Blogs
My Round 2 of the 2024 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship

My Round 2 of the 2024 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship

Avatar of douglas_stewart
douglas_stewart
Show your flair!
| 0

The Chess.com Daily Chess Championship is a large event with over 65,000 players. It's played in a double round robin of 12 players, so each player has to play 22 games. Only one player advances each round. I'd already made it through round 1 against very underrated competition winning the section with a 21-1 score.

This tournament is very difficult - 22 games, 24 hours per move, no vacation. Even though the round can finish in as little as month (with cooperation from fast moving opponents), over the course of a month life and work often interfere. I had an over the board weekend chess tournament during this round. You have to plan to check your games and move at least every morning and evening to keep up. What does help is a number of players time out, which gives you fewer games to focus on. Even in round 2 a surprising number of players never moved or timed out.

Based on Chess.com Daily ratings, I was also the prohibitive favorite in round 2. I was 2097 going in, and my closest opponent was only 1693, an over 400 point difference. With a little deeper dive against my opponents though, my main competitors were not the closest rated. I had two opponents with similar FIDE ratings (* note my FIDE rating is not published because it's just through 3 games, but it's probably pretty accurate) who also had rapid and blitz ratings hundreds of points higher than me. The following table indicates my opponents various types of ratings, with anything 1500+ shaded green.

Section Players and Their Various Ratings

I quickly figured out that my real competition for first place was Gulishyan2021 and juicer1210, who were clearly the strongest online fast play chess players. When you see divergent Daily and Rapid/Blitz ratings there can be several explanations. The easiest is they don't care much about Daily and maybe don't even use the analysis board. They may just make a move after glancing at the board for a few seconds. Of course, just because they might play like that normally, doesn't mean they'd play that way for this event. I've often found when I've played such players in meaningful events such as this, their performance is significantly better than their Daily rating.

I also noted the presence of Maine United States Chess Federation player @sirminkdeadly (Michael Dudley), a friendly face who I knew from ICCF play - certainly a legitimate ~1500 player who could give me trouble.

Lucky Escape

Michael Dudley was actually one of the players who gave me a lot of trouble. In my game with White against him I misplayed my kingside attack.

Games Against the Best Players

Based ion their ratings, I expected my games against @Gulishyan2021 and @juicer1210 to be my most difficult, and they didn't disappoint.

In my game as White against @Gulishyan2021 I found myself in a very tricky endgame and I had a serious fear of losing. While I consider myself a good endgame player it never comes intuitively for me, it's always calculation. This game took a lot of calculation to keep from going a pawn down in the rook and pawn endgame that eventually came along.

In my game as Black against @Gulishyan2021 I fared a lot better. A confession though - I gave him too much credit for his high blitz and rapid ratings and constantly thought I was the player struggling to survive. It made me not take a realistic look at my winning middlegame and to not be thinking about my winning opportunities at the end of the game. A real missed opportunity.
Now I needed to score at least 50% against @juicer1210. With that and my split against @Gulishyan2021 all 3 of us would tie and advance to the next round. In our first game to finish I really had all the chances - just didn't take advantage of them. Also a problem of giving my opponent too much respect.
My last game against @juicer1210 was for all the marbles. Win or draw and I advance. With a win only I advance as I eliminate both @juicer1210 and @Gulishyan2021.
With a win I clinched first place in round 2 for myself, finishing half a point ahead of the next closest player. It was a round with more missed opportunities than lucky escapes. The analysis board is your friend. My primary thought from looking at my games is I need to use the analysis board more for finding wins. I used it well for defending, but not so well for offense.
Looking at the players from all sections advancing from round 2 it looks like it'll be very hard to advance past round 3 - but we'll see! I'm hoping round 3 starts soon and finishes before I am playing over the board in the World Open in Philadelphia, PA in early July. It's hard to juggle a tough chess tournament and no vacation 24 hour Daily chess. I've been trying to finish my other Daily chess games so I can focus when round 3 starts.