What happened in March to make it important. The following are the major events of the month:

Points Season 1 (Way back in March 2020, I know)
Vote For SA (Cringe...And guess what? The loser wins to)
R2GM Team Competition
We get an app?! (That doesn’t turn out, does it?)

Spam makers this month:

Friday the 13^th Event
JoshuaMountain’s spam of news
Chimpreturns Spam of News
Pukelmen Closes their account

Points Season 1:

This event’s registration began on February 23, 2020 and was not very successful. The Registration was to end on February 25 but since barely anyone registered it was extended to the 27^th. https://www.chess.com/news/view/new-point-system-important-season-1-registration

https://www.chess.com/news/view/season-1-registration-no-email-number-or-address-required

When My_Chemica1_Cha0s posted a forum with the leaderboard on it on March 2, 2020 Things were not looking good for this event. Only 3 people were in the leaderboard https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/current-leader-board-for-season-1

It gets worse, though. On March 3, 2020 while working on the app @My_Chemica1_Cha0s announces that he lost the leaderboard for Season 1 Standings (Which, I might add was supposed to end on March 7, 2020) https://www.chess.com/news/view/bad-news-good-news

He decided to restart with the whole thing, scratching what they had already (kai complains because he ‘had’ 20 points apparently)

After the points system ‘restarted’ there is no more found news or forums on the subject. It is doubted as to whether or not anything ever became of it.

An App:

Around the time that the point system was crashing down my_chemica1_cha0s was trying to make an app for Road to GM. He thought it was brilliant and the other administration probably did too, although after a few news posts Chemica1 posted that his app had failed. The app was announced and the way to download was posted here https://www.chess.com/news/view/easy-way-to-download-the-app however, it didn’t get much attention and the idea was dropped by the time April came.

Vote For SA:

This was the first biggest scale event in Road to GM. In fact, it's interesting to note that it had more participation than all of the other events that took place in March. The SA vote was a very big thing for the club...for some reason. Even though it sounds like a very cringey thing, it really made the club more active during the plethora of News posted during March (Total News posts were 94!)

There were two candidates for this SA vote @JeshwantVana @kai2008y. Both of these two have a unique history in Road to GM. ParticularyKai2008y. He is in fact one of the ones that went mad against the club. Although that is a different story and requires us to talk a little about “Chess Boys” Chess club.

Anyway, The Voting was to be held on March 8, 2020 but something interesting happened. Here is what we have dug up in the news:

On March 1, 2020 @Pukelmen announces the two candidates https://www.chess.com/news/view/vote-for-me

On March 2, 2020 @My_Chemica1_Cha0s Announces that you may still sign up to be voted for! Clearly the administration is confused… https://www.chess.com/news/view/are-you-interested-in-becoming-a-super-admin

It seems that it gets cleared up as the next day, March 3^rd, Cheimca1 posts all of the candidates and announces that Kai and Jesh are the “Big Players” (Main parties) And that was true. It was getting so democratic and it only helped with making more news posts.

Later on March 3, 2020 @pukelmen again posts a news announcing who his “favorites” were in the event. It was titled: “Candidates for SA top 3 Choices (My opinion)” It seems like there is discussions and things going on now. It’s really getting epic. But the surprising thing is that no one has complained about too many news posts yet...That’s because we haven’t gotten to the @ChimpReturns period, which really wrecked some things in the club.

Continuing with the SA Vote….The Post that pukelmen made got 29 comments! https://www.chess.com/news/view/candidates-for-sa-top-3-choices-this-is-an-opinion

This is much more than any news post of the present day usually gets. Typically the “Of the Month” or the Monthly Updates gets 30-60, but this was getting that many in each news post! In the top 3 candidates pukelmen mentions Jesh and Kai as well as @AKSHAYtheGRANDMASTER who has a big part of Partner Club trouble for R2GM...And Devesh_The_King. This will be discussed in detail...later. AkshaytheGrandmaster became a candidate (According to a forum thread) on March 3, 2020, so it seems that pukelmen had a liking to Akshay, especially since he also mentioned his club that “Gained 89 members in only a week in his club” https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/two-new-candidates

Moving on, about 20 News posts later, on March 4^th, the next news post that is about the Vote comes on. It is from pukelmen again telling everyone not to be a sore loser https://www.chess.com/news/view/please-6 (By the way, pukelmen is @nightly-Knight)

The next twist in the event to give it more excitement was On March 6^th My_Chemica1_cha0s posted news that the election was postponed to the next Wednesday (instead of Sunday, March 8^th)

Of course, someone made a mistake and had to redo an election….

https://www.chess.com/news/view/election-time-redo

What happened next was...a tie between kai and jesh (SURPRISE! Everyone though kai was going to win by miles) https://www.chess.com/news/view/tiebreaker-please-vote

Hold your horses, folks! The voting has happened? The next news post on the election comes on March 13, 2020 (Guess what? This is an important day, @Friday_The_13th7 opened an account that no one knew what was) On March 13, 2020 Chemica1 was announcing the winner (@Jeshwantvana) https://www.chess.com/news/view/drumroll-please

Conspiracies are beginning in Road to GM now. Some strange things are going on, and the members are not letting it go unnoticed (currently 300+ members)

Jesh was promoted to SA, as the election voted, but kai as well was promoted. Had R2GM gone crazy? No, because it wasn’t even called R2GM yet! That will happen in a week or so.

What is going on now? It’s time to discuss the Friday the 13^th event!

Here is a little history on the Friday thing; @pukelmen was leaving for a Taekwondo tournament (First tournament he would compete as a 1^st degree black belt) and he was leaving on Friday the 13^th for the event. Before leaving, however, he came online to post the Friday the 13^th. Word Game. He then made a club for Friday the 13^th (No disabled) https://www.chess.com/clubs/members/friday-the-13th-club

The next day, when pukelmen returned from the tournament with 3 First places he logged into his new “Friday_The_13th7” account and joined Road to GM in it.

R2GM Team Competition/Friday the 13th7 fun!:

The R2GM Team Competition was first announced by Friday_The_13th7. It was also announced after the mystery had ended about Friday. The account had been made on March 13^th (Friday) and joined the club on March 14^th, then it was immediately promoted to Super Admin. Many made speculations about the situation and the administration was kept silent, Friday especially made the administration not talk about it. He had special plans ;)

The Friday the 13th7 mystery had a club of its own as well! It was called “Pukelmen’s account Closure” https://www.chess.com/clubs/members/pukelmens-account-closure In that club (Made by Friday) People were to guess what happened to pukelmen to make him close. In the end the member @antisunechess guessed that Friday was pukelmen, and for that, friday promoted him to SA and asked him to make another mystery story for us. That never happened and not to long later the Pukelmen’s account closure club was disabled.

Pukelmen’s account closure was no small thing in the club. He announced right before he closed on March 18, 2020 that he was closing. And the comments were all teary eyed. People loved pukelmen. He was the life of Road to GM in the early days. However, it wasn’t too bad, a new life of the party came in and his name was Friday_The_13th7. And after the mystery was solved it was found that pukelmen hadn’t left, he just regenerated. Also, this whole mystery thing was pukelmen’s “April fools” and it was all thought out. It seems that pukelmen/Friday enjoyed April Fools/Superstitions as his name implies. He had promised to tell why he closed on April 1, 2020 if no one had guessed it yet. But that wasn’t necessary as on March 21 Antisuneches found the answer. (note that Friday the 13th7 is now Nightly-Knight, changed in September 2020)

antisunechess

Mar 21, 2020

I got a guess, he opened a new account, @Friday_The_13th7

Nightly-Knight

Mar 21, 2020

you are pretty smart.....

Nightly-Knight

Mar 21, 2020

nice gues

antisunechess

Mar 21, 2020

Am I correct?

antisunechess

Mar 21, 2020

Are you pukelmen?

Nightly-Knight

Mar 21, 2020

possibly

Nightly-Knight

Mar 21, 2020

https://www.chess.com/live#t=1163717 want to play this?

antisunechess

Mar 21, 2020

If you like 3 check, you are Pukelmen, busted

Nightly-Knight

Mar 21, 2020

3check, of course.....

On March 25, 2020 when everything was back to normal Friday posted news about the upcoming event

https://www.chess.com/news/view/coming-soon-2

This post seemed to have awakened excitement again, just like in the vote (Which, by the way was to be repeated monthly after that) This post came on March 25, 2020.

After this, in the next few days several news posts came out, asking for members in the individual teams. After this, on March 30 Friday announced the official teams https://www.chess.com/news/view/r2gm-team-competition

This is also when Road to GM first became “R2GM” When Nightly was instructing the captains on how to make their clubs he started the famous R2GM phrase by telling them to make the title “R2GM_Team {Insert name here)” And that is when R2GM began officially being “R2GM”

After the announcement of the teams no more news posts can be found. However, we do know that Round 1 successfully began and there were 4 teams in it. The problem, though, was that one team disabled their club and after that the whole event crashed down and ended. There was nothing left to do.

Spam of ChimpReturns and Joshuamountain

These two were promoted to Admin in Road to GM, probably because they begged @joseph7505 enough times (That was how you got into being admin back then) What they did when they became admin was not meant to be harmful, but it was.

The biggest problem was that they were both doing it at the same time

What were they doing?

ChimpReturns was making a news post every 10+ minutes about how many members we had. They would complain that we lost a member, or that we finally made it to 310 members.

This was going on March 4 to March 8 Although Joshuamountain started posting before that (March 5^th or earlier)

A total of about 20 News posts were posted between those 5 days.

Here they all are:

@Chimpreturns

https://www.chess.com/news/view/we-have-309-members
https://www.chess.com/news/view/were-losing-members
https://www.chess.com/news/view/we-are-losing-members-2
https://www.chess.com/news/view/we-are-losing-members-3
https://www.chess.com/news/view/we-have-gone-back-to-305
https://www.chess.com/news/view/our-current-target-is-310-members
https://www.chess.com/news/view/305-member-special
https://www.chess.com/news/view/number-306-wins-against-207
https://www.chess.com/news/view/307-or-404
https://www.chess.com/news/view/404-error
https://www.chess.com/news/view/we-are-back-to-309-members
https://www.chess.com/news/view/309-member-special
https://www.chess.com/news/view/we-successfully-hit-310-members
https://www.chess.com/news/view/310-member-special
https://www.chess.com/news/view/313
https://www.chess.com/news/view/313-member-special
https://www.chess.com/news/view/313-member-special-answer
https://www.chess.com/news/view/guys-we-hit-318-members

@Joshuamountain

https://www.chess.com/news/view/club-rles
https://www.chess.com/news/view/am-i-famous
https://www.chess.com/news/view/chess-boss
https://www.chess.com/news/view/should-i-stop

As you can see, Joshuamountain only posted an average of a little less than one per day during those four days, but ChimReturns posted 18 News Posts between March 4 and March 9. This made quite a few members disappear to never set foot in the club again. On March 9, Chimp Returns stopped posting, probably because they were demoted.

This spam was the start of what would happen in April. A character named 1Oding would show up to take over the face of the earth (I mean chess.com)

(This is a 1900 Word history for March written by @Nightly-Knight)

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