Bongcloud or Botez Arena Speedrun
Hello everyone! Recently I got it into my head that I would try a blitz speedrun for blogging content. Why I decided to torment myself for others' entertainment is beyond my human comprehension. But anyway, that's beside the point. I had been wanting to try a blitz speedrun for a while now and that's when I came up with the unique idea of combining the trollish chess opening of the Bongcloud and the Botez Gambit. For those of you who don't know, the Botez Gambit is a notorious queen sacrifice coined and patronized by WFM Alexandra Botez. This eponymous piece sac is even the inspiration for one of Hikaru Nakamura's own speedruns, linked below.
Obviously, I'd be following Chess.com's Terms of Service, which overtly state that players should refrain from unauthorized speedruns and other forms of rating manipulation. Therefore, instead I'd be playing in one of Chess.com's hourly arenas, trying to win as many games as possible. Now of course, in arenas it's possible to get paired with any other participating player, regardless of the rating gap. Considering that I'm not Hikaru, saccing my queen against 2000+ players seemed like a bad idea. (It didn't even work for the sub-1500 players 
, subtle foreshadowing). Thus, I devised a format for this speedrun, combining the ideas of both the Bongcloud and the Botez Gambit Hikaru speedruns, with my special twist on it.
I would be playing in one of Chess.com's 3/0 arenas. I chose this time control since it was slow enough to allow adequate calculation time, and it was fast enough to be an asset to me as I confuse my opponent with dubious lines and attempt to swindle them in the ensuing time scramble. Additionally, I would only be sacrificing my queen against players rated U1600. For anyone above 1600 I'd be playing a Bongcloud as soon as my king could legally move. I originally commited myself to saccing my queen within the first fifteen moves of the game at least, but some of the following queens feature Botez Gambits later on. Cut me some slack; some of these U1600s were really whooping my queenless butt. My ambitious goal would be to win at least five games using either the Botez or the Bongcloud, losing as little rating as possible. Just for reference, I started this speedrun with 1817 blitz rating. Let's see how much I can alleviate te inevitable rating losses. Without further ado, I present to you the unique, Bongcloud or Botez Speedrun.
Game 1: Queenless Fireworks in the Scandinavian
Let's go! Starting off the first game of the speedrun with a nice dub. I really couldn't have asked for a better start. Not going to lie, I didn't really have high expectations for myself regarding this speedrun. I thought that I would lose dozens of rating points to the sub-1500s during the Botez Gambit games. Now I had hope. The queen sacrifices were going to be the more challenging side of the bargain, and now I had a fresh win under my belt.
Insights:
- This goes to show that while queens are the most powerful piece in the game of chess, they're not immortal. Several other factors determine the result of a game, like space, piece activity, etc., as demonstrated in the first game of my speedrun. This is why you should never play solely on current material imbalances. A couple of minor pieces can overpower a queen in the right circumstances. Also, never resign! You never know what could happen.
Game 2: King Goes For a Jog
Not the most interesting game, although I'm still pleased with a draw. To be honest, I’m surprised that I was even capable of securing a draw using the Bongcloud against a player of this caliber. Nothing particularly educational can really be gained from this game, so we’re moving on to the next, with my current record being 1.5/2!
I proceeded to lose my next four games. 
My rating dropped from 1815 to 1778, as I was clobbered by 1600s. I’m not going to waste my time annotating games where I never had an advantage, so instead I’ll just demonstrate what kind of position you get from sacking your queen versus a 1500.
So uhh… yeah, not pretty in the slightest, and certainly not the ideal position 😅. Now sitting at a -40 rating point deficit, I’d need to set up my game and unleash my true inner Hikaru, in order to grind out this speedrun. Four wins to go!
Round 3: Opponent Gives Me a Gift
Funny story, I played this game on day 2 of the speedrun and accidentally started a game in the 3/0 open pool, rather than the arena, which I didn't notice until after the game finished. I don't think it affected the speedrun negatively at all, and actually gave me objectively better competition than the unpredictable arena pairings. This was my second win.
Insights
- Although there weren't many opportunities for my opponent to exploit my opening choice, at the end of the day, the Bongcloud is still unsound and my opponent should have at least attempted to refute it. It seems that when someone overexerts themselves to refute the Bongcloud, their position collapses. But then again, they can't simply play normal chess and let me get a raging attack using my kingside pawns.
- Up to this point, the Bongcloud has yet to be refuted and hasn't harmed my positions besides the obvious loss of castling and a single tempo.
Round 4: My Opponent Shows Complete Disregard For His Pieces
Apparently it's possible for players other than Hikaru to beat 2000-rated players with the worst opening in chess?! I'm now on cruise-control, relaxing with back-to-back wins, both versus players above 1700. I'm beginning to believe that my blitz rating can be salvaged after all. Unfortunately I was wrong and the wins would only last for a brief moment.
Round 5: Saved by the Clock
Phew! That was way too close for my liking. Luckily I'm a bullet player at heart and was able to blitz my way to my third consecutive win (see what I did there?). Now came the misfortunes.
Round 6: 1800 Literally Doesn't Care... Twice
What, you expected me to annotate my string of losses? No way. Bongcloud games in general have very little instructional value so losses with the Bongcloud are even more useless. But I kid you not, I played the same gentleman, featured in the above screenshots, in back-to-back arena games. Don't ask me how this is even possible considering the usually impeccable pairing algorithm that the arenas use. Somehow I was paired against this guy twice, and unsurprisngly, lost both times. It only went downhill from there as you can see from the following photo.
Sighhhhhh…from 1815-1744; very, very gross rating drop. All I had to was be clutch for once in my life and win the fifth required game. Instead I lost five consecutive games and was tilting like crazy. Was I able to mitigate my rating losses with the Round 6 game? Or would I descend on a rollercoaster below 1700 blitz?
Round 6: I Cheat the Speedrun
Okay, yes I may have cheated the system a tiny bit, but whatever. I don't ever recall setting a rule for myself stating that I couldn't take my opponent's Botez Gambits. [EDIT: You did say the sack had to be in the first fifteen moves of the game though, not the first thirty, you dolt.] Anyway, that was it! I became elated with triumph as I realized I had beaten the Bongcloud or Botez speedrun, with only minor rating damages of -71! Maybe there was still hope for my chess! Afterall I had beaten a 2000 using a debilitating opening move. (We can leave out the part where I lost to several players rated below 1500).
Conclusion
Well that's it for this blog! While the idea of this was fun, I didn't actually enjoy losing a chunk of my blitz rating. If you enjoyed my torment, make sure to leave a comment and let me know how this was. I decided to try something knew instead of solely writing about my OTB chess so if you want more content like this, feel free to drop a suggestion in the comments. Speaking of OTB, I recently played an U1700 tournament and had relatively positive results, which I'll recap by the end of the month.
Thanks a lot for reading! I'm trying hard to get Top Blogger by the end of the summer and I have several blogs in progress as I write this. I plan to drop my "Five Most Hated & Five Most Loved Openings" blog next weekend.
Until next time, -Nimzo
