bhad bhabie’, for the English-only speakers) of the Brawl VicPez come back to challenge the orthodoxy imposed by PracticalNiceGuy in his recent reign of terror? I guess we’ll have to find out. In the meantime, come join us over at #theme-brawl and suggest your favourite opening for us to play next week!

I leave you with this wild game between VicPez and PracticalNiceGuy, which, despite the violence exhibited in the game, actually ended in a draw. I’m not saying it was a perfect game by either player - the combined ACPL should tell you that much. But quite the clash of styles, don’t you think?

This week’s Theme Brawl was fought in the Open Catalan. The keen-eyed among you might be thinking ’hey, wait a minute, hasn’t there already been a Catalan Brawl?’. And you are correct! However, the rule about repeating openings in Theme Brawl only stipulates that the exact same opening can’t be played twice. Subvariations are very much allowed! A good turnout this week, and the Brawl in question was won by HowHorseyMoves. If I’m not mistaken, this was their first Theme Brawl win so congratulations to them! This week’s 2nd and 3rd placed players were AlexGaul, a relative newcomer to the competition, and Lupo_Jones. Congratulations also to them! Congratulations all round! Another relatively quiet week for the standings this week, with no major changes to the top of the board either this season or overall - PracticalNiceGuy, VicPez and adande1 are still steaming ahead in the overall standings. Will these new, highly-rated contenders upset the balance in the coming weeks? We’ll have to wait to find out. I’ll leave you with this exciting game from the top two placed players in this week’s Brawl - in which HowHorseyMoves as White was able to expertly leverage an early advantage into a dangerous passed pawn on the queenside, and after some murky middlegame play in which Black had some fair chances, was able to use two further connected passed pawns on the queenside to bring it home.

While I’ve got you, a brief word on the format of this little corner of the Ledger going forward. Unfortunately for me, I’ve got things going on in my life outside of chess (lame, I know) and writing the Tales from the Brawl segments you may have seen in previous issues takes bloody ages. Therefore, I have decided to make this a monthly addition to the Ledger, which will give the best game of the month (that’s the best of four whole Brawls!) in the last edition of every month. This means Tales from the Brawl will be four times less frequent, but four times more bombastic than it was before. Seems like a fair trade-off, no? So I hope you all enjoy the thrills and spills that these coming games bring, and as always I hope to see you all at next week’s Brawl! Ciao!

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, 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!

Book Club

By @Ecclesiastic

We're making steady progress working our way through the classic 100 Endgames You Must Know. Starting [last] Monday, we'll play our last round of opposite-coloured bishop endgames. As always, new members who want to participate are always welcome - please see #book-club and ping Ecclesiastic.

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. Last ledger we'd moved into Tier 12, after finally winning promotion following a long period in Tier 13.

So what did we have to fear from the titans of Tier 12? Well, it turns out we were the titans, as we won promotion once more, to Tier 11, at only the second attempt!

The hero of the hour was Lord_Axe, with an impressive 37 points despite joining late, which helped us reach second place overall.

Moreover, on the Thursday, we consolidated our position with a safe mid-table finish (5th), one place behind a team boasting a GM on their books. Flokithecat was our top scorer this time, with 42 points and an unbeaten record until the very last game.

The following Sunday, we made it three promotion Sundays in a row, storming into first place once again. 4545 players do love an increment, and we made full use of those two bonus seconds per move. Pawndercover was the top player in the whole division, with 49 points. After just four wins in their first 11 games, they then went on a magnificent 10-game unbeaten run. We should also praise the late-joining koedem, who had time for breakfast before scoring nine wins from ten and a 2359 performance rating.

Thursday was once again consolidation day as we finished safely in fifth place. mathijshuis was top scorer with 30 points but it was even more of a team effort than usual, with nine players reaching double figures. A special mention to ztraynor who at one point managed four wins in a row, all against much higher rated opponents.

Join us this Sunday at 1800 UTC when it'll be fast and furious fun with a 3+0 time control. Can we make it a fourth Sunday promotion in a row? Yes we can! But will we? That's up to you!

Stats Corner

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

Weekly stats for Season 25 Round 6

The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: sesquipedalism, Black: vicpez.
The biggest upset was 316 points in Gamelink White: antennaman, Black: cornelius25.
The longest game ended with white on move 91 Gamelink White: clarinetref, Black: matt7.
8 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: colwem, Black: pryr, Gamelink White: practicalniceguy, Black: polo60, Gamelink White: sexbucket, Black: aerytheta.
Combined minimum ACPL was 24 in Gamelink White: fyrox96, Black: pendru, Gamelink White: rampichino, Black: zubenelgenubi.
The longest think was 31 minutes 20.0 seconds on move 21 in Gamelink White: frugofruit90, Black: shrekmated.
The most time left was 64 minutes 56.0 seconds in Gamelink White: mahithas, Black: dakillian.
The most time spent by a single player was 106 minutes 42.0 seconds in Gamelink White: mike_132, Black: aactrl.

Board	MinACPL	CombinedMinACPL
1	9 by frugofruit90 GAMELINK	29 by j1234j/kjar GAMELINK
2	10 by narf64 GAMELINK	24 by fyrox96/pendru GAMELINK
3	8 by practicalniceguy GAMELINK	43 by chewbacca_defense/gaben1773 GAMELINK 43 by nonowho/phantom567459 GAMELINK
4	11 by isuckatchess247 GAMELINK	24 by rampichino/zubenelgenubi GAMELINK
5	8 by sexbucket GAMELINK	35 by lawkeito/partymagier GAMELINK
6	10 by a380-800f3 GAMELINK	51 by swandog/pepepibote GAMELINK
7	8 by pryr GAMELINK	47 by colwem/pryr GAMELINK
8	14 by katewalker GAMELINK	61 by katewalker/marian_roman GAMELINK
9	12 by gigantaure GAMELINK	48 by sednomini/lettucecheckmate GAMELINK 48 by rehbein/pifisch GAMELINK
10	13 by dingoe12 GAMELINK	48 by oops2queen/dingoe12 GAMELINK

Weekly stats for Season 25 Round 5

The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: ionlypractice, Black: svendra.
The biggest upset was 208 points in Gamelink White: eshpy, Black: secretarisvogel.
The longest game ended with black on move 116 Gamelink White: parametric, Black: bufferunderrun.
6 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: narf64, Black: arpodymov.
Combined minimum ACPL was 12 in Gamelink White: narf64, Black: arpodymov.
The longest think was 26 minutes 47.0 seconds on move 13 in Gamelink White: gbnsongy, Black: lucagaglia73.
The most time left was 58 minutes 24.0 seconds in Gamelink White: kinozarco, Black: caodanny.
The most time spent was 129 minutes 4.0 seconds in Gamelink White: parametric, Black: bufferunderrun.

Board	MinACPL	CombinedMinACPL
1	8 by lovlas GAMELINK	19 by razorneck/landypjy GAMELINK
2	6 by narf64/arpodymov GAMELINK	12 by narf64/arpodymov GAMELINK
3	9 by sundancekid1019 GAMELINK	22 by bufferunderrun/practicalniceguy GAMELINK
4	13 by the_wayward_prince/cannonbait GAMELINK	26 by the_wayward_prince/cannonbait GAMELINK
5	10 by andrewwells8188 GAMELINK	44 by showboater/lc91 GAMELINK
6	10 by abdelkodous GAMELINK	42 by jamougha/flipiflapi GAMELINK
7	13 by eskaayy GAMELINK	36 by eskaayy/eithrial GAMELINK
8	9 by chessnerdbird GAMELINK	45 by epoch44/wickiddoc GAMELINK
9	12 by ljump12 GAMELINK	31 by barbarausbielefeld/jumpjazz GAMELINK
10	7 by mojomoe GAMELINK	44 by eruantien/mojomoe GAMELINK

Weekly stats for Season 21 Round 4

The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: lucapette, Black: clarinetref.
The biggest upset was 263 points in Gamelink White: nerja25390, Black: actuville.
The longest game ended with black on move 82 Gamelink White: mcnate, Black: arthi15.
Combined minimum ACPL was 10 in Gamelink White: macastani, Black: notzmv.
The longest think was 14 minutes 30.0 seconds on move 18 in Gamelink White: timvier, Black: adrienb96.
The most time left was 50 minutes 18.0 seconds in Gamelink White: mcnate, Black: arthi15.
The most time spent by a single player was 68 minutes 25.0 seconds in Gamelink White: fwg2, Black: lion88.

Weekly stats for Season 21 Round 3

The fastest draw was found in Gamelink White: jjupiter6, Black: neeladri.
The biggest upset was 272 points in Gamelink White: neuesamjuan, Black: pedropablo72.
The longest game ended with white on move 93 Gamelink White: terrormt, Black: mujtubayousufi.
7 was the lowest ACPL in Gamelink White: ipr, Black: noeom.
Combined minimum ACPL was 32 in Gamelink White: pjjackson, Black: moneywolf.
The longest think was 13 minutes 56.0 seconds on move 14 in Gamelink White: izcms02, Black: meeklydim.
The most time left was 50 minutes 33.0 seconds in Gamelink White: baellouf, Black: amirkhaled21.
The most time spent was 67 minutes 38.0 seconds in Gamelink White: thexord, Black: i8i9.

Reader Submissions

By @drchessdad

In Round 5, drchessdad took on Vlad_G92. Here's their take on the game:

izzie's Miscellany

Sorry, there won't be any puzzles this week, thanks to strong wind (yeah, let's go with that).

In their place, as suggested by Tranzoo, I'll leave you with some chess-related reading etc that I've been thinking about lately:

Trap. Dominate. Fuck. We should be grateful that the New Yorker magazine asked famed English novelist Julian Barnes to cover the 1993 World Championship match between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short. The result is frankly celestial - probably my favourite bit of chess writing ever. Some memorable one-liners: "Sceptics maintain that live chess is as enthralling as watching paint dry. Ultra-sceptics reply: unfair to paint." and "Chess is, famously, an activity entirely unrelated to the rest of life: from this springs its fragile profundity." Don't miss the lengthy account of Short's controversial statements up to 1994 (for more, read his infamous obituary of Tony Miles from 2001: "I obtained a measure of revenge not only by eclipsing Tony in terms of chess performance but also by sleeping with his girlfriend, which was definitely satisfying but perhaps not entirely gentlemanly." 😲). Trust me, if you like chess, and you like to read, you'll want to read the whole thing.
Passed Pawns (US Chess School lecture by GM Johan Hellsten). I watched this last night, and was blown away by the clarity of GM Hellsten's explanations and his overall teaching style. If this is up your alley, check out his other recent USCS lectures on endgame lessons, Tigran Petrosian, Ulf Andersson, and Bent Larsen. Meanwhile, my pristine copy of Mastering Chess Strategy is staring at me somewhat dolefully 😂

That's all folks - whatever you're up to this week, enjoy responsibly!

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

Thanks to everyone who contributed this week: @drchessdad, @Ecclesiastic, @gavalanche20, @gingersquirrelnuts, @izzie26, @kostasvl, @lc91, @Lou-E, @Silkthewanderer, @Tranzoo, and @Vegemite_Fighter.

The editors claim they aren't responsible for any errors and omissions, but are nevertheless willing to make any necessary corrections...for a small fee of course.