The Timeouts and Turnouts

Hey there!

The 2024 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship started on the 2nd of Jan, 2024 (in Japan time) and there were more than 60,000 people who had signed up and I was one of them.

Let’s jump right into it. The wins, the losses and everything in between.

My Opponents

Earlier I had said that more than 60,000 people were playing, 62765 to be exact. There were 5277 groups with each one having 12 people. There were a total of 696389 games.

In my group, #2437, the players were: 

1. @OZOBMOZ (1325) - He was probably one of my only threats. Most of the other people were in the 3 digits.

2. @sleepyporcyy (1062) - A very stupid person who'd probably lose the first round (spoilers)

3. @PMBerko_chess_24 (467) - I was pretty confident with my chances against them.

4. @Henroto (724) - Same thoughts as number 3.

5. @Ayushjoshi2211 (400), 6. @im_Maza (400), 7. @Chetan_Chaudhary (934) - Same thoughts as number 3.

8. @erdemtalha (1200) - I thought they might be an opponent who could defeat me at some point but I still felt like I could handle them.

9. @k1ngkongaj (1600) - Had been offline for a week so I hoped they'd timeout.

10. @danisplayng (800), 11. @naku10 (400), 12. @Butchakel (387) - Same thoughts as number 3.

As you can see, most of my opponents were under the rating of 1000, which was nice. I was pretty sure I could defeat all of them.

The Timeouts

I've been on chess.com since 2017. And in my time on this site, I know how often people just timeout their daily games, especially in the official chess.com tournaments (I've done it a lot before). Out of the 242 games in my group, more than 120 of them were timed out.

This definitely wasn't just my group either. Almost every group had a similar thing happen to it. In total, in the entire first round, there were 581669 timeouts (around 85% of games).

A screenshot which shows you how bad the time-out rates were in every group (group 13).

It's the sad truth...

The Games

The games I did get to play were pretty interesting though. One of them took a week to complete, another one took two weeks and the other two took even more. I'm a very slow Daily player, unlike my opponents who were blitzing out their moves...

OZOBMOZ

Game 1

@OZOBMOZ started our first game with d4, my least favorite first move to face as White. I responded with an Englund Gambit. That ended up being a really bad choice because despite me playing the Englund and my main response to 1. d4 as Black for more than a year...I forgot how to play it and immediately blundered and lost.

Game 2

The game started with a fried liver accepted and I was winning. Slowly though, the position became slightly more equal and would be a draw if OZOBMOZ didn't blunder. As you know, this was a problem for me. I had to win this game...

The points table before this game. By this time, I had already defeated my other opponents. Win = qualify, anything else = no qualification.

A Short Poem

I was very sad after my loss so I wrote a poem. How are the two connected? I don't know.

- I stood there in shame,

I felt very lame,

I lost my chances of qualifying,

I was very sad and felt like crying,

I missed it by half a point,

I felt pain in all my joints,

"I had played so well!" I thought,

As my surroundings started facing drought,

My accuracy was ninety,

Yet my heart felt empty,

"I'll try better next time," I said,

as I sadly lay down and went back to bed. -

PMBerko_chess_24 

Game 1

I started this game with a trusty Bishop's Opening. I tried to play the Scholar's mate because why not, but my opponent stopped it. My opponent hung a pawn and a bishop and hence lost.

-

---

Game 2

My opponent started this game with a Bishop's opening and blundered their Knight on move 4. From that point, I was winning and my position just got better and better. Eventually, I won.

Conclusion

That's the end of my Chess.com Daily Championship story. I wasn't able to qualify and missed it by a point at the end of the day. Good job and good luck to @OZOBMOZ.

I was definitely not proud. In my eyes, I was the clear favorite to win as I was rated above my competition. I can't change what happened in the past so I'll just try better next time.

A special thanks to @HornetCruise because I just changed his blog title about the same topic a little bit (with permission of course).

This blog is not great but it's a blog. I wrote this blog just for fun and because I didn't have any other blog ideas. I might even delete this if I don't feel good about it.

Thanks for reading and have a good day.