Untitled Tuesday and Saturday recaps - January

The January recap was written by @dpnorman.

The January 2019 edition of Untitled Tuesday saw as strong a field as the tournament has ever seen, strong enough that players rated over 2000 were already playing each other in the second round, and that the winner of the tournament did not face any players under 2000 blitz after the first game. 

In the early rounds, a few of the higher-rated competitors began to separate themselves from the rest of the field. In particular, Yourinsuil1991, cjxchess17, Everyfishknows, Keitthonsky, and grubyilysy all had at least 2.5/3, joined by two slightly lower-rated (and Canadian) participants MynameisJeff21lol and heavyduty90. But in the next few games the contenders would begin to separate themselves.

Perennial contender Yourinsuil1991 continued his good start with a victory over cxjchess17:

In the next round, Keitthonsky and Yourinsuil1991 played a very complicated game that ended with a few unfortunate blunders from the former, who until that point had held an equal position:

While the field was fairly densely packed-together early on, Yourinsuil1991 gradually took control of the tournament, winning four games in a row in the middle part of the event. 

In the eighth game, Yourinsuil1991 finally lost, and it was to one of the players trying to catch him from the rear, SJFG. He was drawing, but blundered the e5-pawn with check and quickly found himself mated.

To cement his control over the top spot, Yourinsuil1991 won as white in a Scotch against Everyfishknows:

Behind Yourinsuil1991 in clear first, a few players fought in the last rounds for the remaining spots on the podium, including SamuelIFowler and grubyilysy, whose game in the last round decided second place.

Finally it should be acknowledged that the late-join feature allowed a few members to hop in after the event was already underway, and one of them, Schachmasteo, won all six of his games and finished in the top ten (albeit receiving one win via forfeit against an opponent who did not move from the starting position). An impressive performance!

Detailed results from the tournament at this link: https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/untitled-tuesday---january-1025571 

The Untitled Saturday tournament for the month of January was more of an oddball. The field was a bit smaller than it was on Tuesday, but there were still a few of the higher-rated usuals and many interesting games.

One player who began the event on fire was Marignon, who has played in no shortage of Untitled Tuesday and Saturday events. However, along the way, he was often completely losing, and received numerous lucky breaks:

But as all good things must come to an end, Marignon's luck finally ran out against happycuber in the fifth round.

Despite losing to Marignon it must be said that Astraferz had a great event. It would ultimately be his only loss of the tournament and he netted a number of nice wins, including this one:

Slowly but surely, a new contender emerged in the form of MynameisJeff21lol. He had lost his second round game to Astraferz, but picked up steam in the middle of the event. Perhaps one of the biggest moments for his tournament was winning an equal material knight ending in seventy moves with the black pieces.

Another impressive performance from MynameisJeff21lol came in the penultimate round, when he defeated KaosKid and took a clear lead in the standings:

MynameisJeff21lol sealed clear first with a final round win, capping off a streak of eight straight (!) after losing one early. Astraferz, in fact the only player who defeated him, finished in second, and in third was Tudorache_M, who himself had a few fun games in the tournament including this win over KaosKid: 

Detailed results available at https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/saturday-event---january-1025572