Lichess4545 League Interview: Meet the Player behind this Artwork

This week, we talk a player who has made some league-wide famous artwork! This player has a very recognizable fox icon in the league slack. Can you guess this player?

If you left the league a few years ago and are now thinking “I know this one! It’s @ErinYu!” You are wrong. Sadly, ErinYu left the league after season 28, long before when this player joined last season. (Interviewers note to all former league players: please come back to the league for season 45 later this year.) No, the player who is being interviewed is none other than the creator of the artwork we use every week for the ledger, @FunnyAnimatorJimTV!

Tell us a bit about yourself and/or your chess play.

“Online chess has been a powerful hobby that I always come back to every few years. I guess because chess feels both pure (it’s a simple checkerboard), and also exciting (it’s literally warfare). I was never super disciplined about playing classical, but heard about the 45+45 league from IM Andras Toth and IM ChessExplained’s videos, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy the league was to join. There are tons of options so you have total control over exactly how much chess activity you want to be doing at any moment. And just doing the bare minimum (one 45+45 game a week) ensures that you can still keep chess in your life (good), without overloading yourself or forgetting everything (bad). So I would say that joining the lichess 45+45 league has been one of my best life decisions in a long time.”

You are likely most known around the league for your famous league artwork. What inspired you to start creating these pieces?

“In the past I’ve been in communities where people would sometimes make drawings of several people’s characters together, and the group drawings would always give all of us a really nice feeling. So I thought it would be a really fun idea to try making a similar group drawing of as many members of the lichess 45+45 league as I could (their characters/icons/etc). I’m happy with the result and really happy that people like it. I think the reason people really like group drawings, even if they’re not super high quality, is because everyone is able to come together and ‘bond’ over one common thing, that also features several of their own unique personalized characters. So a group drawing is able to have a nice mix of individuality and collectivity, which makes us all feel really good.”

“I think the ‘bonding’ aspect also applies to popular art/games/music: Popular stuff may not be the most high-quality, but the fact that it’s popular and accessible makes it so most people can easily discuss/bond over it (which makes it even more popular, etc).”

Are you planning any special artwork for season 45?

“That sounds like a good idea, I just don’t want to get people’s hopes up in case I can’t force myself to make it. @RabbieR also has been making (much more professional-looking) art for people in the league, so maybe it’s now time for him to get some more opportunities for recognition and support.”

Which of your games this season is your favorite?

“In this game (white) I was losing terribly, feeling really discouraged (wanting to quit the league again?!?!) but made a practical decision on move 16, that I think helped me save the game. I think trying harder to find “practical moves” is one way my play has improved recently.”

Which league player do you most respect? Which league player would you most like to see interviewed in a future edition of the ledger?

“There are so many active members that are really nice and contribute a lot to the community. To name just a few, I’ve seen @Inter-temporal, @jg777, @tommeketoch, @Feet_Barbie being super dedicated to keeping lots of active chess discussion/content , and @RabbieR making really good art, so I would love to see any of them interviewed. I also want to shout out the hundreds of mysterious league members that may be much less active in the chat but are crucially needed to keep the playing field thriving.”

Please give us a nugget of wisdom.

“When you analyze your games with the engine, pay attention to the psychology. Think about the reason WHY you made a mistake, and HOW you could change your thinking to be able to find the better move. For example... if during the game you thought your bishop on b3 was ‘perfect’, so you left it there forever, but the engine points out that later on you could have won material by moving it to a4... then your Mistake is that you thought a piece was ‘ideally placed’/‘glued to the board’ and didn’t consider relocating it... and the Solution would be to ‘reconsider the location of all your pieces’ often. So you can give this mental flaw a unique name, like “avoid Glued Pieces”... Then store all these self-tips in a list, so you can easily review them before each game.”

How would you react if your opponent suddenly turned into a pumpkin mid-game?

“My reaction would be similar to how I reacted to AI: initially it seems good, but the more you think about it/are exposed to it, the more you realize it’s bad. The idea that a human could painlessly transform into another object at will would sound really exciting to me at first, making me think about what kinds of new discoveries would emerge and what kinds of transformations would become possible. However, the initial opponent-to-pumpkin transformation would of course cause unbearable trauma to their family members, and of course the transformation ability would probably cause severe damage to humanity once the power inevitably spread and got into the wrong hands, like we are seeing with AI today. So yeah if that happened then a lot of us would panic and it would all probably end up badly.”

“Although given how discouraged I felt during some of my league games (like the one above) I might have opted to turn into a pumpkin if I was able to. Sorry mom and sorry team.”

---

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.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA).
Interview conducted by @fork2020