Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Oh well, we'll have to replay the moves. I'm not going to be on much probably till Thursday, but maybe we'll manage to be on simultaneously at some point, which should mean we can do it quite quickly.

[ad hoc]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Thursday sounds good. Let's aim to start then (or I guess we could start whenever and try and get through the moves on Thursday)

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Yeah, might as well start now.

[Sam]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

PGN/FEN are indeed to do with importing and exporting, ad hoc. Here's the PGN from the game in question:

[Event OTF Chess #7]
[Site Chess.com]
[Date 2016.11.01]
[White EtienneOTF]
[Black adhocfromotf]
[Result 1/2-1/2]
[ECO B20]
[TimeControl 1 in 3 days]
[Termination Game drawn by agreement]
[CurrentPosition 3r1rk1/4bpp1/1pn1b2p/p1p1p3/P3NnP1/1PPPRN1P/1BK2PB1/6R1 b - - 17 28]

1.e4 c5 2.b3 d6 3.Bb2 e5 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.d3 Be7 6.h3 O-O 7.Nbd2 Nc6 8.Nh2 Bd7 9.Ndf3 Qa5+ 10.Qd2 Qxd2+ 11.Nxd2 Nb4 12.Kd1 b6 13.c3 Nc6 14.g4 a5 15.a4 Be6 16.Bg2 Rad8 17.Kc2 h6 18.Raf1 d5 19.exd5 Nxd5 20.Rhg1 Bf6 21.Ne4 Bh4 22.Nf3 Be7 23.Re1 Nf4 24.Re3 Nd5 25.Re2 Nf4 26.Re3 Nd5 27.Re2 Nf4 28.Re3
1/2-1/2

If you copy the last bit - where the moves of the game itself are recorded - without the 1/2-1/2 at the end into an analysis engine even on another website, it'll play the game up to that point for you. It's literally just a case of copying and pasting.

I just went into ad hoc's profile and tried creating a challenge to him to see whether it allowed me to challenge him to a match starting from that position, but can't see an option to do it. I'm reasonably sure it's possible in Lichess, but of course you'd both need to sign up on there if you've not already.

The second post of this thread on the Chess.com forums might be worth a look, too.

[Sam]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Scrap that, there is a way after all, as pointed out by someone further down that thread. If one of you copies the FEN (not the PGN I copied above) from the game, then challenges the other to a game, then the challenge box gives a few options: Rated Y/N; Type; I play as; Title. Select 'Custom FEN' next to 'Type', and paste it in there. Bob's your auntie's husband.

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

I should have read this thread before challenging ad hoc.

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

I've now challenged ad hoc with the old position (I think) thanks Sam.

The tournament itself is looking very interestingly poised. Hard to pick a winner at the moment.

[matt j]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Adhoc to win, Alex to show, Etienne to place (this will be the tight one)

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Well. with only 22% (18 matches) played, it's still wide open of course. But I reckon it's ad hoc's to lose, unless he has more moments like his move 21 as white against Levin, which was the chess equivalent of Phil "the Power" Taylor completely missing the dartboard.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Evariste Euler Gauss wrote: Well. with only 22% (18 matches) played, it's still wide open of course. But I reckon it's ad hoc's to lose, unless he has more moments like his move 21 as white against Levin, which was the chess equivalent of Phil "the Power" Taylor completely missing the dartboard.

*goes immediately to check game*

[ad hoc]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

I'm still at a loss as to how I managed that. Leaving a piece under attack that I hadn't noticed, that's something that happens. Leaving oneself open to a fork, also. Even moving one piece and uncovering another. But moving my queen to a square protected by a pawn? That takes some doing. Complete blind spot.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

The position in a match which I'm playing in the 2nd group stage of a 960 tournament is currently (after 31 moves each) remarkably evocative of the distribution of rugby players (well, rugby sevens) in a passage of open play. Unfortunately, the play is around my 22 yard line. I'm up by a knight but more than capable of losing from this position:

https://www.chess.com/daily/game/149058136

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

"Adhoc to win, Alex to show, Etienne to place (this will be the tight one)"

Maybe. But with Levin and VT still at 100% it's tough to rule them out. The improvements that ad hoc and Kev made from one tournament to the next show we can't bet against them simply based on prior performance.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Etienne wrote: "Adhoc to win, Alex to show, Etienne to place (this will be the tight one)"

Maybe. But with Levin and VT still at 100% it's tough to rule them out. The improvements that ad hoc and Kev made from one tournament to the next show we can't bet against them simply based on prior performance.

I'm looking to pick up enough points to secure 7th spot.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

The site seems to be down at the moment. At least, with my crappy and unreliable broadband connection I can currently access all the sites I try to other than the chess.com one, so I'm concluding that it's *probably* a problem at their end. For the last 10 to 15 minutes or so.

Edit: it does seem to be at their end. I can't get on to the site from my desktop either with Chrome or with Internet Explorer. I wonder if they have automatic procedures for dealing fairly with time limit issues in outage scenarios (not that I'm anywhere near a time limit in any of my games right now)?

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Been fine for me all morning.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Thanks Etienne. Are you accessing it via broadband or mobile phone? I've discovered that I can get on to it on my phone (and have just used my phone accsss to accept a draw offer from VT), but I'm still in the position where my broadband, whilst apparently having no problem with other websites, cannot get on to it at all. Any IT experts on here who might have an idea why? I hate using my phone for chess, it's such a pain.

Edit: finally, desktop access! After about 30 minutes of trying. Good job I don't have a job right now. My internet connection really sucks.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

But with Levin and VT still at 100% it's tough to rule them out. The improvements that ad hoc and Kev made from one tournament to the next show we can't bet against them simply based on prior performance

Kev's improvement over the year, from a rating in the 1000s back in March (dropping at one point to 994) to his current level of 1420, recently 1427, has been absolutely phenomenal. Shoe in for "Most Improved Player" at the OTF Chess annual awards ceremony (although I think his raring was misleadingly low back in the day due to loads of extremely tight/close defeats, certainly a few such to me in early OTF tournaments). But I for one wouldn't rule out VT emulating that rise: I see that his draw with me just now followed a run of 13 consecutive wins, which means it's his 14th consecutive rating increase.

[ad hoc]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

VT looks set to beat me in our first match up too, I'd say. I've been behind since early on and have utterly failed to claw it back.

Meanwhile, in the game we called a draw early on, which we then carried on from the final position, Etienne has just won - it was fairly close until I made a catastrophic error in move 46, thereby ultimately leading to my demise https://www.chess.com/echess/game?id=149334624

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Fairly close is kind. I was near to resigning before you handed me the rook.

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Given VT's undefeated results so far (wins over me and Levin, draws against ad hoc and EEG) his protestations of aiming for seventh sound a bit like Ranieri in December last season saying that Leicester's priority was avoiding relegation.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Ha, not quite Leicester 2015/16, but I reckon that VT's results so far give him currently the shortest odds in the field for finishing 4th.

I finally edged a win against VT yesterday after the mother of all epic end games - we were down to N and pawns versus B and pawns from move 26, and the game ended on move 58. It would have been even more epic and trickier for me if VT had gone 55. g6 instead of 55. Kg7. It would still, I think, have ended in a win for me if I had played correctly throughout from there, as the computer analysis (deep level) did not find any fault in VT's move 55, but there would have been a significant chance of my failing to play correctly given all the potential traps. (game here: https://www.chess.com/daily/game/149469704?page=1 )

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Yes - big game, that. My post-game analysis says that I lost it at moves 19 and 20, so I suppose I did well to hang on for so long.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Does anyone else find the number given on their Stats page for "Events Entered" bewildering? I can't think what it can mean, other than tournaments, but the number shown on my page is more than twice the number of all tournaments (combining both completed and ongoing ones) that I've entered. What on earth does it mean?

Edit: I've been racking my brains about this. Would it work if it counted each round of a knock-out as a separate "event"? Well, no, the number is still way too large. One bizarre possibility that's occurred to me is that there may be a design/programme flaw such that when you're browsing in the list of current tournaments you get marked as having "entered" even if you don't sign up - but experiment fails to confirm that speculation. Do some normal one-off matches get counted for no obvious reason as "events", as if they were two-person tournaments? Maybe that might happen if you have a rematch with your opponent, so that you've each played each colour pieces against each other?

[Etienne]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Bored, you are entering into losing matches on time danger.