How does it feel to play in Lichess4545 league?

In this edition of the ledger, we want to put a spotlight on our newcomer @Okady, who wrote down how does it look and feel like to become part of Lichess4545 league from the perspective of a newcomer. In case you wonder if Lichess4545 league is good for you, maybe this will help you make up your mind.

My first season in the 4545 League by @Okady

I recently moved in with my girlfriend. After a while she got a little bit annoyed with me like women often do with their boyfriends. She said to me:

Thijs, it’s time for you to get yourself a hobby.

So I was thinking: let’s play some online chess from time to time. Let’s just get better at that, and start learning how to really play chess, and not just do some stupid things. I started learning openings and obsessively searching for the right video or tip that would tell me how to get good at chess fast. As most of us know, there is no such thing. The main tip I found was like, “Play games that take more than half an hour for each player.” In the beginning I was like: who even has time for that? But then I found a link to the Lonewolf competition. The Lonewolf season had already been going for seven rounds, but they had another competition: 4545, which was played in teams. It was going to end soon, but restart in two weeks. But I still needed a Lichess non-provisional rating (editor note: to get non-provisional rating, you need to get rid of that pesky question mark next to it). (editor note: As luck would have it, Lichess4545 Season 47 will start on 12th January with teams being formed on 5th January. You can register for it here.)

So I started playing some classical games here on Lichess. The games I played for half an hour per player still felt like rapid games because me and my opponents most of the time were still blitzing out our moves. But in the end I was very happy with myself because I got an established rating around 1870.

The new season was about to begin and I was drawn randomly into a team, with no idea what to expect and how this would work. My teammates started to introduce themselves and I was able to ask them all further questions about this league. Everyone was really helpful and nice. The first pairing round came and I was matched with my first opponent. We talked about which time we both could play — on the FAQ they recommend planning for a game time of at least 3 hours. I was still like, “Okay, most of my games were a half hour, but okay.” We scheduled our preferred time, told it to the slackbot Chesster and he created a game for us with the right colors. The game then shows on the lichess4545 TV page and everyone can watch — really outstanding work from the programmers of the league.

This first match I started to blitz out the moves like normal:

My opponent took his time for every move and I was like: “Why would you take 2 minutes to think about a move?” Of course it happened on move 11 — I blundered my queen. Naturally, I resigned and I was very angry with myself. How could this happen? He is even rated 100 points lower than me! I wanted to quit after just one game, I felt so incredibly stupid. How can this happen?! There were like 6 people spectating my game live too, and I just blundered my queen.

After this disaster my teammates tried to cheer me up, saying “It happens to everyone their first time here.” I got a tip from some other members of the league: try to play with a board next to you. So for the following week I tried to play some games in the normal Lichess pool with a board next to me, and I started to think about my moves and what my opponent could do. It worked really well — my accuracy reported at the end of the games shot through the roof. The second game I played well against someone, again rated about 100 points (editor note: not quite, but memories can be deceiving) lower than me....

....but he defeated me fair and square. We analysed the game together and he was like: “Yeah, around move 8 here I changed your pawn structure and traded everything to an endgame, because I knew I could win that. I read that somewhere in a book.” I was like: what, I just think about my next move, and about what my opponent might do after that. I don’t think about pawn structure or which endgames we go into. So naturally I started searching the internet again and ordered my very first chess book — a new step in my chess career. Only 8 weeks later I am now the proud owner of 6 different chess books.

I was looking forward to my third game, because my teammates helped me prepare against this next opponent using the website openingtree where you can see all the opening moves anyone has ever played in any specific scenario. We prepared a nice Caro–Kann. I got in a winning position and got nervous — so I lost my winning advantage with a blunder and eventually even the game. But in the end I was still very proud of myself, because I really put up a fight and played very well.

The next step in my chess career was made after this game:

I decided to join the local chess club and play classical games over the board. Now I play there every Thursday. The fourth week of Lichess4545 I started to spectate the games of my teammates. I was never a big fan of watching chess by grandmasters because I am not good enough to understand their plans. But with players of a similar rating it’s much more fun to watch them and discuss with other spectators. When players use the whisper function in chat, you can even read about their thought process. (editor note: players on Lichess can use whisper functionality during the game, which makes their comments visible to spectators only, without the player themselves being in the chat)

Finally the thing I was looking forward to the most happened in round 6:

I got my first win. A hard fought game and I think I have never played that well in my life. The feeling after that win I can’t describe — after 4 losses in a row and a draw, I had finally won a game while 8 strangers were watching. What a dopamine rush that was! The season has ended now, and I managed to win my last 2 games! So after 8 games my full results were:

4 Losses
1 Draw
3 Wins

(Editor note: You can see how @Okady did here.)

I look back on my first season with some very good memories. Analysing games with your opponents, helping you out by explaining what you did wrong. Watching your teammates’ games and cheering when they win, improving your team’s chances to win the round. Helping prepare a teammate with a specific opening, and making a shared annotated study of our league games together. Also a shoutout to the entire 4545 community — everyone is very helpful, and open to analysing the games even when they didn’t play well. The chats are mostly fun while playing the game against your opponents. Currently I am playing the off-season quad, which is a very short competition between seasons. I can’t wait for the next season to begin.

Season 46 write-up

We would be remiss to not to give shout-out to recently closed Season 46 winners. Their performance was historic, in Lichess4545 chronicles, there have been very few teams who would go to win all their 8 matches. You can now add Working on our 46-pack to that list. @rio2018 @guitarspider @Pope123 @berndwind @cinemashow @chesssedin @pezzo17 @Marco_Chess13 carved a special place in the story of 4545 league.

"A Knight You Will Remember" had a season to remember and came in 2nd (going 6W-1D-1L). "Doomsday Hedgehogs" are in 3rd with 5W-2D-1L.

This is how the title race played and yout and as you can see, for the champs, it was utter dominance for start to finish. The Hedgehogs had a rocky road to eventually finish strong and on the podium.

For little piece of trivia, the longest game of the season took over 4 hours (4h 2m 22s to be precise), it was a battle between @Rolihlahla and @PVGibson.

Talk about a looooong endgame.

If that does not scare you off, we perhaps look forward to seeing some of you in the future seasons!

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 @Okady, @Tranzoo with further editing by @glbert