2025 daily championship rd 2, pt 1
https://www.chess.com/tournament/2025-chess-com-daily-chess-championship-1
Round 2 has been crazy so I should probably start making a blog.
So far, it looks like SirHarold is the favorite to win. Looks like SirHarold 1-1 HoppyBrewsky.
I'm pretty proud of my games so far. That's an understatement, this is the best year so far, pretty surprising since I'm doing this at like 1:46 am. This has led to a timeout by me.
What's crazy about the timeout is that I woke up and had 5 minutes left on both games against CheDA13. For both I quickly rushed to lichess opening database and made a move on one game, and a move on the other. My phone said I had one minute left, but the move wasn't sending. I tried again, it failed again. Then I reloaded and I lost on time. I can only assume I was just a few seconds too late. Interestingly, from experience chess.com used to allow you to make a move up to like one minute after the deadline. Either this changed or I was actually one minute late.
It's probably the latter: the PGN shows I took 3 minutes to play in the first game. smh... I should've done math and realized at this pace I would need to play immediately.
Timeout wins vs chrispim1
chrispim1 is the lowest rated player, so I played faster here.
- move flexibility: Reordering moves so that the move you are most sure you have to do/has no drawbacks goes first
- kingside pawn advance: a solid wall, with obvious gaps that I try to use
- a4: I want the c4 square. Black played b4 to prevent me from moving there, so a4 unblocked it, except it doesn't since black could've ignored it. Similarly with h4, responding to it wins for me, quite unintuitive since black can "win" the pawn (at very great cost, the wall is exploded open)
- I've now infiltrated with Bh5+ and more moves to come. Meanwhile black's kingside bishop and rook are bad. Ndc4 first vs Nf5+ is tactically more optimal, and the game finishes tactically from there.
Looks like in other games deschaakspeler loses a lot due to the propensity for useless flank pawn moves. Controlling a square/squares by a pawn is not good when:
- the piece has many other options and is not very limited by not being able to go to that square
- the piece is not especially more good at that square (i.e. a pin that can easily be dealt with)
- there are more active developing moves (esp. the position is more open, less closed and positional)
- it introduces weaknesses
Useful flank (a,b,g,h) pawn moves:
- ideally long-term restriction of multiple pieces, or restricts a single piece (usually a knight) enough that multiple maneuvering moves are needed for the piece to escape, such that you gain the time back
- advancing to create an attack or pawn storm or squeeze
- the occasional small push like a fianchetto for the bishop or a leave against back rank mate, if the piece is already on the square, then you gain your move back
Oop, deschaakspeler just resigned the other game:
