photo by @baberle
Chess960 League: Game Studies
I introduce key games and players from the Lichess4545 Chess960 League. Games are annotated by the players themselves using the Lichess Study tool.
Chess960 Tournament Details
You may have heard about Lichess4545 for its team league and LoneWolf tournaments for classical players. A lesser known feature of the league is the 20+20 Chess960 Swiss tournament. Registration is open to classical players from within the Lichess4545 community. The 20+20 time control is long enough to satisfy most of these players while being short enough to fit into a schedule already booked with other games.
Round One (#311)
The opening round of the season is one of my favorite times because it is when our new players get to play their first games with us. In this game both @GoldenRetrieverChess and @debrx made their league debut. GRC was also playing Chess960 for the first time. The game itself met the moment. Both players had winning chances and fought through a Rook Pawn endgame that was decided by the slimmest margin. I hope these two stay. Another newsworthy item here is that the starting position for this game (311) occurred twice out of the 20 games from the round!
Round Two (#57)
There is a school of thought that doesn’t consider this variant to be “real” chess. Then there are those that regard standard chess as the 518th position out of a possible 960. The following game began in Position #57 but sure looks like chess to me. In this game @Sivakumarr teaches a masterclass in endgame technique versus newcomer @Safaero, who played well in a dynamic middlegame.
Round Three (#280)
Chess960 doesn’t always look like normal chess. Sometimes it looks like this. Behold this stunning attack and queen sacrifice by one of our top players, FM @sterpfi.
Season Outlook
Three rounds in and four to go! There will be some strong matchups ahead as the Swiss pairing system positions the top players against each other. There will also be a U1600 award winner to determine. I hope that our new players especially have a satisfying experience and keep playing hard through the end of this season and into the next!
This season will end on January 20 and the next one will begin a week later. But wait! We have a special event to celebrate the holidays. On December 27th, habitual champion and random chess superhero @moistvonlipwig will host a Chess960 30+30 Simul! https://lichess.org/simul/QC0ieQeX. This is a rare occasion that you won’t want to miss.
Happy holidays to you dear reader! Let’s take a cup of random chess, for auld lang syne.
Lichess4545 is an online chess league for people who like playing long time control games online. For more information visit the website.
