My Daily Chess Adventure

Hi, everyone! I know it has been a while since my last post, but I wanted to share with everyone my experience in the first round of the Daily Chess Championship. For some background, the Daily Chess Championship is a tournament here on Chess.com with over 16,000 people playing 1 move per day games.

I participated in the Daily Chess Championship a few years ago and had to withdraw due to the stress of having so many games going on at the same time. However, this year I decided to take a chance and play in the Daily Chess Championship and try my best to advance to play stronger players in Round 2.

Without further ado, here is my first game to end, which I was quite satisfied with.

Due to the speed of my opponent and my play, the game ended within 6 hours of the tournament starting, which helped me to focus on other more important games. After a day or two of play, it was clear who would not be contending for a spot in Round 2 as many players (like me years ago) withdrew early on. One of the players who was contending to advance was @LutherIce, who eventually got 3rd place. Here was my favorite game of the tournament against him.

My main contender for the Round 2 spot was @Vladik666, who was rated 1932 compared to my mere 1400 (although I am 1950 blitz). This player seemed to be beating everyone in the group, including me after a few days of play. After some inspection of this player's profile, I noticed that his account was new and his play was suspiciously accurate, having only played daily chess, which is fairly easy to cheat in. I decided to report their account for cheating. After not much time, I received this message from Chess.com.

I was not only happy that I was now the favorite to win my group, but also happy that this shows that site is being well protected from cheaters after this instantaneous response. Now, my biggest competitor was @miguechg, who eventually finished second in the group. Here is my lucky comeback victory against him.

After that win, I was on 20/20, which surprised even me. My remaining two games were both against @adityavaibhav078. The first game against him ended fairly quickly, but the second game transitioned into an endgame, which took much longer to finish.

After some hard work and a lot of luck, I won the group with 22/22 to advance to Round 2. Keep an eye out for a Round 2 blog! Here are the final standings of my group: