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Kickoff to the TMC Cash League - Round 1 Overview

ChessAnalysisTournament
D1 throwers vs Bruzeland

OVERVIEW


The Moon Club cash league is a league hosted by discord.gg/moonclub where teams of 5 compete against each other in separate divisions. It consists of 27 teams, with 7 teams in division 1, 2, and 3 and 6 teams in division 4.

Players play their corresponding board of the other team in a 3+1 2 game match. The result will be accumulated in the team's total score, and the team with the most amount of points wins the match. In the case of a tie (5-5), the result of the match will be a draw. Each division will play a round robin with teams within their division.

The top 4 teams of each division based on the amount of wins in the round robin will advance to the knockout stage and try to work their way up to the final.


ROUND 1


My team, also known as the D1 throwers, were paired up with Bruzeland on the first round.

Right off the bat I knew this would be a tough match. Bruzeland's team members ratings were all very close to ours, meaning we really had to push to win our matches.


BOARD 5 - THEEPICMALLOW VS SHAWN37


TheEpicMallow is mainly a rapid player- with a peak of 2150 in rapid it shows he's a pretty serious chess player. The only problem is how he will do in a time control he has almost 0 experience with; 3+1.

His opponent, Shawn37 is also a pretty solid player. Hovering around a consistent rating of 1800 blitz, it won't be easy for TheEpicMallow to get an advantage on him.

So the first game starts. They get into a drawn bishop endgame where TheEpicMallow blunders a pawn and all of a sudden Shawn takes the lead! However, Shawn offers a bishop trade which leads TheEpicMallow in a drawn king endgame! Unfortunately, he is unable to hold and ends up blundering and Shawn takes the first game.
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2nd game. The pressure is on. With none of the games played in the overall team match, losing this game will result in immense pressure on the other boards to perform.

He locks in and clutches up the 2nd game dominantly with a great 93% accuracy absolutely destroying his opponent.

The match is now tied 1-1.


BOARD 3 - BTREX2010 VS SHMOOLIK


Going into this match I knew I was extremely washed up. I took a break from online chess for a long time, and only played a few over the board tournaments the past year.

When trying to get back into chess, I dropped a miserable 100 points bringing my blitz rating sub 2400. However, this still should be enough to beat my opponent, who is only around 2100 on chess.com.

Game 1 was extremely shaky. I got a bit cocky from the start knowing I was playing a lower rated player, and I got into a miserable position. I managed to pull off an attack on the kingside and eventually found a mating net.

Game 2 was where it all fell down. I got into a boring position out the opening, managed to activate my pieces and get into a comfortable winning position. All is good right?

NO. It is NOT ALL GOOD. After trading rooks, I expected him to take with the knight as taking with the queen would lead to him losing a pawn, so I was hovering over the square I would move my queen too.

But he took with the queen. And I didn't react fast enough. I lifted my finger off my cursor leading my queen to go on b4 with his queen on c3, hanging a queen. I lost the game because of this. An easy, light game, that should've been 2-0 without any effort whatsoever did not go well at all.
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This puts our score to 2-2, giving the other 3 boards crazy pressure to perform.


BOARD 1 - MISTERFOX120 VS WILLZEITNOT


Although it may seem like misterfox120 is a weak 2200, you would be completely wrong. Misterfox120 is actually an FM with a rating of 2600+ blitz on chess.com, making him a good competitor for his opponent.

However, his opponent, WillZeitnot, is a skilled NM who mainly plays bullet. With a peak of almost 3200 bullet and 2700 blitz, this was going to be a tough match for misterfox.

With WillZeitnot as a favorite for this game, and the match is tied up at 2-2, misterfox knew he really had to bring his A game in order to keep our team alive with winning chances.

Game 1 was a steady long draw. In an endgame where both opponents were under 5 seconds, both managed to hold until insufficient material.

Game 2 was an important one as usual. misterfox had the white pieces, the match is all tied up, and he built some confidence from the first game. On move 10, Will blunders giving misterfox a +2 advantage. However, he is unable to capitalize and the game is back to a draw. This leads the game to go into a sharp endgame where under pressure Will blunders with 30 seconds left and misterfox is able to find the winning move and capitalize even under time pressure. He wins the game, making the score of the match a solid 1.5-0.5
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This makes the overall score 3.5-2.5, with mixterfox leading this match 1.5-0.5


BOARD 2 - PROJECTNAOKI VS DETERRING


5.5 is the score to win it. Going into this match, naoki knew that if he were to win 2-0, we would automatically win the match.

Naoki's peak on chess.com is an impressive 2720, but his opponent was also quite strong, having a 2680 peak on chess.com as well. This would not be an easy match.

Game 1 begins. Naoki is streaming the match and is actively dealing with streaming problems! Distracted by this, he gets into a losing position but somehow bounces back with both players under time pressure and gets into a completely winning position. However, after all this, he is unable to find the winning move to promote his queen. image.png

With his stream fixed, game 2 starts. He gets into a favorable position out of the opening and has a very solid attack, leading deterring into a hard to play miserable position. As time goes on, deterring makes mistakes and eventually blunders his bishop, which naoki capitalizes on. Naoki converts easily and wins game 2.

This puts the match at 1.5-0.5 for Naoki and 5-3 overall


BOARD 4 - PERSONALLYGABE VS VERYTIREDCHESS


Because our team is at 5 points, the worst case scenario at this point is a 5-5 draw. However, Gabe is similar strength to his opponent so a 0-2 loss would be very unlikely, and 1 draw is all he needs for us to win the whole thing.

Gabe starts with a rather shaky start, but manages to get into a winning endgame which he converts even under time pressure. image.png
This makes our team win the match as we accumulated 6 points in total.

In theory, the next game doesn't really matter as we already won, but tiebreaks do exist in the league so it would be stupid if Gabe intentionally threw.

The next game is pretty dry and a draw throughout, but unfortunately Gabe's laptop dies leading his time to run out in a drawn rook endgame.

He still played very well and had a really clutch performance in the first game, making our team win round 1.


CONCLUSION


We beat Bruzeland 6-4, and considering the amount of throws we had, that is a very strong performance especially against one of the better teams in the division.

I hope you guys enjoyed this overview and I will be doing another blog like this for every match we play so stay tuned for the next one!

If you are interested in following this league all the pairings and standings are here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18j_PpxVXWFg7Wolqf-L95HNoBZIqq5tW/edit?gid=1074575984#gid=1074575984