Chess

[Alora Valo]

Third place match:

Ioghnis vs. Alora guy

Friday (24.02.2023)19:00 CET

[Alora Valo]

https://lichess.org/iqhNnEgB8fIc - Ioghnis(W) 0 - 1 Alora guy(B).
https://lichess.org/EUMTmmV7nrTF - Alora guy(W) 1 - 0 Ioghnis(B).
https://lichess.org/uqXsXXsaawgz - Ioghnis(W) 0 - 1 Alora guy(B).

[Lord THON]

The final showdown
1: https://lichess.org/TLEVR3C3eaBl - Bart wins
2: https://lichess.org/tYby7GVVGjjE - Thon wins
3: https://lichess.org/y2MVsbLGUnjq - Bart wins

thon thinks match 3 was world championship tier

The results
1. Bart
2. Thon
3. Alora guy
4. Ioghnis
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quarter finalists: Orn, Noam, Rhena guy, Farhir
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eliminated: Amara, Thang, Carthage, Tanna guy

[Lord THON]

thon thon, hello

Carthage is finally sending the rewards from what he told me, I fully understand the delay, the guy has been to 7 countries this year, including a war site so yeah i think this is one of the few moments you can understand half a year of delay imo?

****

This reminds me i wanted to give you some tips guys because why not and I want to be a friendly thon.

Besides, thon loves chess.

Source: i was usually getting pretty high places in my town's chess tournaments, i even have an official FIDE rating IRL of 1600-1700 level (don't want to post preciseful data or some evil lurker from outside Szlakiem will doxx thon), this tournament was my first time returning to chess after many bad things happened to thon irl.

I'm also doing a massive tag of everyone, because I don't know who reads which parts of the forum. DONT CLICK BELOW OR IT WILL KILL YOUR EYES

Ukryte:

Alora player: hey you're really, really good, and I think there is only one specific thing you mess up often. You often go into tunnel vision and focus too much on specific place of the chessboard and then get yourself opened to an attack from a site that seems almost random from your point of view. You're often not going into analysing the full chessboard imo. Your mistakes come from being too much into the given moment and you have the mentality commonly associated with players that shuffle pieces at Blitz and stuff like that, you know. You should focus on doing puzzles and analysing the situation from the viewpoint of an entire chessboard. Practice looking at the full picture at any given moment. This is the only skill you're lacking, if you work on that, you're easily gonna go from ~1000 FIDE to like ~1200 FIDE imo, and that's really INSANE level for people that got most of their chess focus after their 25 years of age. Less fast matches, more puzzles, puzzles, puzzles, and you're gonna get on a way higher level and feel mega proud of yourself buddy.

Amara: You're really good and there is completely no specific thing you need to work on. You have the same vibe as I do, experienced player that got rusty and is sometimes randomly blind or messes up some specific strategy, but in reality you don't have any specific area of weakness, any specific moments you mess up. You're just like me and you just need to get back to working your brain, nothing more than that.


Bart: I don't think I can give you many tips anymore, you're already 2100 lichess and 2100 rated lichess players are around 1900 FIDE according to giant pool of stats. Honestly with your rate, give it a year or two and you could think of getting an official National Master title in chess but not sure you want it as that's affiliated with your country, sob.

Carthage: okay my brother in thon, let's be honest, you're just terrible and you're just the guy that jumped into, barely knowing how pieces move. You just opened up the game without the tutorial and chess just doesn't work that way.

Farhir: learn openings more, you know the principles, you have reasonable moves, you're really good for an amateur but from what I've seen (admittedly not only the tournament matches but your other ones), but you don't know openings and mess up the beginning. Learn some simple universal ones. Just literally google "chess openings beginner" and read some stuff, that's really it.

Ioghnis: I really actually have nothing to say, you're probably the most solid one all around with no specific weaknesses. Every aspect of your game I would rate the same. Maybe one thing, if you mess up badly then you fall under pressure and make blunder after blunder... but then again I've seen that in your matches vs Bart... and really it doesn't matter that you go that way because if you go against 2000 rated people one you will not recover from your L either way, being honest. So if you don't have that problem of your brain melting when you face ~1000 rated people, you're good. And you have equal skills in pretty much every facet of the game!

Noam: you're great at endgame patterns and not bad at openings. You tend to make some terrible mistakes and I think there is only one thing you can do with that and it's gonna be slow:
- go into game analysis
- look at your blunders
- analyze why they're bad, look at how the next best moves look
- figure out how you could have predicted them, they're usually very simple and like 2 moves ahead, you don't make a 1-move blunder almost never, but you fail at 2-moves
It's not something you can learn in any specific manner, but these are usually, as I said, just 2-step plans, the blunder isn't obvious if you just imagine your opponent's next move, but if you go after that they're pretty clear.

Orn: I've been teaching you myself so what's to write.

Rhena player: I am so sad. You deserve to get a lot of good tutoring, you're awesome, but I can't think of anything. Every aspect of your play is equally good, you don't make errors in any specific way that's easy to run through by simple Szlakiem post. There is no one specific error, aspect, stuff you're specifically good or bad at, you're developing enormously solidly and precisely. I can't give any simple forum-tier advice with stuff like "work on utilizing your bishop pair and syncing them", and that makes me really sad. Thon very sad for not having good tips.

Tanna player: you have one specific thing you need to work on, and that's capitalizing on a poor play of your opponent. You got defeated by Orn who often blundered heavily and was nearly dead, but instead of capitalizing on his blunders you went for normal play and continued like nothing happened. That's the most important thing you need to focus on, realizing your opponent messed up. Practicing that is very simple, you don't go for fast chess. Really people that need practice shouldn't be doing fast 5min matches. I've seen in your profile you're mostly doing relatively fast chess matches and they're simply bad for practice. Improving in chess requires staring at the chessboard like an autist and analysing dozens of options. Like it's easy to fall into the trap of this general idea that "this is general skill, you just need to practice man" which is right, but then people go into quick matches where they can't really practice actually. You also tend to have what me and my friends called "primadonna chess", and that is, if you mess up and ruin your situation, you really stop noticing your opponent messing up and it feels like you just give in to the despair and suffering. Don't lose hope too early. Losing hope when you blundered big time is only a thing at 1000+ rating.

Thang: openings are your weak spot. You should try learning some basic, universal openings, called "systems" that can be used pretty much no matter what your opponent does, that aren't very "reactive" so to speak and require you to use a very general development pattern that's pretty open and appliable everywhere. I would recommend London System. Google it, read up on it, learn maybe 1 or 2 more. Then you go learn on the common opening traps buddy. Stuff like Fried Liver, etc, this kind of jazz. This is 50% of what you need to learn. The other 50% is GO LOOK UP ENDGAME PATTERNS. They're much funnier to learn, they're not a set of moves, but principles and mathematical ideas. Learn on how to use your king to cut off the escape route and how to slowly push the opponent in with your last remaining rook/queen. You're really good and just don't have this stuff about general patterns figured out. You're also generally good at pattern recognition and analogies and I think learning endgames will be super quick for you and very profitable, go for it.

Bonus points for people I've seen play outside the tournament:
Elia: hey you're awesome for one with your experience, you got really solid on the basics with speed more suited for people 10 years younger. Really great promise and potential, one would need to be really into chess to beat you.
Cradum: focus on early midgames from what i've seen in your profile, that's where your biggest Ls happen. They also happen a lot in late endgame as if you lost your focus. ADHD pills maybe imo.
Ashtar: DEGENERATION
Liren: your openings are a travesty, terrible cringe travesty. You make reasonable, logical, sometimes the only legit moves later in the game, but you move pieces at random in the openings. Like HOLY THON, you're using CRAB OPENING seriously. Your first moves are absolutely insanely garbage, please read ANYTHING on openings. I don't want you learning some specific openings, studying stuff like that, just read on the most basic ideas of openings so you don't blunder the whole game in move nr 5. PLS. EVERYTIME YOU PLAY YOUR OPENINGS THERE'S A LITTLE BABY THON THAT CRIES.

thon thon thon
hope thon helped

[Thang Glauru]

Thanks for the opinions everyone's chess skills. It's super important to know, where to improve. Hope next time we have a competition like this, there will be a progress :D

[Elia]

Wow! Thank you Thon sir! Didn't expect to find me here :D

[Ashtar Tey]

Ashtar: DEGENERATION

At your service.