Greetings to all chess fans and the Midnight Letters community! I played in the 20th round of the Hivechess Season 1 last night. The Hivechess tournament is a weekly chess Arena blitz tournament which ran for over an hour. It starts at eleven pm our time and ends at midnight. The time control for this round was three minute blitz with an option to go on "berserk". Going berserk will give you half the time (one and a half minute) but will give you an extra point if you win.
I played poorly in this round and only landed in twelfth place. There were a lot of missed opportunities and I even blundered against a lower rated opponent. I wasn't satisfied with my game in this round.
My first win in the tournament after two losses. I played against a much lower rated player with Elo of 1000+. I was winning comfortably but I went astray and blundered.
After Qxc3+ I'm losing. My opponent was merciful and didn't play it. I was lucky to escape with a win.
Here is one game against a high rated player. One of my traps that I wrote about in previous post worked against him.
This is a well known position to me and I recognized it at once. I wrote posts about it in 2022 and 2024. The sequence starts with Bxb8 Rxb8 Bb5+ where Black has to move Ke7 and lose castling rights.
Instead, he moved Nd7 and after Ne5 Black is losing a piece!
Here are my previous posts on the position:
https://peakd.com/hive-157286/@iamchessguy/a-familiar-pattern-appears
https://peakd.com/hive-157286/@iamchessguy/avoid-this-dirty-trick-in-the-london
There were a lot of games that were heartbreakers. They were games that I had the advantage but I collapsed and lost. Here's one such example against @stayoutoftherz
I won a piece in a game Nimzowitch will be happy with. I had a well placed Knight on c5 and restrained White's double c pawns. I went astray again and managed to lose the game 😭💔.
I played poorly in this round because I was slow and lacked practice. There were games that were winning that I ended up losing plus I struggled against lower rated players. I'll have to prepare and do better next round!
Thanks to @sam.chess @samostically for hosting and congratulations to the winners!
Link to tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/8Xovwl1w
Playing chess is great for the mind but let's not forget about physical activities. I recently committed to exercise and to keep me motivated, I joined actifit.io