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@FunnyAnimatorJimTV depiction of Lichess4545 League Members

Meet the 4545er who is Big in Japan

ChessTournamentChess Personalities
Another week brings us another 4545 Interview with a league player conducted by our resident reporter, @fork2020. Plus, the registrations for Season 43 are now open!

As season 42 ends, we have another interview for you! The player being interviewed Is a season 39 champion. (Interviewers note: I am not biased towards the season 39 champions.) This player also is a notable member of the newly revived streamer community. Can you guess the player?

If you guessed @MilsBees, you are wrong. While MilsBees is a league streamer and a season 39 champion, he was just interviewed last week. No, the answer is @Flipiflapi!

Tell us a bit about yourself and/or your chess play:

I’m a South African living in Japan for about ~8 years now (always makes scheduling tricky). Started chess after bringing a wooden chess board back from a visit to family and then seeing Hikaru drawing a million arrows on-stream, and down the rabbit hole I went. I got lucky in finding the 4545 community and in finding some great teammates in gavalanche20 and Meeklydim some years ago. Also leading to my realization of how amazing these online relationships could be. My chess isn’t anything special, but I enjoy sometimes looking back and realizing the slow evolution in play that comes with time.

You are one of the forces behind the rebirth of the streaming community. What has that been like?

Super fun, very surprising, totally unplanned. I played a French CM & YouTuber at a tournament here in Japan (Kyoto Gion Open 2024 – Round 6 game vs Julien Song). Seeing them walk around recording themselves reminded me of the videos I used to make after first moving to Japan. I decided to stop considering and just enjoy it again, and so made some recaps of my games for YouTube. Around the same time, I saw jg777 talking about streaming in #general and looking for others who were interested. So, we got talking, then Tranzoo pulled into the driveway with snacks (and admin powers), and suddenly boom – streaming mania! As things usually go, I expect the hype will die down over time, but we are doing this for fun after all so let's just enjoy! Come have a look in #4545-streaming and join the fun in whatever capacity you feel like.

You are a member of season 39's winning team "Senior dogs that can't get onto the couch (or sofa if you're British) anymore due to their bad knees". Do you have any experiences from that season that you want to share?

We put a lot of thought and opinions into this name (: That season the team did well on the board, but more importantly did amazingly in the slack ;) Out of necessity we innovated with “THE PREP THREAD” to contain Feet_Barbie and others, and in which thread-length records were eventually broken. We all tried and failed to beat Lone_ranger at movie quizzes, and somehow, we won the league in between it all after losing the final match even. This team also led to the Gary-Wars in the #fantasy league - a story of pain and sorrow for everyone except gary0892, who also remained undefeated on the board in a following season when faced with a team called “Still only here to beat gary0892”. Honestly, I don’t remember anything about the chess anymore, but the relationships and fun memories remain.

Which of your games this season is your favorite?

This season has had a lot of fun games (even though I’ve drawn/lost most of them). Although if you’ll let me I would rather point to my most memorable league game

https://lichess.org/JX0Bc3Z7/black

I don’t think anyone will point to this as a masterclass of any sort, but it was the decider game in the last week that could clinch the league win for my team. We had a ton of spectators, and somehow, I swindled a win from a terrible attacking idea – only to have the league win disappear when one of my teammates was flagged for cheating after season closing. Although we didn’t win anything in the end, there were a few days there where I felt like a rockstar ^^

As we close the season, what are three things that you think this season will be remembered for?

Streaming hype (#4545-streaming)
FunnyAnimatorJimTV’s drawing (Interviewers note: See the title image.)
Low drama season overall, which is always a blessing. (Interviewers note: this interview occurred before two “championship teams” were dethroned due to fair play decisions. Thank you to the Lichess moderators and our league moderators for detecting fair play violations and adjusting the league standings, respectively.)

Which league player would you most like to see interviewed in a future edition of the ledger?

Meeklydim – incidentally the one who made the awesome thumbnails for some of my videos (You’ll notice which ones I mean).

Which league player do you most respect?

There are many people putting in their personal time and energy to make this community and all its parts keep moving. For me, I will highlight Mori, as I am very aware of their efforts from the LoneWolf side specifically but also just in general (I would also respect MilsBees so would point to him if he wasn’t so young and handsome and had a beautiful puppy, but considering these I am mostly just jealous).

Please give us a nugget of wisdom.

I’ll come in with a double: Be unapologetically passionate about your interests + Get out of your own way a bit more and just try things.

How would you react if your opponent suddenly turned into a pumpkin mid-game?

Online, I would do my best to waffle for the remainder of their time since I’m streaming and pumpkins aren’t known for their ability to input chess moves. If OTB, I would scream “You’re a wizard Harry!”, make sure it’s my opponent’s turn and then go for a coffee nearby to relax for the next round.


Registration for Season 43 is now open! Come join us and register at this link.

Lichess4545 is an online chess league for people who like playing long time control games online. Players are assigned to teams and play one game per week with a 45+45 time control. For more information visit our league home page.
LoneWolf is a side league of the Lichess4545 league. It is an 11-round Swiss tournament where players play one game per week with a 30+30 time control. For more information about the LoneWolf tournament visit the LoneWolf homepage.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA).
Interview conducted by @fork2020