How to improve at chess: RAR's first three events!

Cover photo is of some players playing ten second. Not of this tournament, but in the future we'll have masters playing in these events!

RAR's inaugural chess.com live tournaments (a recent addition to this great website) was not expected to be great. But it was. Chess players came out in droves, spectators numbered in the thousands...

I wish.

In reality, it was over like in 2 minutes. Probably because the events were only 2 minutes long. Why?

It was the type of chess recommended by the experts, (more like expert), 10 second chess.

In what is the quickest time control ever, players must rely on their premoving skills, as well as getting out of check, quickly. 

But before we delve into these important games which must be analyzed as they are very instructive, let us talk about the journey, and how this event came to be.

As usual, I always have great ideas. After playing in the magnificent Untitled Tuesday, an event for untitled players held after Titled Tuesday, I had a great time and wanted to experience the fun again. So, I created my own tournmament, for players in the Classic RAR group, 10 seconds a move, so that we could tell if they had the ability to flag their opponents in this non-skill game. (If you didn't know, RAR promotes getting good results at chess without getting better at it.)

After creating this event, I knew I needed to get a good number of people to play. So, I spammed multiple groups, raising awareness of the event, and many players were interested.

However, since rating is the meaning of life, many of them wanted to know how much rating they might lose. I reassured them that they couldn't lose more than 2 points (turns out 3 is the max) in a game. 

Why is this? You see, when chess.com first let people play 10 second chess, and rated it as bullet, the really good speedy players proceeded to get amazing ratings in bullet. Some got higher than Hikaru, even though they were normally just 2000 in bullet. Seeing the problems, chess.com decided to make it less important in the rating system. Personally, I would make a separate rating system, but this is ok, too. 

Anyways, people were still scared of rating loss, so I had to reassure two people, @RookSacrifice and @boy20116, that I would refund their rating. It turned out to be a bad idea...

Earlier on in the day, I had achieved, with no help from anybody else, a new high in blitz (2251), and later, in bullet (2231). Encouraged, I figured I would play well in 10 second. 

Anyways, now that I've talked about how the event happened, let's delve into the action!

RAR event #1

The tournament for this event was the best of all the tournaments, with just half an hour I managed to get 10 players in the tournament. The highest rated, was boy20116, of course, rated 2401 going into this event. Next was me, with the expert RookSacrifice (2004), and near expert (in bullet) ace_mar (1997) close behind. The tournament was expected to be amazing, and sure enough it was.

RARond 1

I'll start with my game. Unlike other events, the games here were so fast you could never see anyone else's games. I played my friend, DKBRAO, but he couldn't handle the speed. 

They say not to analyze blitz games, so I've decided to analyze 10 second chess! Way better!

And here was the upset of the round, @Atomic_Rift (1397) vs. RookSacrifice

What a great game! I must mention that these games were very intense to play, and the tension was high, no one could chat during the rounds, and everyone had to keep a good grip on their mouse (There was a few incidents of mouses breaking, and then eating everyone's cheese, but that didn't happen to me since I was on my iPad). 

RARond 2 was coming. Me, boy20116, ace_mar, Schachmasteo, and Atomic_Rift all had won, but what would happen in the next 15 seconds?

RARond 2

I played the evil Schachmasteo, a great player, although will no skill involved, no one could know who would win:

A very good game, which I am proud of. Qb6-g1 was genius!

The other important game, between boy20116 and ace_mar was surprising since boy 20116 premoved almost all his move! He used 3.5 seconds to play 27 moves, probably some sort of record. Clearly, he would be my toughest competitor.

RARond 3

The key game of the tournament took place, Joseph Truelson vs. boy20116! This game decided the tournament, so there is no usage looking at more games from this event after this one.

What a game! With this one, I managed to basically win the tournament. I went on to win all 5 games, with the suprising Atomic_Rift finishing 2nd. Congratulations Atomic_Rift! 

Here is his amazing swindle against an unsuspecting boy20116, a critical last round game that decided second place:

Other games

As a result, Atomic-Rift got 2nd, and boy20116 got 3rd. Good job guys!
DKBRAO shows in his last round game that it doesn't matter if you give up everything, just not your time!

Our last interesting game from this tournament features boy20116 deciding that nothing matters, not king safety, or material, only time!

Crosstable for the event: https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/rars-first-online-tournament-882348 

RAR event #2

Everyone wanted to play right away in another event, because these tournmanets were really fun. After refunding boy20116 his rating (Rating is the meaning of life to him), our second tournament was underway. The field was the same as the first event, except Atomic_Rift, RookSacrifice, and Yoyopuppy. Vigorous Viggy decided to join us, much to our delight, however, he was not on the internet when the games started, and was thus withdraw.

I begged RookSacrifce to play, but he thought it wasn't a good idea. "10 second might be bad for my chess".

Schachmasteo tried to convince him, asking "Is ten second really chess?"

However, RookSacrifice thought it was more chess than a video game (which was what I called it), and preferred to spectate.

Even though I offered to refund his rating if he lost, it didn't work. Ace_mar demanded that I mention him in my report or he wouldn't play, so there, I did. He wanted to be the admin of Classic RAR, but that will never happen. 

There were 7 players therefore playing, and with chess.com running properly, the games began.

The first round went as expected: Me, boy20116, ace_mar, and @chessboy1516 (with a full point bye) had scores of 1/1. 
In the next round, I won against chessboy1516, while the fight of who would get the honor to play me in 20 seconds occured:

Thus boy20116 got the remarkable chance to play me. I would not refund his rating in the event this time, so he was extra determined to beat me:

So I went on to the last round with momentum. I was clear first, but ace-mar, with two points, still had a chance. If he upsetted me, he might have won due to good tiebreaks. I spammed him with draw offers, knowing it would win, but he didn't accept any of them.

Crosstable: https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/rars-second-event-882365 

RAR's third event

The third and final event of the day was scheduled to take place 5 minutes after the last tournament. Unfortuantely, I had set it for 10 minutes! After the grieving, I managed to get everyone back in shape, some of them agreeing to wait 15 minutes for the next event. But not enough, there was a record low turnout of 7 players. boy20116 led the event, with me, @Schachmasteo, @MeforChessPresident (He was talking about me, not him), @yoyopuppy, and chessboy1516 rounding out the field.

The next round, the unthinkable happened. I lost, causing the whole world to weep.

I won my last game, thus I got 2nd place. boy 20116 won, and Schachmasteo finished 3rd.

Crosstable for this evil event: https://www.chess.com/tournament/live/rars-third-event-882374 
This concludes the 10 second tournament series of August 2nd, 2017. It was a very instructional tournament, and I hope to use the lessons I learned here in the Seattle Chess Classic, a big money event held here in a couple weeks. In the meantime, I hope to play more of these tournaments, and improve my skills when in time pressure, real time pressure.