Advancing to the Elite League on Chess.com! | GAMES of the WEEK! 🤩👍

#playersleague #elite #vonhennig #englund #queensac #duboisreti #kiddie 

On Monday morning (23^rd June 2025), I woke up to the announcement on my phone that I had finally levelled up in the Chess.com Players League from the Crystal to Elite league! In fact, I managed to rank #1 in my division with a total of 402 trophies!  🥳🎉

This was no small effort for me, having to play 98 games (43 won, 8 drawn, 47 lost) last week. Now, that might be normal for the true chess elite, but I normally only play one or two games a day! I thought that with almost a hundred games that I’ll do a bit of a retrospective and reflect on some insights from the week. Things did get a bit rough towards the end as I was feeling very tired on Sunday night, and I went through a run of games making silly blunders! 🥱

Note: although each division of the Chess.com Players League starts and ends nominally at 12 noon, California time (GMT -7) is seventeen hours behind Sydney Australia (GMT +10). For me, each division ends on Monday at 5 AM in the morning! In practice, I need to make sure that I have a high enough score before I go to bed on Sunday night to minimise the risk that an enthusiastic player or two in other time zones won’t bump me off the advancement ranks while I’m asleep!

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Players League? 🤔

If you’re not already aware of the Players League, this is a feature of Chess.com that you’re most likely already enrolled in! Each week, you’re placed into a division with 49 other players within your League. Everybody starts initially in the Wood League. The rated games that you play (and not lose!) on the platform are awarded points (“trophies”) and at the end of the week, the top ranked players in terms of points are promoted to the next League tier!

I’d been stuck in the Crystal League without advancement for almost two years as I simply didn’t play enough games to rank in the top 3.

Insight 1: I had the most success with the von Hennig Gambit!

With almost 100 games over a week of blitz 5+5 at beginner-intermediate territory, I realised that I had some interesting lived experience on what opening attacks might be especially fruitful from the Romantic perspective, especially in achieving a quick win! So, I decided to first have a look at the games where I won in 20 moves or fewer. The results were a little surprising!

I had a total of 23 games where I had won by turn 20:

Openings:

During the last week, I had poor performance in the Vienna Game and Gambit so in “normal” times, I think that I would have been able to do better. However, the standout seems to be the von Hennig Gambit against the Caro-Kann Defense (1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Bc4!?). Not only is the Caro-Kann a commonly played response by Black against (1. e4), it seemed that at this level, most seemed to do poorly against the von Hennig!

In three of the six von Hennig Gambit games, Black played the natural looking (6… Bg4) which is a blunder!

In fact, I got the classic 8-move checkmate described in the chapter on the von Hennig Gambit in my book, “Become a Chess Assassin” both times I attempted it; both times against players that I saw were rated in the low- to mid-900s ELO!

Against higher rated players, I usually play the bishop sacrifice, such as the following game, which was the final game before I went to bed last night! In this game, Black calculated and didn’t like the look of the damage from capturing the sacrificial bishop (Kxf7), and so attempted to run the king. However, this is worse!

Insight 2: Englund Queen Sac takes down my strongest opponent

Earlier in the month, I described the uncompromising Englund Complex Queen Sacrifice line as the Rorschach of Romantic chess openings.

Interestingly, the second game in that video and article involved me beating a much stronger opponent through sheer bloody will! Although White is nominally winning with an evaluation of around +3 at the queen sacrifice, the resulting position is difficult to play for White, and I managed to grind them down to win on time! To reach the Elite League, I defeated my strongest opponent in the past week once again with the Queen Sac line! And they were rather stronger than me: with a peak ELO in blitz in the mid-1300s (vs. 1100) and in rapid in the mid-1600s (vs. 1400).

My opponent managed to keep the advantage, even forcing a trade of pieces. However, it’s difficult to navigate when Black has more minor pieces, supported by undamaged pawns! The evaluation remained favourable for White up to turn 33. With only 19 seconds left on the clock (to my 88 seconds), they played a logical looking infiltration with their rook (33. Rc6?), but this is a mistake that returned the evaluation to [0.00]! White missed that I had a tempo winning fork of their rook and queen with (33… Ng3!) and after the knight-rook exchange, we were back at material and evaluation equality.

Under time pressure on turn 42, White made an endgame blunder (42. Rg3??), and hung their queen! With (42… Rxd8), White was discombobulated, and their final 11 seconds ran out. Good game, GG!

Insight 3: The most beautiful game; crushing the Scotch Gambit!

After tilting earlier on Sunday night, I had a good run around midnight. I’d earned sufficient points to be first on the rankings, so the pressure was off. Before going to bed, I wanted to play to create a buffer, and this led to some fun and stress-free games that were satisfying and beautiful!

This is probably my favourite winning combination from the week. I had the black pieces and my opponent with White played the aggressive and tricky Scotch Gambit (1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Bc4). The Scotch Gambit is one of the most successful openings with White winning 54% to 42% from the position (in the massive Lichess database of community games)! However, I have previously explored a good way to respond. First, we play the Dubois Réti Defense with (4… Nf6), and if White plays the Advance Variation (5. e5) we counterstrike with the lovely (5… d5!).

White responded with the best move (6. Bb5) but the venom of the Scotch Gambit has already fizzled. So, I decided to immediately launch an attack of my own with the somewhat unsound (6… Ng4!?). White recaptured the pawn, very consistent with their attack (7. Nxd4?), but this was a mistake. In essence, the return of the pawn is Black’s gambit to accelerate development with (7… Bc5). The target? White’s weak f2-pawn!

White, having psychologically lost the initiative, castled short and defended the f2-pawn, but this was again inaccurate. The Scotch Gambit is two-edged and complicated; in this specific arrangement, the correct move was to double-down on the attack THIS turn.

I castled too and White offered to trade knights (9. Nxc6??); where it was the most accurate move last turn, it was now a blunder! I refrained from recapturing the knight with (9… Qh4!) threatening checkmate on h2, and with three attackers on f2!

To immediately defang the mating attack, the engine recommends that White should trade their queen for my g4-knight, but that is inhuman. White played the obvious (10. h3) and we began a beautiful dance of death around White’s king!

• 10… Nxf2, threatened White’s queen and a discovered check!
  • White moved their queen out of the way (11. Qf3??) and a mating net was woven!
• 11… Nxh3+, double check!
  • White correctly played (12. Kh2)
  • If White played (12. Kh1), then (12… Nf2+) double check, (13. Kg1) forced move, (13… Qh1#) checkmate!
• 12… Ng1+, a discovered check and White’s only legal move is to trade their queen for the knight or c3-bishop.

White, emotionally defeated, resigned; good game, GG!

Insight 4: Most unexpected win; never give up, never surrender!

In this game, my opponent with the White pieces played the Wayward Queen Attack, and I responded with my favourite, the Romantic and spicy Kiddie Countergambit (1. e4 e5 2. Qh5 2. Nf6!?).

White played a tricky aggressive move with (8. Bh6!?) threatening checkmate and on turn 8, I blundered by playing (8… Nh5??) without looking carefully; the h5 square was defended by White’s light square bishop on d1, and so (9. Bxh5) and I lost my knight for no compensation with White threatening checkmate! 😭

Thinking that I didn’t have any better options, I traded a rook for White’s dark square bishop with (9… g6?! 10. Bxf8 Bxf8) and felt some temporary respite that there was no immediate checkmate threat. Nonetheless, I was down SIX points of material, with an evaluation favouring White at +4!

I thought about resigning, but I decided to play on. White played well, consolidating their position. Notice after (19. d4), they had created a massive pawn pyramid on dark squares, negating the loss of their dark square bishop!

However, I noticed a couple of turns later that White was suffering from a cognitive bias: loss aversion. As White had a clear material advantage, it was in their interest to trade pieces. However, after I offered a bishop trade so that I could develop (20… Bd7), White opted to pull their bishop back rather than exchange.

From the perspective of psychological tactics, this is noteworthy! It means that if an exchange or trade isn’t “forced”, the opponent is more likely to retreat or hold than capture. This potentially allows pieces to move into positions, at least temporarily, that they shouldn’t have access to. It also means that the opponent might blunder by moving a piece, when they could safely simplify, even if it isn’t the most optimal move!

The test came with (26… Qa5+). I’d sacrificed a bishop a couple of turns earlier to punch a hole through White’s pawn wall for a chance for an attack. The simplest response would probably have been (27. Qd2), blocking check and offering a queen trade. However, (27. Kf2). Is White trying to run their king?

Then once more with (28… Qc5+) and White played (29. Kg2??). Yes, they were running their king to the board flank and my intuition was this was probably a massive tactical mistake! One more prod with (29… Ne3+!) and White voluntarily walked their king in front of their fence of pawns (30. Kh3??), and to his doom as (30… Qc8+!) and the king was trapped on the wrong side and separated from his army.

And so, I won, unexpectedly, and barely deserved! Two quotes by the great Savielly Tartakower come to mind:

The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.

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No game was ever won by resigning.

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Learn how to play the best chess opening attacks in the Romantic style with my new book, “Become a Chess Assassin!”.