Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

OTF Chess 8 Thunderbirds are go!

[Wouter D]

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Levin wrote:

That is amazing!

[Wouter D]

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Evariste Euler Gauss wrote: OTF Chess 8 Thunderbirds are go!

Cheers EEG! Thanks for organizing this one.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Yes, that Hartwig Bauhaus set is lovely. I like the intuitive piece designs, e.g. the way the tops of the knights and the bishops suggest their moving rules (as long as the bishop is placed on the board with the "correct" orientation of course).

[Etienne]

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Just in case Bored hasn't noticed, the tournament started 2 days ago.

[ad hoc]

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Evariste Euler Gauss wrote: Yes, that Hartwig Bauhaus set is lovely. I like the intuitive piece designs, e.g. the way the tops of the knights and the bishops suggest their moving rules (as long as the bishop is placed on the board with the "correct" orientation of course).

But if you put the bishop piece with the wrong orientation it signifies it's bishopy-ness more, in that it then is clearly topped off with a Christian symbol.
(so it's win-win)

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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Ha, nice point ad hoc, but a very anglophone one. French, German and Russian words for the piece respectively translate as madman, runner and elephant.

Edit: and you can no doubt widen my knowledge by telling me what the Hungarians and Romanians call it....

[ad hoc]

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Actually I have no idea, and had no idea that it wasn't a bishop in all those languages. Fascinating. (The pieces tend to look ecclesiastical though, don;t they? Or is that not true in chess sets across the continent?)

[ad hoc]

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Ok having looked up in Hungarian the bishop is a runner and in Romanian a madman (which given the historical connections between Hungary and Germany and Romania and France is possibly not a surprise)

[ad hoc]

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Pawn in Hungarian is a paraszt - literally "peasant"

[Etienne]

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I think we should halt the tournament now.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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ha ha! I would say "well played" but I think I made it a bit too easy for you to need to play particularly well. Well done anyway, though I suspect that in terms of number of moves, rather than time on the clock, that won't be my fastest loss this tournament.

Striking that I've managed to lose an entire match before Bored has managed to make a single move in any of his matches.

[Bored Of Education]

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It's my new tactic.

[Sam]

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Yesterday was completely lost to chess, I did very little else. A whole bunch of wins in a one-day tournament in which I'm the second lowest-rated player meant that at one point yesterday my daily rating hit 1195. It's down to 1170-something now, but even so, the number of tournaments I've got going at present means I have a chance of getting above 1200 before the first anniversary of the last time my rating was that high (i.e. the day I signed up, 28th January 2016). Tantalisingly close...

In other news, I only found out the other night that Alex has a proper FIDE rating, thanks to the tournaments he takes part in here. He can't be the only one on OTF Chess, can he?

[Sam]

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Er, that could be confusing... so, when I say, 'thanks to the tournaments he takes part in here,' I mean in Buenos Aires, not on OTF.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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I only found out the other night that Alex has a proper FIDE rating

May we ask what it is? I'm interested in how FIDE ratings of players on chess.com compare with their chess.com ratings.

Good luck with hitting the 1200 mark (as long as it's not courtesy of wins over me)!

[Sam]

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I can't remember precisely (we were at an Afrobeat night with my girlfriend so he didn't exactly have my undivided attention... and yes, talking about chess at an Afrobeat night, I know), but I think he said it was in the 1300s, so lower than his chess.com rating. There's a space to put your FIDE rating into your chess.com profile, I think, but he's not done so. I assume you have to show them some sort of proof.

I also think the Grand Masters, International Masters etc. who show up on the site have their FIDE ratings rather than chess.com ratings alongside their names, but I might be mistaken.

[ad hoc]

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There's something self-fulfilling about rankings. EEG has just resigned against me as he was about to go 2 pawns down. I feel that he wouldn't have resigned that position against someone with a ranking 100 points lower.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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I'll resist the temptation to ask a NTNON News judge sketch type question on "Afrobeat Night".

Just resigned my first match against ad hoc. I was only 1 pawn down, about to go 2 pawns down next move, but it was a thoroughly hopelessly lost position, even if I'd been playing a much weaker opponent.

Edit: crossed with ad hoc's post. I agree with your point in general ad hoc, but that was an awful position I was in, so I'd have resigned it against most players. My pawns could do nothing to stop your black (from memory) squared bishop strangling any counterplay I might attempt.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

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There's something self-fulfilling about rankings.

A truer illustration of that would be from my second match against you. If I'd been playing a match that I though I had any significant chance of winning as at move 1, I'd have stopped and actually looked properly at the board before my move 5 and done something half-sensible instead of making that self-destructive b5 move out of resigned carelessness. Apologies, as it denies you a chance of playing a match that you actually have to work to win.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Anyway, things are looking up slightly for me chess-wise. I'm performing poorly in general in this tourney, but at least I've just got my first win against Etienne in several attempts.

[Sam]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

I'm about to head out to Alex's and he's taking me to his chess class. He's been telling me to come along for nigh on a year but it so frequently clashes with podcast recording, Libertadores/Sudamericana football or something else that this will be the first time I actually attend.

[Sam]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

I'm getting quite fed up with how badly I'm playing in this tournament. It's like I totally forget what to do when a new OTF tournament starts.

[Sam]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Alex's FIDE rating is 1411 by the way, EEG. Of course that's only from a handful of games in (I think) one tournament he played here a month or two ago.

At the class the other night they had the tables used in the 1978 Olympiad. Really nice ones with the sides jutting out/an inward curve towards the centre in front of each player, so you can stick your elbows on the sides and really lean right in over the board when playing. One of them had a plaque on it to mark the fact that Korchnoi had played on it.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Roll up, roll up for the OTF chess tournaments

Thanks for that info, Sam. So there's a gap of 145 at the moment between his FIDE and chess.com rankings. Those tables sound great.

It's like I totally forget what to do when a new OTF tournament starts.

I know exactly how you feel, Sam. Both in this tournament and in the previous one I've started off with a big run of defeats then (in the previous one and perhaps in this one, fingers crossed) got better results in the second half. That's partly because my quickest matches to finish have included both games against each of the two most difficult opponents, but also in both this tourney and the previous one I've played better in the second match than in the first against some* of the more evenly matched oppo.

* important caveat