December Recaps and Untitled Tuesday 2017 Review

Apologies for the delayed report.  The first part of the report was written by @chessguy1012, and the rest by @MGleason.  This was rather cobbled together, so apologies for the brevity.

     It was Tuesday, December 5th, 2017. The December Untitled Tuesday was delayed due to the Titled Tuesday having to restart because of a server error. Before I start, I want to thank @MGleason, for making these amazing tournaments. 

     It was about to start, 54 players in all. The top rated player was @CP6033 (2141) who got 3rd in the last Tuesday Event. The event was 10 rounds of 3|2 blitz, the same as Titled Tuesday. But anyway, lets start.

Round 1 didn't have many upsets, except the top seed losing, and me, drawing. My opponent @arnavbatta had played a great game and then, with mate in 2, lost on time and drew the game against me! here was the game of board 1: 

So a possible mouse slip decides board 1, we all know how @CP6033 feels after this. Other than that and my game, nothing big really happens.

Round 2: This round was also a fairly calm round, ending with only one upset. 

I always knew @speedychess11 was underrated, and he shows it in this game. 

Round 3: Nothing big happened in this round, the contenders for the top spots started to pull away from the players that didn't have a chance. Here is my game from round 3: 

Round 4: @hectogon starts a run, with 4/4, one of the suprising players to do well in this tournament. I beat the top seed, but that was nothing special, here is hectogons game: 

This game is an example of a Catalan played well.

The rest was written by @MGleason

In rounds five and six, @Ast_F pulled into clear first with wins over @Enderao and @Hectogon, but a loss to Schachmasteo led to a three-way tie between @Schachmasteo, @chessguy1012, and @Ast_F with three rounds to go:

In round 8, @chessguy1012 also beat @Ast_F.  He was able to create a pair of connected passed pawns, and then @Ast_F couldn't find a perpetual check.

@chessguy1012 and @Schachmasteo then drew to remain tied at the top with a round to play:

With wins for both in the final round, they finished tied on 8.5/10, and @chessguy1012 edged it on tiebreak by half a point, with early leader @Ast_F finishing third.

The Saturday event was disrupted by another instance of fair play violations, with @bikramc being banned shortly after his perfect 10/10.  Behind him was a very tight race.

@CP6033 took the early lead with a 5/6 start, including a win over @Yourinsuil1991 where he wiped out black's queenside:

@MishaMedved caught up with a win over @Ast_F:

@cancrushyou leapfrogged both of them with a win over @Ankalyov:

@SmyslovFan played spoiler in the final round, earning a draw against @cancrushyou, allowing @CP6033 and @MishaMedved to catch up on points:

@CP6033 edged it on tiebreak, with @MishaMedved second, and @cancrushyou third.

We also had our 1,000 member celebration event in December.  This was a 1|0 bullet event, and to quote Rashid Nuzhmetdinov, "He who analyses blitz is stupid."  Therefore, I won't provide comments on any of the games.

A 4/4 start got @chessguy1012 off to an early lead.  However, losses to @Heinie08 and @SamuelIFowler dropped him down to tied second with @The_Helloer, with @SamuelIFowler one point ahead.

@SamuelIFowler was unable to maintain his lead, and @The_Helloer and @chessguy1012 finished strongly to share the lead, with @The_Helloer edging the win on tiebreaks, and @SamuelIFowler finishing third.

Interestingly, @Ast_F played the best quality chess (as judged by Stockfish 7) of anyone near the top, but seriously struggled with time management, flagging in several games for a 7th place finish.  He even got a draw by flagging against a bare king in one game.

At the other end of the table, my perfect (losing) record was only spoiled by a 1-point bye in the sixth round.  Playing bad moves slowly is even less of a path to success in 1|0 bullet than playing good moves slowly.

@SmyslovFan is the overall Untitled Tuesday champion of 2017.  He didn't win as many individual events as some of the others, but playing in almost every event and performing strongly in many events earned him nine top ten finishes, for a total of 60 points, eight ahead of @Joseph_Truelson and twelve ahead of @CP6033.

Here are the top 10 overall:

The full table can be seen here: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/event-history-and-leaderboard 

Not counting the bonus 1,000 member celebration event, we ran 15 different tournaments, and had 12 unique winners (with @Dominus_et_Deus, @CP6033, and @Joseph_Truelson the only players to win two events).  Interestingly, nobody finished third twice, and only @Schachmasteo finished second twice.

@Joseph_Truelson won four medals, and @Schachmasteo, @CP6033, and @Dominus_et_Deus each earned three.  @bluegalaxy4, @LonerDruid, @SmyslovFan, @chessguy1012, and @Yourinsuil1991 each got two medals, with @bluegalaxy4 the only competitor to finish in the top three twice without winning an event.

We had 85 different people finish in the top ten of at least one event.  The full list can be seen here.

From a fair play perspective, we had a pretty good year.  We had four events where at least one person in the top three was subsequently disqualified, and only in two of them was first place affected.  There were a number of other people who were banned during the year, but many of them appear to have played the Untitled Tuesday events clean.  Most of our events gave me no concerns.  We will continue to monitor future events.