Atlas Chess Tournament '21 (Final Scores)

[patzer]

My game with patzer has ended, 1-0. Congratulations to patzer on a well-deserved win and thanks for an extremely tough game in which I never felt like I even had an opportunity to win an advantage.

This is a classic cautionary tale - in a drawn position, I thought about offering a draw a couple of times but then reasoned, eh, why not make a few more moves? I mean, come on, what am I going to do? Blunder the endgame? A disappointing note to conclude the tournament on but on the other hand it was a very intense and interesting game, so I can't complain.

I might have a few thoughts later but at first glance I only see one move that really merits immediate comment.

1. Nf3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. c4 e6 4. Nc3 Bb4 5. e3 O-O 6. Bd2 c6 7. a3 Bxc3 8. Bxc3
b6 9. Rc1 Ba6 10. b3 Nbd7 11. Bd3 Qe7 12. O-O Ne4 13. a4 f5 14. Ne5 Nxe5 15.
dxe5 Qc7 16. cxd5 Nxc3 17. Rxc3 Qxe5 18. Rxc6 Qxd5 19. Bb5 Bxb5 20. Qxd5 exd5
21. axb5 Rfc8 22. Rfc1 Rd8 23. h4 h6 24. Rc7 d4 25. exd4 Rxd4 26. g3 Rb4 27.
Rc8+ Rxc8 28. Rxc8+ Kh7 29. Rc7 Rxb3 30. Rxa7 Rxb5 31. h5 f4 32. g4 f3 33. Kh2
Rb3 34. Kg3 Kg8 35. Rb7 b5 36. Kf4 b4

37. Kf5 Rb2 ??

What was I thinking here? This ignores White's forcing rook moves and leaves my pawns doomed. My best explanation is it's an example of how one can develop tunnel vision in these positions: I simply didn't pay any heed to the attack until after I'd made the fatal move, and that slow sinking feeling set in. If we were playing bullet or something you might play on, hoping for a counter-blunder, but there's little chance of such a thing in correspondence - and certainly not against a very strong player like patzer. As such, the only reasonable conclusion is to fall on your sword rather than be surgically picked apart for a few more moves.

38. Kg6 Kf8 39. Rf7+ (Black resigns) 1-0

That was a fun game, thank you. Pretty competitive, I did feel somewhat lucky to win after having been in the worse position for about half of the game!

Moments that caught my eye: 16. cxd5 may have been inaccurate from me- that forcing sequence of moves that followed ended up with me having doubled isolated pawns. If I'd wanted to take the d-pawn, it might have been better to do so earlier on move 14. I think I'd been focusing on the possibility of something like 16. cxd5 Bxd3 17. d6 Qd8 18. Qxd3 rather than the strong way you actually responded.

However, having said that my position going into the endgame wasn't too bad despite said isolated b-pawns; I think I should have played 24. Rd1 to stop your pawn breakthrough and then brought my king into the game.
Move 27, something like Rb7 and doubling my rooks on the 7th would have been strong in hindsight. As it was, I just swapped rooks off and ended up in a pawn-down endgame.

I think on move 30, Kg6 would have been good for black. Would have stopped me from doing h5 locking the black position down, and my pawn on b5 is still falling next turn anyway.

And finally by the end... yes I think it was Rb2 on move 37 that was the crucial mistake- something like Kh7 would have blunted my attack. Unfortunate end to a pretty interesting game.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Won my match against Tim Turner. Good game, Tim. I'm glad I was able to end this on a somewhat better note.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Won my match against Tim Turner. Good game, Tim. I'm glad I was able to end this on a somewhat better note.

It was a pleasure, thank you.
You getting your best move 27 times vs only 11 times for me was probably decisive.
And you got accuracy of almost 90%, relative to my 73%.
Best of luck in the rest of the tournament!
EDIT: why in the world does the game engine think pawn to f5 is a good move in turn 21, when it would have let you take my queen without me being able to respond?

[muon2]

Won my match against Tim Turner. Good game, Tim. I'm glad I was able to end this on a somewhat better note.

It was a pleasure, thank you.
You getting your best move 27 times vs only 11 times for me was probably decisive.
And you got accuracy of almost 90%, relative to my 73%.
Best of luck in the rest of the tournament!
EDIT: why in the world does the game engine think pawn to f5 is a good move in turn 21, when it would have let you take my queen without me being able to respond?

The engine thinks losing the queen is preferable to a forced mate. After 22. Bxh7+ white has forced mate in 3: 22 ....Kh8 23. Bg6+ Kg8 24. Qh7+ Kf8 25. Qxf7#. Humans can hope their opponent won't see the mate and therefore not immediately sacrifice the queen to stop it.

[Ebowed]

NOVA Green emerged victorious in our game.  Congrats.

[NOVA Green]

NOVA Green emerged victorious in our game.  Congrats.

My apologies for not posting earlier.... I was starting to draft a detailed analysis but got side-tracked with Ukraine.   

I honestly thought I had a pretty decent positional advantage from relatively early on after effectively forcing the Queen exchange and preventing your King from any future castling attempts.

Still, despite repeated assaults you were able to rebuff my advances and prevent any material gain for the longest time.

Need to look through in more detail, but at one point the Game Review showed you as a solid favorite in the Middle Game!!!!

Well played and might be willing for a personal rematch challenge if you are interested, since I believe the Tournament is basically over (at least as far as any more completed rounds for the both of us)!

[muon2]

NOVA Green emerged victorious in our game.  Congrats.

My apologies for not posting earlier.... I was starting to draft a detailed analysis but got side-tracked with Ukraine.   

I honestly thought I had a pretty decent positional advantage from relatively early on after effectively forcing the Queen exchange and preventing your King from any future castling attempts.

Still, despite repeated assaults you were able to rebuff my advances and prevent any material gain for the longest time.

On move 13 you conceded your opening advantage by blocking the d-file with the bishop. The computer likes a long castle to both take advantage of that file and protect the rooks. The bishop can come out later.

Need to look through in more detail, but at one point the Game Review showed you as a solid favorite in the Middle Game!!!!

There was a quick sequence of errors on moves 16 and 17 that caused the engine to flip back and forth. 16 Bf4 protected the c7 knight which wasn't threatening anything, so it was better to just move the knight away. 16... Rc8 attacked that protected knight that wasn't threatening anything, so it was better to attack the bishop with g5 before worrying about the c7 knight. 17. c3 is a real blunder since it allows black to attack the unguarded f4 bishop and win the c7 knight. 17... Nd5 attacks the f4 bishop, but can be taken by the c7 knight so material equality is maintained. That gives white the advantage again with better development and king safety.

Well played and might be willing for a personal rematch challenge if you are interested, since I believe the Tournament is basically over (at least as far as any more completed rounds for the both of us)!

Definitely gg for both and fun to watch.

[bore]

Congrats to mimoha on winning the game between us, and thanks for his patience in dealing with my slowness in moving

Thanks also once again to scott and muon for organising this.

[muon2]

Congrats to mimoha on winning the game between us, and thanks for his patience in dealing with my slowness in moving

gg to both. I have heard of the Fried Liver Attack, but this is the first time I'd seen it in a real game. It's one of the older known openings, first described over 400 years ago.

Thanks also once again to scott and muon for organising this.

Thanks to all who played, and to Scott for leading the effort.

Here's the final scoreboard:

pts   TB1   TB2   player
5   16   16   muon2
4   16   11   minionofmidas
4   11.5   9   patzer
3.5   10   5.75   NOVA Green
3   17.5   8.5   oakvale
3   15.5   6.5   OBD
3   15.5   6.5   AGA
3   12.5   4.5   bore
3   12   6   Mimoha
3   10   4   YPestis25
2   16   4.5   Ebowed
2   11.5   3.5   Scott
1.5   11.5   1.75   TimTurner
1.5   11   1.25   Abdullah
1   12.5   1.5   NewYorkExpress

These are the players who have withdrawn and their scores for calculating tie breakers.
(2) HockeyDude (withdrew before round 4)
(1.5) Ishan (withdrew before round 3)
(1.5) morgieb (withdrew before round 3)
(1.5) OSR (withdrew before round 3)
(2) diptheriadan (withdrew before round 2)

[minionofmidas]

Congrats to mimoha on winning the game between us, and thanks for his patience in dealing with my slowness in moving

gg to both. I have heard of the Fried Liver Attack, but this is the first time I'd seen it in a real game. It's one of the older known openings, first described over 400 years ago.

I've never heard it referred to by that or any other name or seen that sequence in any book, but I've played it over the board vs a friend as both white and black!

[muon2]

Congrats to mimoha on winning the game between us, and thanks for his patience in dealing with my slowness in moving

gg to both. I have heard of the Fried Liver Attack, but this is the first time I'd seen it in a real game. It's one of the older known openings, first described over 400 years ago.

I've never heard it referred to by that or any other name or seen that sequence in any book, but I've played it over the board vs a friend as both white and black!

It's also called the Fegatello Attack and is defined by the knight sacrifice 6. Nxf7. It was first published in the early 1600's and even has its own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_Liver_Attack

I think I've avoided it by not favoring the moves that lead to it. For instance, on the black side I prefer 3... Bc5 or g6 and on the white side I prefer 4. d3 to 4. Ng5.

[minionofmidas]

Congrats to mimoha on winning the game between us, and thanks for his patience in dealing with my slowness in moving

gg to both. I have heard of the Fried Liver Attack, but this is the first time I'd seen it in a real game. It's one of the older known openings, first described over 400 years ago.

I've never heard it referred to by that or any other name or seen that sequence in any book, but I've played it over the board vs a friend as both white and black!

It's also called the Fegatello Attack and is defined by the knight sacrifice 6. Nxf7. It was first published in the early 1600's and even has its own Wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fried_Liver_Attack

I think I've avoided it by not favoring the moves that lead to it. For instance, on the black side I prefer 3... Bc5 or g6 and on the white side I prefer 4. d3 to 4. Ng5.

Same thing - fegatelli are fried livers. 5... Nxd5 is a beginner's mistake (or, you know, careless friendly game mistake) and 6. d4 is an even stronger answer that I would choose in correspondence.

[NOVA Green]

Next Atlas Chess Tournament?   

Got a private game on currently from a formidable opponent, which I narrowly croaked out a win last go around and won looking fwd towards a Spring 2022 Atlas Chess Tournament!!!

Suspect not the only one "Jonesing" for another sequence of match-ups!   

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

It only took eight months but good game folks.

This year's tournament won't be for a while but I think we need to have a clearer understanding of the rules and possibly shorter time limits. The three-day round thing clearly wasn't working even though people have busy schedules. If muon or anyone else has something different in mind I'm all ears. We can also move from chess.com to lichess.org, as I understand some want to do.

What do people think of the Swiss model?

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Also, this year's tournament will be in early summer. I realize that starting these at the beginning of the semester doesn't make much sense.

Needless to say this tournament wouldn't be possible without muon's help, so thank you for keeping score and setting the match-ups.

[muon2]

The two problems that I think most affected the tournament was the number of dropouts in the early rounds, and the length of time it took to get through all the rounds. In general these seemed to be unconnected, since most of the dropouts occurred after the first couple of rounds, and those rounds were not overly delayed.

I think the swiss tournament improved on the single elimination format, since everyone got to play multiple games instead of seeing half the players eliminated after the first round. However, a swiss tournament requires everyone to wait for a round to be complete before they can start the next round, and that was frustrating for many.

Ideally games should average about a turn a day to keep things moving, and in principle a time limit of 3 days per move should get to that average. However, there was nothing against a player using their full time allotment and a round was only as fast as the slowest game. I do think that a limit of 1 day per move could be difficult for some players who will occasionally have a day with conflicts that prevent spending time on chess. I know I did in a couple of the rounds of this last tournament.

Let me make a suggestion to use a different format called a knock-out round-robin. In a true round robin tournament everyone plays everyone, but if there are 20 players that requires 19 rounds! (This last tournament was five rounds.) In a knock-out round-robin players are divided into pools of 3 to 5 players each and each pool plays a round robin. The winner of each pool goes on to play in a final pool to determine the champion. This type of pool play is very much like one sees for Olympic team sports and the World Cup.

In a 3-day-per-move chess tournament using a knock-out round robin each player would play simultaneously against the other players in the pool. As each game finished they would switch colors against that player until they had played everyone in their pool with both colors. The only wait would be for the pool winners to start their final matches. Players would have between 2 and 4 simultaneous games for a pool of 3 to 5 players.

In terms of a platform, I have looked at but not played on lichess. I know they have a smaller pool of players than chess.com. Chess.com also has sophisticated anti-cheating software that lichess lacks (not that I expect any cheating from Atlas), and I like the analysis tools on chess.com though that can be a matter of taste. One can run a swiss tournament on either platform, but lichess does not support round-robin tournaments. I would strongly prefer we stay on chess.com for the tournament.

[NewYorkExpress]

It only took eight months but good game folks.

This year's tournament won't be for a while but I think we need to have a clearer understanding of the rules and possibly shorter time limits. The three-day round thing clearly wasn't working even though people have busy schedules. If muon or anyone else has something different in mind I'm all ears. We can also move from chess.com to lichess.org, as I understand some want to do.

What do people think of the Swiss model?

I'd prefer chess.com.

I think a one day format is best in terms of time.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Why not take a middle ground and reduce the three-day limit to two?