TMC Cash League Round 2 Overview

After coming off a nice Round 1 win, my team came in confident into this match.

The team we would be playing in round 2 is definitely on the weaker side when compared with our roster- however this team should still be taken seriously especially with Andrew Tang on board 1 and very solid players on 2 and 3.

Board 1: BTRex2010 vs Penguingim1

Because of how strong Andrew is, I knew that he would most likely 2-0 anyone on our roster. This is why I moved myself up to board 1, acting like a sacrifice so board 2 and 3 have a stronger chance of winning.

Game 1:

Game 2:

Not really much commentary needed here, I completely got blown off the board but it sure was a privilege playing such a strong opponent.

This makes our overall score 0-2

Board 2: ProjectNaoki vs SacrificialNinja101

Coming into the match Naoki is the clear favorite, with his opponent around 200 points lower than him.

Game 1:

This game did not go well for Naoki at all. After getting into a rather miserable position in the opening to getting outplayed in the endgame, Naoki was extremely lucky to win this game. His opponent tried repeating moves multiple times in a winning position, but Naoki ambitiously declined and all that was going through my head was "what is this guy thinking??" In the end, it became an intense time scramble where his opponent blundered his advantage away and ran out of time.

Game 2:

After a chaotic first game, Naoki's opponent allegedly told him to give him a few mins to "cool off". Naoki found this disrespectful, so what he did this game was he played a6 h6 to disrespect him as well and he ended up winning the game. That surely was a message for the other team.

The match is now tied 2-2

Board 4: PersonallyGabe vs stoneperson56

With the match tied and both opponents around the same rating, without a doubt these games would be the most important in the match.

Game 1:

The first game starts off with a bang. After 20 moves both players were blundering all over the place, but after all the chaos settled it was PersonallyGabe with the advantage and he converted the endgame leading him to win the first match.

Game 2:

To say this game was entertaining is an understatement. How does one go from being down 2 minor pieces while having 5 seconds vs 50 to a completely winning 4 pawns vs 3 king endgame to somehow finding the worst possible king moves and losing the endgame! Even though we lost, that sure was fun as hell watching it live.

The match is now tied 3-3

Board 3: Misterfox120 vs Van_eck

I was really expecting misterfox to come out with a 2 or 1.5 against his opponent, even though his opponent is 2300. After seeing what misterfox could do in round 1, it was expected that it would be a walk in the park to get a + score. However, things did not go as expected.

Game 1:

In this case, because their board 5 is so weak, it was completely okay to just play for a draw. Not much excitement with this game, however van_eck did play pretty solid against a stronger opponent for sure.

Game 2:

With the white pieces, misterfox gets into a quick lead as he is up a pawn. His opponent blunders, making misterfox's position ever more dominant, and it looks like misterfox would easily convert this position. Then the worst thing happens. Misterfox mouseslips ne4 on move 24 and blunders his knight in one move. Titled by such a mistake, he is unable to hold a draw and loses the game.

We are now down 3.5-4.5

Board 5: TheEpicMallow vs Mysterynae

This should've been the easiest match by far. TheEpicMallow who is around 1800 is playing Mysterynae, someone who is literally 800 on chess.com. And no disrespect to the 800s out there- but we all know how they play. I'm not even sure if they can even checkmate with 2 queens! With all this said, if epicmallow wins both games, we would win the match 5.5-4.5.

Game 1:

Surprisingly, the 800 played quite well the first 15 moves. However, it was only a matter of time until he blundered a piece, and epic won easily afterwards.

Game 2:

I don't know what was going on with epic mallow in this game. It felt like his brain just completely turned off! To be honest, the 800 did play extremely well, but that was only because epic was making the position so easy to play for black. Going into a dead draw endgame, I would think that epic mallow's endgame technique should be much better than the 800's but he completely gets outplayed. He got extremely lucky in the end though, with the 800 stalemating him.

what an upset.

After the game....

"I'm f****** stupid"
"yeah i'm quitting"
"im ashamed"

- The last words of TheEpicMallow before leaving our team group chat.

I tried to talk with him to convince him to come back, but he simply said that he's too embarrassed to come back.

We now have no board 5, but the good news is that we have a bye next round so we have time to find a replacement.

If you wish to participate in this league and you are in the range of 1750-1857, please message me ASAP and I will try my best to get you into my team.

Conclusion

The match ended 5-5.

This week did not go our way at all. The last 2 matches were disasters and the recent news does not make our situation any better whatsoever. My team really needs to get some momentum going after this brutal draw.

On the bright side of things, we are extremely lucky we did not lose this, and a draw isn't bad at all. In the end, we don't need to beat every single team we play to advance to the playoffs- we just need a relatively good win rate.

I hope you enjoyed the round 2 overview, and due to the bye week we have next round, the next blog probably won't be until another 3-4 weeks.

Thanks for reading!