Dear chess fans, since I am abroad this week with unsecure internet connection (being on a Greek island) and no time to calculate the season end standings I thought I postpone the last round by one week and do instead a fun tournament! Every participant (min. 5 games played) will get one bonus point towards the ranking of S 20! So it is worth it to join!
It will be a 3+2 chess960 arena tournament over 60 minutes at the usual time (Friday, 19h GMT)!
The winner was @franu, followed by @rosmarly and @fcastro177 (and @giuatt07 and @justola1 with the same points)! Congratulations!
Final standings:
Link to the tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/IR2sAo4k
As promised, @franu, @rosmarly, @fcastro177, @giuatt07, @justola1, @kintokris, @zacherybinx, @justfavour, @schamangerbert, @lighteye, @rodrook, @darruiz, @sammy00, @stranger27 and @fiona777 will get a point for their S20 ranking, which will be concluded this Friday! Watch out for the announcement tomorrow!
Over the past months I have collected some surprising plot twists that ended the games rather abruptly😁. Have a look at the following positions and feel sorry for these opponents (or laugh about their naivity).
Let´s start with a mate pattern which is quite rare, isn´t it? How helpless the kings is, suffocated by his own rooks!! Black with his last move captured a piece from White with the Knight from f6 on h7, falling into the trap :)
https://lichess.org/GD0yBCdC#41
Here Black is totally winning, but in his euphoria he did´t notice that with his last check on a3 he forced the White king to being part of a mating net for his Black counterpart. He had to move g5+ or Rh7, but made the slow move Rh3, going for a pointless pawn hunt, only to get surprise-mated with Rxf7#! Ouch!
https://lichess.org/UaWZBBHq/white#101
Black´s last move allows here a nice mate in 2 - can you find it?
White to move, mate in 2:
https://lichess.org/iZMpdmE9/white#64
A check is always good, right? Well, not really. In this case after White´s check on f1 I was able to answer with Bf2#! The bishop is hanging but White had no time to grab it as the game has ended 😄. A checkmate is for sure the best way to answer a check, but only rarely it happens (by the way on this site you can check for your games on lichess if you ever made it).
https://lichess.org/qUowWhCx/black#62
Speaking of the "Rosen score", my fastest checkmate was in 3 moves, what was your fastest game ever?
https://lichess.org/lmrTV6ff#5
Between winning and getting flagged lies often less than a second. In this case I checkmated my opponent having less than 0,01 seconds on my clock!
https://lichess.org/ZszK88ON#95
For sure one of the fastest mates I had recently with Black! White was more than careless here 😄
https://lichess.org/XxHcwBCd/black#30
OK, Blacks position was bad, but from the 2 choices the Black king had, he picked the most fatal one. He had played Ke5?? instead of Ke7 and was promptly mated with f4#. His own queen blocked the last escape square!
https://lichess.org/1AcEATi4/white#67
Now it is your turn: Send your fanciest checkmate into the comments by the end of the week and every entry gets a nice upvote (depending how fancy the mate is)!! But it should be one of your own games!