Erica's Horde Diary 1

• 1. My first thoughts

My friends encouraged me to write blogs on this website, lichess. My English is not the best so please tolerate my mistakes.
I am not a good chess player. This does not stop me from enjoying it. I may be "not so smart", but who cares? I think the same can be said to many players. We play chess for fun, results matter but chess is not totally about winning.
There are quite a few different modes on this website. These are called variants, and one of my favourites is "horde". I have the most number of points in this mode. According to dictionary, it means a big group of people. It makes sense because there are many pawns in this game mode. My blog will be about this mode.
The purpose of my blog is just to store some thoughts and possibly train my English writing. And maybe my blog can show that even beginners can have fun playing chess. I hope you are enjoying chess when reading this.

• 2. My thoughts about horde

It is a very exciting game mode. At start, white has 4 rows of pawns plus 4 more, which means white has 36 pawns in total. Black has the normal pieces, which consists of 2 rooks, knights, bishops, a queen, a king, and 8 pawns, which is 39 points plus a king in total. So naturally, it feels that black should be better and at least 3 more white pawns need to be added. I do not know why white does not have 5 rows of pawns. I heard that black is generally better in this mode, so 5 rows of pawns can be more logical. The game ends if white loses all the pawns, or black gets checkmated, or normal draw conditions like stalemate, repetition, 50 moves or insufficient material. (A black king itself is sufficient material but a white pawn or queen itself is not)
But because the start position cannot be changed, there are many ways of playing. From what I have experienced, there are two following strategies for white. The first one is to push through on one side (or center) and neglect all other pawns. The second one is to push all pawns slowly to avoid a breakthrough by black. Similarly, there are also two strategies for black. One is to sacrifice pieces and break through the side pawns, and get a queen to a1 or h1. The other is to do nothing and wait until white gives pawns away. This is not a joke, it happens sometimes, it is very easy to get into a situation named "zugzwang", which means white would rather move nothing. There is an additional strategy in quick games for white, which is just to move mindlessly and wait until black times out. After all, it is very hard to take all 36 pawns in half a minute. Some people can do it, I cannot. So, do not choose the option named "berserk" (scissors icon) in one minute arenas, when playing as black. For black, the second strategy is obviously better in quick games. I have seen people move rook back and forth and win. I am not joking.

• 3. My thoughts about horde games

Firstly, I am going to show how the best players can beat me easily as black.

I do not really know which opening is best, but it looks like the moves are almost the same for the first few moves. In the database given, 1.d5 is the most common move and is the only move that gives white more winning chances than black. But this is not saying that other moves like e5 or even h5 are bad. I think is a game about "planning", a good player can make the advantage bigger and bigger after each move and win slowly.
Black immediately traded, I did not know what to do so played a5, which was a bad move and apparently gave black the advantage. Black then found a good plan. The h-file can be opened, and black sacrificed the knight to get two pawns. The analysis shows that I should create a breakthrough on the queen side, instead I did nothing and got punished very easily. The king side pawns were very weak and black moved the rook and queen together and sacrificed to get the queen into my back rank. After that it was very hard to defend everything and my pawns were easily stopped. This is an example of the side-breaking strategy. I am still trying to learn to defend against this strategy. That is the magic of horde: every move may be ok on its own but an advantage needs to built by making a good plan. Even the analysis board cannot see some ideas sometimes.
Secondly, I am going to show how they play as white.

I often play b6 a5 as black, this at least allows some space. But the c6 pawn can be very annoying. I tried to trade it as soon as possible but that was apparently not good. White chose the slow strategy and pushed all pawns slowly. My opponent did not allow any breakthrough by queen, and although I got a bishop to the back rank, it got trapped pretty easily. So clearly it is not so good to trade pieces for pawns without opening any line.
And then I shall show a game played by the best players. White, Rayholt, is the top player on horde players list now.

As you can see, black also played the "side triangle", but white decided to close the center. White allowed the queen breakthrough, and continued the own plan : breaking through on the king side. The white pawns became far advanced in the middle files, and all black pawns were traded. White just threatened the black pieces consistently and the black queen was unable to help. So white queened quickly. Normally in horde, having one queen equals a win for white, unless black still has many pieces or white has too few pawns left.
Therefore, a queen breakthrough does not equal to a black win, the queen can be inactive when it is taking the back rank pawns.
Finally I shall show my best game so far.

The opening was very normal. My first mistake was taking "en passant", which is possibly not a good move generally in horde. But who can resist "en passant"? Then I tried to push the backwards pawns until they are advanced enough to win pieces. The b4 fork was possibly bad because a piece can happily sacrifice itself for two pawns. Taking the bishop was bad because it allows a queen breakthrough. But then I started to push in the center, black decided to castle king side but this allowed be to push more freely. (A king can be very useful to stop the pawns.) We both had mistakes, I allowed the queen to get back and defend, my opponent did not find the correct plan (sacrificing one rook) but allowed my three center pawns to get to seventh rank. After getting he queen, I did not find the quickest way to win but still took advantage of the back rank mate possibility, and got the mate!

• 4. My thoughts about variants and the future of this blog

My role model on this website is Ingrid-Vengeance, who is possibly the best horde player on this website. In fact, my friends told me about "the girl who is good at every variant" not long after I started trying different modes. I cannot be as good as her ever in any variant (I am not the smartest, possibly a little dumb), but I can at least enjoy the variants like her. She is an inspiration.
I also like the current horde champion (at least according to my friend), who is Sinamon73. I was invited to a "server" (which is a forum with many topics) on Discord and he is the main character in the "horb" (which means horde but I still do not know the origin) part. He is very nice and is willing to help the players.
In my opinion it is not needed to argue who is really the best horde player. Each top player has a way of playing and they have wins and losses against each other. There are also many players with yellow titles in the players list. I do not know the requirements of joining the horde championship (is it 1700 points?), but my first purpose is going to be achieving the requirements.
I shall continue to write "diaries" whenever I am willing to. I will be talking about my thoughts on games and events, like the "shield" or similar big arenas.