Greetings to all chess fans! I played in the 13th round of the Hivechess Season 1 last night. It was a weekly chess tournament which ran for over an hour with a time control of five minute blitz with an option to go on "berserk". Going berserk will give you half the time (2 minutes and a half instead of 5) but will give you extra points if you win.
This was my best performance of the season, placing sixth. The winner was @southgamer who is a beast in the tournament, not losing a single game. He edged out frequent winners Odnoobraz_bcm and Tangible_ay.
While I'm proud of my results and ranking, my confidence was deflated when I was reviewing the games. I had a lot of blunders not only from the games I lost but also from the ones I won. I only won because my opponent made more mistakes than I did.
Game against jaki01
jaki01 as usual played berserk against me. He's a very strong player so I adjusted my opening a bit to take him out of his comfort zone and capitalize on my lead in the clock.
I made a lot of mistakes in this game but luckily my opponent made more. I pushed a pawn, e4 in the position below that I could have lost if my opponent captured.
Later, my opponent made a mistake, Qf7 but I failed to take advantage by moving Ng5 that could have won material. Instead I took with Bxe6. I still won the game due to my lead in time which caused my opponent to make more mistakes.
Link to game: https://lichess.org/YxaQGSi6
Game against Just_ola
Just_ola is a strong player disguised by his below 1900 Elo rating. In our game, I got greedy by stealing a pawn in the opening and was under constant pressure. Later I exchanged pieces to ease the pressure and push my passed pawns.
Link to game: https://lichess.org/sDWBXM3G/black
Thanks to @sam.chess @samostically for hosting and congratulations to the winners! Link to tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/ASFV4THj
Playing chess is fun but let's not forget about physical activities. I recently committed to exercise and to keep me motivated, I joined actifit.io
https://actifit.io/signup?referrer=chessguy-actifit