Team Iceland beats Srbija Tim in LCWL Division 1

The fourth season of the LCWL (Live Chess World League) got under way last week and the first games in the 1st division were played over the weekend. LCWL is now in it's 4th season and keeps growing every season. The league has four divisions with National Team clubs from Chess.com. Each matchup consists of Team matches in live chess where members of the club duke it out.

This season there are 3 matches in each matchup, one bullet match, one blitz match and one rapid chess960 match.

Team Iceland along with Srbija Tim was in the top 4 all of last season so this matchup was already a very intersting one, with only Team Ukraine and Team Russia placing higher last season.

Match #1 - Bullet Chess 1 minute + 1 second increment

Iceland started this match with a bang as Team Iceland raced off to a 6-0 lead early on with the bottom board providing most of the ammunition for that rocket start. 38 boards were contested in the bullet portion so 6-0 was already a sizeable start!

Serbia got on the board after that and soon they got some points back, one of them courtesy of their top board, the massively strong Miodrag Perunovic, sporting a nice 2800+ blitz rating and 2600+ bullet rating. Miodrag employed his pet 2.Qh5 line which he has made very serious videos about!

Team Iceland also had some offbeat opening lines up their sleeve and "Don Everything" himself, Robert Lagerman provided the magic with the rare Elephant gambit. Robert playing under the username MRBigtimer rolled out a big time attack on the kingside in what followed and secured another Team Iceland point.

Iceland never relinquished their lead and in the end the bullet portion ended 46-30 in favour of Team Iceland.

Match #2 - Blitz Chess 5 minute + 2 second increment

Iceland started very well as well in the blitz portion and a huge 19-7 lead was on the board early on. The blitz portion had a much bigger turnout as 45 board were contested in it.

Iceland has the capability of fielding tons of more strong players on the top boards with several titled players missing in this match. However, due to the hard work of team manager Tomas Veigar aka Lakituba the middle and bottom boards were very well manned with some very strong players helping Team Iceland to a whitewash in the blitz portion.

Take a look at this lower board game where BorgarfjordurEystri takes advantage of an early opening mistake and then delivers a thing of beauty to end the game!

It is in fact safe to say that the middle boards secured the match for Iceland. Have a look at this 15.5 out of 16!

The blitz was never competitive and ended in a resounding 61.5-28.5 win for Team Iceland

Match #3 - Rapid Chess 960 10 minute + 2 second increment

The Rapid Chess960 turned out to be the most exciting match of them all. Srbija Tim for the first time grabbed the lead 0-1 when FM Zibbit, Team Icelands streamer, attempted to exit the match just when it was about to start....resuting in an accidental resignation on board one! A costly mistake that made Zibbit very nervous because with only a 31 board match and a more even distribution of players, this mistake could have been decisive.

Determined to make up for that mistake, Zibbit played a very nice attacking game:

The final blow of the game you can watch below......

Watch LCWL S4 DIV 1 - Team Iceland vs Srbija Tim from Zibbit64 on www.twitch.tv

The Rapid Chess960 match proved to be very exciting. Iceland had the lead from early on but only a slighy lead and could never pull more than 3-6 wins ahead of a resilient Serbian team in this 31 board match. Iceland reached 31-27 which was enough for a draw match but it took a long time for the clincing point to arrive but it finally did courtesty of EinarAs43.

Final score in the rapid chess960 was Team Iceland 33, Srbija Team 29. A very exciting final match and only a swing in two of the Icelandic wins would have meant a drawn match!

So Team Iceland gets 3 points on the scoreboard and awaits the might Team Ukraine in the next round.

The whole match was streamed on FM Zibbit's Twitch channel and you can see the replay at the bottom of this blog. A reminder for the Icelanders reading this that you can join Team Iceland here: https://www.chess.com/club/team-iceland ....for others there should a club for your national team which you can join and participate in this exciting LCWL and have fun while building friendships through chess. See you in the next match!

Watch Highlight: LCWL S4 DIV 1 - Team Iceland vs Srbija Tim from Zibbit64 on www.twitch.tv