2023 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship - Round 1

  Hello everyone! I want to share with you my experience in the first round of the CDCC23. No less than 35 000 players participated this year, among them, several titled players and daily chess experts, but also thousands of people that never played in this format before and time-outed all of their games without making a move. This is especially unfair for the serious players who would have really loved to play. The champion of the 2020 and 2021 editions, IM@IMUffeVinther-Schou, could not enter now, as the organizers set a limit of 35k players in order to prevent server collapse. Well, it  is disappointing, but I am sure the organizers will find a better way to solve this problem and in 2024 we will have a much enjoyable tournament.

  As for myself, it was my second participation, after the disaster I suffered last year from my old account(@Ouol). Back then, I started as top seed in my group with a rating of 1769, 200+ more than 2nd seed, but eventually ended up on 4th place, with 15.5/22.I learned a lot from it and this year I set up the goal of advancing to round 2. I also decided to create this blog post so that I can understand my mistakes better and I also hope to get some tips from stronger players if they ever read it.        

     This year I somehow managed to get a rating of 1723, which conferred me 301 points advantage against 2nd seed and over 400 against 3rd seed in terms of daily rating. The first thing I did after getting my group was to check the rapid/blitz rating of all the players, because they could have been underrated 2000s with few games in this format. I noticed that the 2nd seed was 1650+ in rapid, so he would be my main competitor. The rest of 10 players had relatively low rating in all formats.

Since the time control is very tough for many people, 1 day per move, I was expecting 4-5 players, maybe 6, to time-out all of their games without moving. But 8 was the real number, which means only me, 2nd seed, 3rd seed and 5th seed had to battle for first place. 

                             #1

The first game to finish was one of the worst games I played in 2023.I made blunder after blunder, but my opponent did not find the right way to punish them and eventually I was able to break trough his castling, forcing a repetition. Although Stockfish did not like at all my pawn sacrifice on the queenside, it created enough counter play just not to lose on the spot.

I still can not forgive myself for this game, but a draw is a draw. At that moment, I knew I needed to win all of my games against the 3rd and 5th seeds and draw the black game against the 2nd seed. Quite easy, let's see how it goes.

                            #2 and #3

A few days later I had a negative surprise: the 5th seed time-out both games against after just 18 moves. In one of them I was already up a bishop, but in the other the material was equal. I even felt that I am bit worse(Stockfish agreed), but I should have won anyway.

 As I said, I was not very happy with these free wins, neither with my play. I hope I learned something from them.

                                                        #4 and #5

The 3rd seeded decided that he has no chances to qualify and, as he was losing in all of his 4 games against me and 2nd seed, resigned them all. I did 0 mistakes, 0 missed wins and only 1 blunder when I was already winning (and he blundered back) in these two games together and I had an average accuracy of 87%.

                                                                #6

So, both me and 2nd seed were on 20.5/21, with the last game to decide the winner of the group: if someone wins - he advances alone; if draw - we both advance, as there are no tie-breaks in this tournament. Unfortunately for me, I did not spend much time to think and, at some point, I chose the wrong recapture, allowing my opponent to win a pawn. We traded into a rook endgame with a pawn dawn. I thought that it should be a draw with correct defense, but after the game the engine said white was completely winning.

So that was it! I tied for first, which means I qualified for next round!

I am not very satisfied my my play in these 6 games, but I am sure that i will but a better fight against opponents much stronger than me in Round 2. So, although I will not qualify I will probably write another blog about my experience.

P.S. Did you participate? How many time-outs did you face?