Round 2

So I made it through round 1 of the chess.com daily champs quite easily in the end, despite hanging mate in one. Other than that, I had 21 wins and second place only managed 19 points. I've never made it past round 2 but previously have always been 2nd seed; this year the competition is much larger meaning more groups and despite my rating having slipped a bit I'm top seed in the 387th group, with the other players being significantly lower rated.

Unfortunately there is one guy on 1600 knocking out 90-99% accuracy games, sigh. Including beating me twice (with 96% and 98%). However he has timed out 4 games so far so is unlikely to qualify himself. However however this means that the two people he timed out against (twice each) have a 2 point head start against me and I have to beat them both 2-0 just to draw level with them in the group. I've achieved this with one of them so far, and the second one is a challenging endgame but I think I should manage to squeeze out the win. I've still got to outperform against the rest of the group, which will be tight. Everyone has won a round already, so they aren't completely rubbish even though some ratings are low.

At time of writing I'm on 15 with 5 games left. I think 18 points should be enough to go through and hopefully I'm on course for that. There are another couple of players who are quite slow. If they also get time-out wins against Mr 90% then they might mount a late challenge...

The games haven't been very interesting, which is a shame. I really don't know if I'll bother with it again.