Lichess 4545 Round 4 Update - Misclick Redemption

We're halfway through Lichess4545 Season 47 – and after round 4, we are left with only 2 perfect teams, setting up an amazing showdown for round 5...but before we look ahead, let's see how we got there.

After round 3, one of the big match-ups for round 4 was the meeting of 47 is not a prime number (I am gonna just call them Primers for the rest of this text) and Blunder? I hardly know her (let's call them Blunderers). Both of these teams were 3-0 and both wanted to continue their great run.

The match got off to a great start for the Primers. @SpaceBarIsTaken delivered an upset victory on board 8, quickly followed by @TheChessPhoenix handling the business on board 2, putting the team 2-0 up. @aljtol navigated time pressure well in the board 3 game, pulling it back to 2-1 and after the board 7 clash resulted in a draw, it was 2.5-1.5 for the Primers going into the weekend games.

Enter an epic Saturday board 1 showdown where FM @sterpfi (Primers) handled Black against red-hot @yaminejamal1.

Yaminejamal1 apparently does not believe in fortresses and ground out a gutsy victory over sterpfi, halting their winning streak at 3. That set the match at 2.5-2.5. An awesome board 4 game followed and @adande1 managed to show great resiliency, coming back and bringing a point home for the Blunderers, putting them into the lead for the first time in the match.

This set up a high-pressure Sunday doubleheader to finish the match off. Both @Zanderqfb (Blunderers) and @flyingfred (Primers) were struggling coming into their board 6 meeting and it was to be seen who would come up with an antidote. The game seemed like it could snap both players' losing streaks with a draw, but then, disaster struck.

In what can only be explained as a misclick, Black played 29...Rf6, presumably instead of the intended Rf5. Just like that, the rook was taken, the game was over and Primers had tied the match-up at 3.5-3.5. Zanderqfb could only hope their teammate @PhilippBrandenbrett would deliver the win in the decider. But standing in their way was @Emadbakry1980, with a 100+ rating point advantage. Unpleasant prospects.

Elo or Glicko or whatever Lichess is using is just a number though, and Philipp proved it, coming up big in the final game of the round, just edging out an epic 4.5–3.5 victory for the Blunderers, managing to stay perfect.

Their round 5 rival will be Essence of Sahkal and the Fragrances of the 7 (whom I will just refer to as Fragrances from now on). Fragrances continued their run with a 4.5-3.5 victory over Hanging Pieces of Babylon in a match that was clinched early, after Fragrances ran up their lead to 4.5-1.5.

The most intriguing pairing in the upcoming clash of perfect teams will happen on board 4, where @adande1 takes on @alex11star, both on 3+ game winning streaks, league veterans in their first ever battle. Should be a fun one.

We have to give a shout-out to a couple of other exciting games from round 4 as well. @Jbyrd11 took on @Safaero in a wild one. With a 4-game winning streak, Jbyrd was looking to ride the hot hand, but found themselves facing mate in 5!

A mate only counts if it's delivered, though. Black didn't see it and White escaped with a bit of a miraculous victory in a sharp one, prolonging their win streak to 5.

We would also be remiss not to mention the league legends @scarff and @timothyha being paired for the first time ever. These gentlemen played together on 14 teams, won the league together in Season 29 and had plenty of games throughout the years, but never on 4545 turf! Until last week. And perhaps fittingly, it ended up with a draw. Friendship continues!

Annotated games by @glbert

Glbert continues their road to improvement with annotations of their rounds 3 and 4 games. Enjoy and maybe learn something as well!

Thank you glbert!

Lichess4545 is an online chess league for people who like playing long time control games online. Players are assigned to teams and play one game per week with a 45+45 time control. For more information visit our league home page.
LoneWolf is a side league of the Lichess4545 league. It is an 11-round Swiss tournament where players play one game per week with a 30+30 time control. For more information about the LoneWolf tournament visit the LoneWolf homepage.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA).
Contributions to this edition by @Tranzoo and @glbert