Up to 12 players confirmed for T7.

Invites pending for

2BitBish, Aide46 Drew27 dtcaban Nosedive37

Anyone else wanting in? If not I’ll start the tournament at the weekend.

Think I’ve signed up for it (aide46), cheers for setting up another tournament

Signed up
Thanks again

Couple of good final games there. I got beaten by @stevomcd but managed a win against @irc

I think I may have had an advantage in that as it was the only tournament game on the go so I could concentrate properly on it.

Been playing some of the 10min Blitz games in quiet times to wildly varying degrees of accuracy. Earlier this evening I got another win courtesy of the Stafford Gambit, it really is incredibly powerful if you can pull it off. But this morning I got fairly soundly thrashed so swings and roundabouts!

@crazy-legs

My score for the 2 games with you was 25% pretty much as our respective ratings suggest. Likewise a 50% against Stevo is about right.

The Stafford is fun to play even if not totally sound. Last game I played it I had to sacrifice a Knight and Bishop en route to mate after 27 moves.

https://www.chess.com/analysis/game/daily/383049745

White’s last 8 moves all king moves as it got chsed over to the Queens rook file for mate.

Anyone else interested in the latest STW tournament ….

https://www.chess.com/tournament/stw-t7/join/f307f2

2bitBish – I’ve tried resending the invite for you.

The Stafford is fun to play even if not totally sound. Last game I played it I had to sacrifice a Knight and Bishop en route to mate after 27 moves.

Yeah, the post-game analysis tool on chess.com really doesn’t like it, it shows up as a weakness for Black up until the point that the knight and bishop are aligned and then suddenly it all comes together. I got mate in 11 moves!

Due to a glitch in the invites which meant 2BitBish got locked out T7 is cancelled and being recreated as T8. To join go to

https://www.chess.com/tournament/stw-t8/join/e55a48

AS above. Anyone who was down for STW Tournament 7 should sign up for T8 as T7 cancelled.

@stevo_mcd, @vince2638, @dtcaban still to join T8.

https://www.chess.com/tournament/stw-t8/join/e55a48

Just waiting to see if Steve_McD is in before starting T8.

Ooh, I’ve just had a message from chess.com:

We have detected that one or more of your recent opponents has violated our Fair Play Policy. As compensation for potentially unfair rating losses, we adjusted your following ratings:

Rapid: 1547 + 5 => 1552

I’m wondering how they tell – my scores on Rapid have been wildly variable. Nearly 100% if I can get a quick win off something like Stafford Gambit falling to about 40% on occasions, it just becomes a game where each player is making blunder after blunder!

Some stuff here.

https://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-com-fair-play-and-cheat-detection

Presumably at our level there is ittle or no humasn intervention and it’s all software based. Perhap comparing a player’s moves with best computer play. In a long game you are only getting 100% by cheating. I’ve played 578 daily games and only played a perfect game once. A Staffotd gam bit of around 15 moves when I was following opening theory (allowed in daily) for the whole game.

In rapid where you are on your own from move 1 any 100% scores would be dodgy for any mid rated player apart from very short games.

Sorry I ducked out of T7 (now T8) as I seem struggle to play in 24hr games. I think I’m too indecisive and can’t make a decision! Plus it only takes one evening of kids going bed late etc I’m struggling to fit the moves in.

If anyone is up for a slow 3 day game, clicky link: https://play.chess.com/tBcW5

I’m in for T8. I think I’m registered?

Yeah, couple of good games in the final. I will concede I won a recent game against Ian after all the stafford gambit chat on here and how it’s fun / super-agressive but risky. Figured I might as well draw it out and play the counters!

That last game was savage James. I got ahead off the back of that little tactic on the knight, but felt like I couldn’t afford a single inaccuracy through the endgame. I have never played through so many variations before picking a move!

I think on the cheat detection thing, there’s nothing automatic. I think your opponent has to report you. But they’re pretty secretive about it for obvious reasons. I’ve had a similar thing to James a couple of times. Recently had someone accuse me of cheating and “block” me (can you even do that?) in a one-minute game. How on earth do you cheat in 1min? The time it took to enter the moves into an engine would cost you the game!

My game is very up and down at the moment. It’s peak season for work and I’m often trying to play with a very fuzzy head after a long day (which may have ended with a beer or two). My rating in bullet chess is quite funny to view. Rises and falls in the opposite direction to the peaks and troughs in my working year!

@drew27 3 day Game on.

I’m starting T8 now. We have 14 players. Groups of 5, 5 and 4. Top 2 plus ties going to next round.

@stevomcd unfortunately it’s possible to get chrome extensions that show recommend moves on the screen. A quick Google/ YT can show it in action. I think you can block someone so that you don’t play them again but how often do you ever come across the same player??

I’ve had a few notifications on lichess where someone has cheated but never on chess.com. It might be the case on chess.com you have to report it. Opponents letting time run out on purpose in a losing position in blitz is annoying though!

I’m not overly worried about cheaters, if you play enough games, the rating gets evened out.

In other news, I just broke 1500 in my daily rating!! Hopefully I can keep it above this. Looking at my recent games though, I think it’s been a lot of luck. The number of poor mistakes/ blunders I’ve made are quite annoying at times. I just didn’t get punished for them.

In other news, I just broke 1500 in my daily rating!! Hopefully I can keep it above this. Looking at my recent games though, I think it’s been a lot of luck. The number of poor mistakes/ blunders I’ve made are quite annoying at times. I just didn’t get punished for them.

My Rapid rating dropped by >100 points today to 1450. Blunder after blunder – sometimes by me and sometimes not picking up on mistakes from opponents. A match I did go on to win, the guy left his queen unguarded for 2 moves and I missed both opportunities to take it. Think I need some sort of reset, maybe a few puzzles and games against the computer without a time limit.

As @stevomcd says though, it can be very affected by other stuff like work stresses etc.

@crazy-legs

You sound like me, a win with blunders is just hollow.

I have found that chasing successive defeats just leads to more defeats due to playing overly aggressive. A bit like a gambler not knowing when to stop!

Definitely being in the right mood/ state of mind helps. I have watching GM blitz games and watching no mistakes can help a little to get in that right frame of mind.

I could do with doing a lot more puzzles and studying though!

Feast or famine strikes again. A couple of tournaments rolled onto the next round and I’m up to 31 daily games. Luckily apart from STW they are all 2 or 3 day time limits. So I can wait a day or so if I need to find a bit of time.

A couple my non STW games. Opponent graded 699 but playing really solid. All square 25 moves in.

Something odd here. So I checked his stats. Previously rated 1450 but loses 40% of games on time.

Appears to be playing 1500 daily games just now.

https://www.chess.com/member/cald-or11

His rating was between 1100 and 1200 when our games started so he has dropped 400 odd grading points by timing out.

Very odd. Just wondering if I lose or draw is my rating adjusted based on a result against a 699 player or a 1200 player?

The second round of that Daily Play Championships has just started. Won a few games on timeout already, just got my first “proper” win as well.

I’ve sort of lost interest in it to be honest, I did actually consider just resigning everything at one point yesterday. I’m more into the 10-min Rapid games although it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster in that lot. I have big loss runs where my rating drops 200+ points and then a streak of wins where it’ll creep back up to 1700, there seems to be no in between. My consistency is appalling!

And I still get occasional messages from chess.com telling me they’ve adjusted my rating based on their Fair Play detection that an opponent has cheated. Although amusingly, I was holding my own against a 2000 Dutch player a while ago, got into a massively complicated position and he started messaging me telling me I must be cheating! What with typing back to him and trying to analyse the position, it all fell to pieces very quickly.

Very odd. Just wondering if I lose or draw is my rating adjusted based on a result against a 699 player or a 1200 player?

It seems to be against their rating as it’s listed at the moment. People intentionally timing out is a common tactic to drop ratings and get easier games. It doesn’t appear as you being “beaten”, just that you timed out so you get a higher win rate.

Interestingly daily tournaments have a default max timeout rate of 10%. So that player will not be getting into many tournaments.

My games are part of a club match. So a good argument fir not playing club games and sticking to tournaments with a 10% or less max timeouts.

Been an entertaining couple of days on the 10-min tournament front. Was playing a Ukrainian guy a few days ago, about a 2000 ranking and sort of holding my own (just) and he first accused me of cheating then he apologised and said he was having a really rough day.

Anyway, chatting back and forth on the in-game messaging, turns out he’d just escaped to Poland and he was trying to maintain some sort of normality by playing chess. And in that time my clock was running down and I felt sorry for him so I resigned. I was slightly behind anyway, it saved me getting my arse kicked.

And then earlier today, I blundered my queen after about 10 moves against a guy rated about 1200. He messaged to (very sportingly) offer me a draw as he recognised that it was a total elementary blunder but I said he deserved it, it had been a total cock-up on my part so he deserved the rating increase.

Result is I’ve dropped about 80 points again in the course of 2-3 days! I crawl up to 1700 (slowly) and then fall back to 1600 very very quickly. My consistency is dreadful, I can play at 90% for a few games but it’ll drop to 60% at times. If I could sit there at a steady 80%, I’d be happy!

However, it actually seems that the vast majority of people in the Rapid tournaments are pretty decent, there’s plenty of friendly and supportive chat which is nice. Chess.com still message me every once in a while to tell me they’ve increased my ranking based on “potential losses due to cheating” but I honestly can’t tell if an opponent is playing well or cheating. Guess I just hope for the best!

You could start a new campaign. ~resign for Ukraine. See how Putin likes it when the Ukrainian ratings increase!

Talking about resigning. I was offered a draw 2 moves ago in this game.

Round 1 STW8 is nearly finished. Just one game left.

Its a close struggle between Kprook and Dannybgoode. Plenty play left though. A few weeks at a move per day.

https://www.chess.com/game/daily/394998683

Hopefully not anything like that sort of time. Am aware it’s the last game so conscious of trying to get it finished quite quickly. But yes, it’s a close one (and very enjoyable for that reason).

The reason we’re so behind is that our first game went to nearly 90 moves. Bit of an epic. So this one was late in starting.

@kennyp

No problem. I wasn’t having a dig. Just hadn’t checked how it was going for a while and thought I would post an update.

Still got 20 other daily games ticking over just now. Plenty to keep me going.

No problem. I wasn’t having a dig. Just hadn’t checked how it was going for a while and thought I would post an update.

No worries, didn’t think for a minute you actually were having a dig. But I know how frustrating it can be waiting for that one game to end so things can move on. Games between Danny and I have always been very close.

Not going to make any more moves today though having had a few strong Belgian beers while watching Paris – Roubaix!!

I’ve said it before, but these STW tournaments have been great. Totally reignited my love of chess.

Meanwhile. In another non STW tournament I’m wondering if my opponent will resign before I have 5 queens on the board.

Round 1 of STW T8 now complete. Over the next day or so I’ll send out invites to those who dropped out to take part in a T9 tournament. Games to play while T8 continues. Should mostly be closer gradings between players as well.

There are 8 players so simplest would be everyone in one group. 7 gasmes ongoing at one time. 1 day time limit but vacation allowed.

If anyone taking part would prefer either a 2 groups of 4 format or maybe 2 days time limit let me know.

1 group of 8, 1 day per move would be my preference. Cheers for sorting again.

Count me I too, please.
Django2357

1 group of 8, 1 day per move would be my preference. Cheers for sorting again.

Same for me – cheers.

OK. T9 set up and invites out.

I’ll be up for anything. Had a few actually almost decent games this time round and nearly squeaked into the next round 🙂

Still only 4 players in for T9.

Invites out to
Aide46
dannybgoode
Django2357
vince2638

Or

https://www.chess.com/tournament/stw-t9/join/bcef5e

No more interest and I’ll start it as a 4 person tournament when I’m back from the Cairngorms on Tuesday.

I’m in according to the app

Also already in according to the app

I’ll play.

Winter season is finally over. My achilles heel of playing the “obvious” move while checking phone on chairlift then deeply regretting it later should be somewhat reduced!

Sorry irc I appear to have missed this post. I had expected to get an email notification from Chess.com, but did not notice anything. T9 appears to be full now. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. Disappointed to have missed out 😭.