A longtime Board 1 heavyweight meets an experienced Lichess4545 veteran taking on the league’s top board for the first time in our latest community selected Game of the Month.
Welcome to our monthly 4545 GOTM blog post!
Another month brings another game worthy of the spotlight! This time we head back to Round 7 of Season 49 and get the chance to celebrate two familiar members of the Lichess4545 community.
Game Review
This month’s featured game comes from Round 7 of Season 49 and gives us a chance to spotlight two familiar members of the Lichess4545 community: @alp_arslan92, playing Board 1 for, We eat our pawns with a fork and @Magagna of The Fork-Ty Niners. Their teams entered the round with identical 2–3–1 match records, making this late season meeting a struggle as each team tried to improve their team's standings going into the final round.
The matchup also brought together two players with very different histories on the league’s top board. Alp is something of a Board 1 heavyweight around Team League, with years of experience facing some of the strongest players in our community and nearly 100 Team League games to his name. He was also part of the Season 37 championship winning b2 or not b2 squad.
Magagna, meanwhile, was taking on Board 1 for the first time in Season 49. Their previous Team League appearances in Seasons 32 and 33 had come on Board 2, but they were hardly new to online chess or to the Lichess4545 community. Their Lichess account dates all the way back to 2015, and Magagna brought a wealth of experience from LoneWolf, where they had played 114 games and scored 65½ points. Between Team League and LoneWolf, Magagna had already been a familiar presence in the community leagues for years before making the move to Board 1.
Heading into Round 7, Alp held a 4–2 record for the season and was rated 2351, while Magagna entered at 2084, a sizeable 267-point difference between the two Board 1 players. Magagna had faced a challenging Season 49 to that point, but ratings and records are only part of the story. One of the things we love most about Team League is that every round gives members of our community a fresh chance to sit down for a serious 45+45 game and create something memorable.
That spirit is exactly what our Game of the Month feature is meant to celebrate. This game was nominated and chosen by members of the community as one worth revisiting. So, with a Board 1 veteran on one side, an experienced community player taking on the top board for the first time on the other, and 267 rating points separating them, there was plenty to make this Round 7 encounter worth a closer look.
