Untitled Tuesday and Saturday recaps - October 3rd and 7th

(this report was written by @dpnorman)

Untitled Tuesday: October 2017

Sometimes losing the first game can ruin someone's tournament. Coming into an event as one of the rating favorites and then senselessly dropping the first one to a considerably lower-rated opponent is never a good feeling, and can throw one off for the rest of the competition. But there is always a thought at the back of one's mind that maybe, if everything works out perfectly, the old Swiss Gambit might just come to fruition. 

Such was the case in the Tuesday event for this month. CP6033, listed as the second highest rated in the competition, lost his first game to a player he outrated by 400+ points, and yet, somehow managed to come all the way back and win eight games in a row. But this still wasn't good enough to clinch first with a round to go, and a dramatic finish ensued. 

So without further ado, here is the aforementioned upset. Black missed a knockout on move five, but had control of the game until simply hanging an exchange! Not sure what happened, but a solid conversion by Weevil99 for one of the biggest upsets of this month's events.

While CP6033 licked his wounds, two other competitors emerged as the top dogs in the standings. In the first five rounds, neither ghostdragon1212 nor noted Untitled Tuesday veteran Dominus_et_Deus lost a game, and both were tied atop the standings at 4.5/5 heading into round six. While they both had quite a few highlights in this event, I want to highlight a very nice game by ghostdragon1212 which I think he can be quite proud to have played in a blitz event.

Unfortunately for ghostdragon1212, in the next round he blundered a rook (albeit in a very difficult and probably lost position anyway) to Dominus_et_Deus, ceding to the latter clear first after six.

And it was here that CP6033 re-entered the discussion. While this was going on, he had begun a winning streak sending him storming back up the ranks, and setting up a match with Dominus_et_Deus atop the standings. It could be said that this game was the deciding one for the entire tournament, but there were no shortage of twists and turns in this one!

 CP6033 would continue winning, beating SmyslovFan and Ankalyov in the eighth and ninth games. Going into the last round, he was on 8.0/9. But victory wasn't guaranteed. Dominus_et_Deus was only half a point behind, and the last round would decide the winner. 

ghostdragon1212 had white vs CP6033 and played another excellent positional game. Apart from games six and seven, he played an outstanding tournament, and in this game, once again, he took an advantage, played well, increased it, and slowly won the game. 

As CP6033 was losing, a window was opened for Dominus_et_Deus to win the tournament. Down only a half-point coming into the round, a win would clinch sole first, while a draw would tie. 

So despite losing in the first and last rounds, CP6033 finished in clear first of this iteration of Untitled Tuesday, and joins the growing list of winners in the short history of this event.

Untitled Saturday

In the Saturday event, a never-before-accomplished feat was finally achieved. Along the way there were some great games, missed opportunities, and plenty of entertainment from the rest of the field.

The player in question was the highest-rated player (by a wide margin), Yourinsuil1991. Given his status far atop the rating list, it's not surprising he ran the table, but given the history of upsets in these tournaments and the long nature of the event, it's still the most impressive performance we've seen in this tournament's short history. Here's one of his early games against one of the higher-rated opponents in the competition.

As always, winning so many games did require a little luck. Perhaps his luckiest moment was against SmyslovFan, who really did have a great chance to pull the upset of the tournament. 

 Despite his loss, SmyslovFan was still part of a very intense race for the second spot on the leaderboard. Everyone near the top played and lost to Yourinsuil1991, but taking care of business in the other games was key. An early contender was Capricorn95, who, despite being rated in the 1600s, was on 4.5/6 midway through the event, but consecutive losses to SmyslovFan and Yourinsuil1991 sent him back down into the field.

The next contender to emerge for second was bluegalaxy4, who lost the customary game to Yourinsuil1991 in the sixth round. In the next game, against Midav_Veakhar, he won one of the quickest games ever in Untitled Tuesday:

In the last round, bluegalaxy4 had a chance to clinch clear second place, but went down to another veteran of these events, chessguy1012. The latter has been trying to get a win into one of these reports for a while, and here it is, even if he was in trouble until his opponent hung a piece due to a knight fork.

This game created a three-way tie for second between chessguy1012, bluegalaxy4, and SmyslovFan. Congratulations to those players, although there's no question who the real story of this event was.

To complete his sweep of the tournament (as he had already easily clinched clear first) Yourinsuil1991 needed to beat KaosKid, who had five points with a chance, albeit requiring an upset win, to get to the six necessary to enter into the tie for second place. This game was nothing fancy, and was even equal or very close to it for a long time, but the favorite outplayed the underdog in an instructive rook ending to close out a perfect tournament.

In conclusion, congratulations to Yourinsuil1991 for a perfect score, to the three who tied for second, to the winner of the Titled Tuesday event above (CP6033), and a thanks to all who played in and/or helped out with the events this month.