Outrageously Fun Monthly Lichess Superblitz - September 2021

Hi all

I uploaded this monthly mammoth tournament to Youtube - all 3.5 hours of it!

https://youtu.be/rbmFYFMex4I

Round 3 very lucky game indeed!

I did have quite a bit of luck on the way. The key lucky highlight was playing on just in case, an entire rook down in game 3:

Somehow he ended up with a bad bishop after saccing the exchange, and I had a winning passed pawn:

So that was "encouraging" because it was also worth 4 points.

Round 7 Tal Influence

The h-file attack opened up - seemed like taking a European football penalty at goal:

Round 10 Tango Opening - dynamic piece sac in opening for many pawns

Round 30 - vs fellow CM - though this would be a quick knockout, but turned out to be gruelling!

Round 42 crunch game vs chasing VERY high rated FM
I initially missed a mate but luckily he gave it to me second time - threat of Qh4-e1

Exhaustion Perspective

The aftermath - day after
Pretty exhausted!

Two days later
Still exhausted and too eager and ready to pointless battle with Trolls on Youtube and elsewhere. Needed to do many walks around garden. Managed to avoid any heated controversies - stuck to walking round garden! Watched "Elementary" on Netflix instead of the usual evening chess.

Three days later
Felt mostly back to normal thankfully. 2nd in Daily bullet. Then won the Daily Superblitz!

Phew - what a tournament. It would be great to support "Chapters" on Youtube for this 3.5 hour video. I mentioned this idea here:

https://lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/youtube-chapters

The Influence of studying Mikhail Tal and starting to study Petrosian more recently

Tal's influence on my play recently is a greater relentless focus on soft-spots around the opponent's king. Also a more careful dissection of the particular type of "weakness of the last move" self-destruct style moves. Self-pin, Self-deflect, Self-interfere, Self-unprotected piece, etc. But the big thing is to maintain complexity. Both Tal and Petrosian with their playing styles seem indirectly to be mocking and undermining the view of the "Tree of analysis". In Mikhail's Tal's case to give the opponent real headaches if they were trying to calculate their way out of complexity. In Petrosian's mockery, it would be in terms of not having any counterplay! What can you analyse if you have no pieces to move!

Petrosian (even though I have just started my studies on him) had a surprisingly big influence in this tournament in terms of choosing "SOLID OPENINGS" - e.g. the English opening many times - I had read that Petrosian's earlier trainer encouraged him to play solid openings. Believe it or not, the Young Petrosian did have a game with the King's Gambit here:

Somehow Petrosian philosophies around "Iron Tigran" - making one's position strong for me seemed now to be more linked with counterplay removal. Petrosian does seem to have a similar style in many respects to long-time British Super GM Michael Adams. Maybe you can be made of feathers (instead of Iron) in the extreme, but if the opponent is not in a position to exploit that, then you may as well have been made of steel or Iron. I think the two are linked - and this is just the kind of intense philosophical chess debate I like to think about when reviewing games. Is it enough to "strengthen position" and can it just mean "reduce opponent counterplay". One of the great Michael Adams games crushing Karjakin black side of a London system seems to be pivoted on a classic Tigran Petrosian plan - the Ne1-d3-e5 as example.

https://youtu.be/J9aUl0gKvYM

Key Takeaway points

• Studying classic World champion players like Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian seems to be beneficial
• A lot of luck is needed to win the monthly superblitz
• "No game is ever won by resigning" - Tartakower
• My Tango system with Nc6 worked pretty well (see my Tango course at : https://kingscrusher.tv/openingtango )
• I experimented with the "Old indian" - early d6 and e5 if permitted. Did manage to take down the FM trying this opening. I noticed by Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian who were great friends both used this with some success.
• Ruthless "maximisation of win probability" primary strategy. Any other strategy for me is subservient to that. Sometimes you just need to move quickly and win on time for example. Sometimes you have got to try and swindle instead of resigning! The more tactical you are, the more likely you are to swindle opponents.

Hope you enjoyed this blog :). Any likes and follows are really appreciated. Also, I also have some interesting chess courses at https://kingscrusher.tv/chesscourses to check out.

Cheers, K