Erica's Horde Diary 2

1. The horde shield

A shield is a monthly event on lichess. 197 horde enjoyers took part in the July shield arena, which was won by fastandfurious2021 (rating is over 2600 points!).
I am still not a good player and most opponents are stronger than me. But I have a feeling that it is easier to play as black than white, at least when the time control is 3 + 2. Adding time every move kills all hope of winning on time as white. According to the analysis, white has the advantage at the beginning but it is very difficult to keep that advantage.

2. Some of the games

I am not a good player, and not a native English speaker, please forgive me if I am not making much sense. I am just sharing some thoughts about some games in the horde shield.

This game was a disaster for me. I tried the side pawn opening, everything went pretty well. I feel that generally it is OK to trade pawns as white as long as black is not getting the queen to the back rank too early. I kept pushing forward and had the advantage until I found the wrong plan. I distracted the black rook, but somehow missed black's Qc5 move and in panic, I missed the last chance (35.d6). Then my far advanced pawns were easily stopped. This shows that it is very important to keep calm during the game.

This game and other similar games show that I probably need to change my opening plan as black. Maybe more experience is needed. Whenever a pawn gets to f6/c6 I try to trade it off, but that is often a bad idea. I need to rethink about my opening plans.

Top players can catch every mistake I make. It was better to play 5.h5, allowing the bishop for two pawns trade. I was too afraid of these trades but keeping the structure is more important. White cannot allow an early invasion by the black rook and queen along the side files. Once I got into a worse position after the tenth move, I was given no more chances.

Next I am going to show some games played by top players.

This is an example of the "doing nothing" idea by black. Black leaves the choice to white and gains precious time while moving the rooks back and forth. Theoretically white should be able to punish black (obviously), but practically it is very hard to find the correct plan, and it is difficult to break through black's pawn wall. In this game white allowed both side files to be opened, this freezes all the side pawns, which might be bad. The b4 and b3 pushes were unnecessary and they were probably the game-deciding blunders. In the end black was able to stop the center pawns and destroy the structure from the back.

This is an example of punishing the previous idea. White was very patient, slowing pushing all the pawns forward during the "doing nothing" period. The deciding moment came when black sacrificed the rook (move 40), white used the zwichenzug idea to force the queen away and captured the rook for free. The rest was simple and black could not deal with all the far advanced pawns with just a rook and a queen. Notice that white is very good at punish this idea, similar games include where the black king got checkmated by the horde of pawns!

https://lichess.org/c090sZz1/
This is an example of timing out. So it is still possible to win on time as white. In losing positions, it is recommended to make the position as complicated as possible, like white did in this game. White got into a worse position after hesitating to take the rook (well, I might be wrong but a rook is a rook, if you do not take it it will take more pawns). But white used the queen side pawns to create counterattack and black failed to defend the threats without timing out.

This is an example of a successful side file breakthrough. Black's queen side breakthrough plan was very clear, and white failed to create enough counterattack chances. The knights can be very useful to open up lines and create the rook-queen setup for the breakthrough, and some maneuvering might be needed, as can be seen here. The game is still not over and black gave white a chance. White missed the g7 idea and had to resign after giving a free pawn. The lesson is: do not give up hope, no matter how hopeless it looks like.

Strangely the winner and runner-up did not get paired even once. So I shall end this part with a random game.

This is an example of a stalemate trick. White decided not to capture a free bishop in the opening but the position was still ok (according to analysis board) until the black queen got to c5. Black was then able to get to the back rank easily, and white did not have anything — but black did not take the a3 pawn in time, allowing stalemate ideas. After the 45th move white was able to force either a stalemate or a promotion. And in the end, a rook and a queen are obviously not enough to trap a queen, considering there is no such thing as a white king! The game lasted for more than 100 moves but all the later moves were effectively meaningless.

3. Studies

My friends showed me the study feature on lichess and it is great. There are studies about everything, and I shall list some studies about horde here:

This is recently trending. It mainly talks about how to defend as black.

There are many instructive puzzles here.

A study about d5 and e5.

"Shuffling", I called it the "doing nothing" idea in this blog.

All the games of the 2020 world horde championship final.

Detailed introduction to the horde openings.

4. Random words

The purpose of this blog is just to keep record, I guess. My next goal is still 1700 points and eligibility of the world championship. I want to have a chance to play against the best players, it can be very exciting.

In my opinion, having fun matters more than getting better. So again, I hope you are having fun, and I shall post some more blogs in the future, whenever I want to.