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    And we are off! Good luck, everyone, and have fun!

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      When did Sam start resigning in games?

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        I hung on long enough to suspect I was getting annoying in the first game. The second one went shit-shaped very quickly, especially considering that the analysis reckoned I hadn't made any blunders and only one mistake.

        I don't resign often, but I give myself the luxury in cases like that game where it was just getting, frankly, a bit embarrassing. (Etienne as white, me as black, in case anyone wants a good laugh.)

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          Heh, yeah, the first game did get a little tedious, but it was a position where I might have accidentally stalemated you I suppose.

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            ...and we're finished exactly a month after we started.

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              Well done everyone! Congrats to Alex in particular of course on his clean sweep. Looks as if we need ad hoc back to give Alex a closer match.

              And my usual post-tournament ratings update, plus changes from the post-OTF11 survey just one page upthread. Overall there's been a large positive movement, indicating that most of us are winning lots of rating points in non-OTF play (and, in my case, transferring nearly all my external points haul to fellow OTFers by playing like a muppet against them):

              Alex 1741 (+88)
              ad hoc 1659 (-)
              Etienne 1558 (-18)
              Levin 1457 (+29)
              EEG 1440 (+7)
              Wouter 1424 (+8)
              VT 1373 (-)
              Matt 1300 (-)
              Sam 1227 (+26)
              TPC 1160 (+19)
              Rogin 854 (-)
              Bored 542 (-16)
              Last edited by Evariste Euler Gauss; 01-12-2017, 21:21.

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                By the way, I've just created another Chess 960 tournament, in case anyone is interested. 48 players, 6->3 progression, max rating 1500 (just catches your 960 rating), 2 day limit, max average move time record 6 hours. Link here:

                https://www.chess.com/tournament/960-fluorite-mohs-4

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                  What the hell, I'm in. Alex and I played a bit of 960 over the board last week. Most of the games went quite rapidly downhill for me.

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                    Excellent, good man!

                    A good tip for 960 is to get in the zone from the very start. I think I lost my first 3 games of 960 straight (all against Wouter) partly due to not being sufficiently thorough in thinking through the implications of the starting array for likely scenarios a couple of moves on, which I think amounts more or less to not thinking like you have to think in the middle of a match. But having learnt that lesson the hard way I never looked back!

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                      chess.com sent me a junk e-mail about the Lucena end game problem (attacking side to play and win), with a link to a drill. Needless to say, I got nowhere near solving it, but it did prompt me to find the very good Wikipedia page on it, having absorbed the lessons of which I was then able to go back and complete the drill. Have to say, I don't recall the position ever cropping up in any of my matches, though.

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                        You know how, in a situation where the tie-breaker fails to break the tie, the algorithm can let more than the intended number of players from a group through to the next stage of a tournament, right (e.g. with "three to progress", both players ending third equal will qualify).

                        Well, I'm currently in the first round of a 100 player tournament and in a group where, if that rule is applied consistently, we may end up with all 5 players progressing despite the idea being just the top two. With 3 games to go, a highly likely outcome (perhaps 50/50 chance as of now, having regard to the state of play) is that the top player gets 8 points (which has already happened as he did the double over everyone else - looks like that annoying type of player whose ranking for whatever reason grossly understates his strength at admission time and then zooms off a few hundred above the admission limit), while all the other players get 3 points each from winning 3 of their remaining 6 games amongst each other, so of course not tie-broken either.

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                          I like the chance of that happening. I'm not sure I like tiebreakers. If a number of players get the same number of points they should all get the same result.

                          On the note of getting the same result, after three rounds of the London Chess Classic all games have been drawn. 15 drawn games so far in the tournament.

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                            wow, that's extraordinary.

                            So, Chess 960. It's called "960" because there are 960 distinct permutations of the back row pieces which meet the two constraints in the rules (bishops on different coloured squares and one rook each side of the king). But of course half of those are just mirror images of the other half, so there are 480 non-equivalent starting positions. And one of those is standard chess, so that leaves 479.

                            The whole point of chess 960 for its original supporters was to remove the exercise of studying opening lines in great depth and going into matches armed with memorised sequences. Perversely, though, I have a daydream of publishing The Bumper Book of Chess 960 Openings, which would have 479 chapters, one for each starting position and its mirror image, each being a survey, perhaps 10-15 pages or so, of good openings for one starting variant. I'm sure it could be compiled with the help of a computer and a team of expert consultants.

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                              Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                              half of those are just mirror images of the other half, so there are 480 non-equivalent starting positions
                              Ah, but mirror images aren't equivalent starting positions, because of the castling rules being asymmetric.

                              I applaud your ambitious goal, and am looking forward to seeing Volume II with the remaining 480 chapters.

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                                ha ha, good point!

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                                  So, the "likely" 8-3-3-3-3 group scoreiine I forecast above is not going to happen. Two games left, one of which I'm playing in and should win, which means depending on the final match result we'll end up either 8-4-3-3-2, with me going through in second place, or 8-4-4-3-1, with me knocked down to third and so eliminated by the tie-break. It's painful to look in on the other match. The player who I need to win is playing white and was up on material by Q+P to R and so clear favourite, but I think he's just in the middle of falling into two traps in a row. The first trap involved his nabbing another pawn on move 39, apparently oblivious to the fact that that allows the other player to force an exchange of Q +P for R+B by 39...... Rxd3 (followed if white is astute by 40 Qxd3, Bxd3, 41 Kxd3). That wouldn't be so bad - it only gives away 2 points of his material advantage so still leaves him up 4 points. But I feel in my bones that he's going to miss the second, much nastier, trap of a discovered bishop attack on his queen simultaneous with rook check by respoding to black's 39....Rxd3 with 40 Kf2 or Kf4, allowing black to go 40......Rxf3 check. Maybe I'm underestimating him, but I don't want to get my hopes up. Link to the game below.

                                  https://www.chess.com/daily/game/178533726

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                                    You've got lucky; black didn't spot it!

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                                      They should get another pawn and the knight at least though, so the advantage will mostly disappear

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                                        Chess tournament news:
                                        https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...london-classic

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                                          Good to see you back on the thread, Kev. I don't suppose we can tempt you back on to chess.com?

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                                            Looks much better for your hopes in that other game now EEG. R-E2 either gets mate in two or leaves him with a Queen vs Bishop ending.

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                                              Indeed (assuming that was a typo for Rg2). I've been hoping that his prior queen move to chase away the bishop guarding g2 was done with that in mind. Painful to watch, though, at that very slow pace.

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                                                So, having finally worked out the obvious (as I mentioned a page or two ago), namely that some players in a tournament will always use close to the maximum time for every move in a game because they are playing a large portfolio of matches and prioritising them by how soon their move expires, I now find myself in a tournament with a 14 day move limit where a bunch of us have already finished quite a few of our matches within 5 days of klck-off, but it's obvious that some players are not going to make their first move for another 9 days or thereabouts. One of the slower players, for example, is this guy, who has a portfolio of currently 593 active games:

                                                https://www.chess.com/member/domkubidom

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                                                  Looks much better for your hopes in that other game now EEG. R-E2 either gets mate in two or leaves him with a Queen vs Bishop ending.
                                                  Mate in two it was! Yay! Didn't expect to come second in a group of 5 with 4 points from 8 matches.

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                                                    Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                                                    So, having finally worked out the obvious (as I mentioned a page or two ago), namely that some players in a tournament will always use close to the maximum time for every move in a game because they are playing a large portfolio of matches and prioritising them by how soon their move expires, I now find myself in a tournament with a 14 day move limit where a bunch of us have already finished quite a few of our matches within 5 days of klck-off, but it's obvious that some players are not going to make their first move for another 9 days or thereabouts. One of the slower players, for example, is this guy, who has a portfolio of currently 593 active games:

                                                    https://www.chess.com/member/domkubidom
                                                    Levin and I are currently in the final group of a tournament in which two players timed out of all their matches, one timed out of all but a few, and two of the remaining ones are doing what you describe here, complete with both being paid accounts so set to go on vacation automatically if they come within x hours of timing out. It is very annoying.

                                                    Although not as annoying as the fact that the player who looks best placed to push me out for second place is a total dick who back in April (during the previous round of this tournament) complained that everyone else in his group was shit and giving away pieces left right and centre, and 'need to study more'. He then posted two games by way of illustration, one of which was mine (but for the record, I found him annoying before he did that). For context, this is an under 1200 tournament and since it started this guy's rating has gone up to 1600-odd. Oh, and his username is 'ChessGrandMaster2015'. Twat.

                                                    Most oddly, in this final group he came within a couple of hours of timing out of his first game against me, then made a move (his first, as black) just in time, and then resigned. I assumed he'd lost interest in this tournament and would be doing the same with everyone else, but he's won all his other games so far. So if I do somehow cling on to my first second place finish (I doubt I'm going to leapfrog Levin into first), it'll be in the knowledge that I have a point I shouldn't really have got, which is a bit of a shame.

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