Weekly THINK Blog Ep. 1
Reporting on Think Leagues Week One, Reposting Memes, And More!Welcome to the first edition of the new THINK Blog! As THINK's new official blogger, I'll take you each week for a tour of what's happened and happening around the league, offer the occasional exciting preview of what is to come, and hopefully make you want to smack your screen every once in a while. Hope you enjoy!
It's been a fairly exciting week of chess and activity in THINK. As the new month hits, THINK is kicking back into overdrive- leagues have resumed, the club championship is coming soon, and we have a new set of Ligas to compete in! So without further dallying, let's kick things of by looking at the state of the THINK Leagues in their inaugural week.
The Opening
Nobody can say that patzer chess doesn't get the heart racing. In League Two's first results of the week, @pn2206 and @ligemerrill did just that by reeling off three straight wins for the White pieces, each relatively straightforward. While you can check out all the games in every match in the studies below, I'll very selfishly bribe myself to highlight (and lightly annotate) my win in the second game of the match. After a tough loss in the first game where I took a rook that was handed to me by a mouseslip, only to mouseslip one back just a few moves later, I was feeling the need to play much more tactically precise chess, so I took full advantage of a slight opening misstep, and slowly applied kingside pressure until there were simply too many pieces all going for checkmate, and Black's position collapsed in just 23 moves.
No more games from that match need be reviewed.
Of course, League Two isn't the only hub for action. League One saw @iancmason make a statement win over @JeremyIsFishing in a 3.5-0.5 smackdown. After Jeremy held a draw in game one with White, Ian went on a tear to win three straight. While Ian clearly deserves credit for his strong start, my heart goes out to Jeremy, who seemed to play below his normal standards, and lost his last game in just eleven moves:
Of course, the real reason I feel bad for Jeremy is because he played the Old Benoni in this match, which has long been my favorite defense against 1. d4. You'll see me mixing things up more, now, as I'm playing more Benkos and Modern Benonis, but the Old Benoni will always have a place in my heart as an extremely underrated weapon, and I hate to see it lose like that. Such is life, though, and I wish Jeremy better luck with his Benonis in the subsequent matches!
League Three saw every player get a match win added to the scoreboard this week as @luka3916 withdrew from the tournament, opting instead of have a life and do undoubtedly much cooler things than read THINK blogs written by your resident patzer, to all the other resident patzers! Seeing as this was the first week, every player benefited equally from this. If this had occurred during the middle of the season, however, those whom Luka had already beaten would undoubtedly have been kicking themselves. Of course, there's an easy path to avoid this. Seeing as the only people who are apt to be annoyed at missing out on free points are those who already lost those points, if one simply wins all one's matches, one never has to kick oneself. I wonder why we don't see more people employing this method.
League Three also saw @DanielJarlskov sweep @Herbyrainer 3-0. Although Herby kept in games pretty well, heading to equal or just slightly disadvantageous endgames, one-move blunders showed the difference between a 1600 and a 2200. The following game exemplifies the others fairly well- a relatively even game, with Daniel getting a better-but-not-won position, Herby fighting back, and then a pretty little mate in two appears out of the blue as Daniel's rook and knight, likely looking innocuous to Herby, neatly for a net. With a formidable rating advantage over most of his competitors, Daniel appears close to a lock to promote, and is my pick to win the league.
League Four doesn't have any results as of right now when I'm writing this, so instead here's an XKCD comic. Not as good at chess, but a heck of a lot funnier than I am.
The Middlegame
Naturally, I would be amiss if I didn't take the opportunity of this middle section to discuss works in progress. Three September Ligas have occurred already, with a fourth set to occur by the time I publish this article. I personally haven't been able to rack up points, going +0 -7 =0 this month, but you didn't come here to read about patzer games. You want to hear about @Eniacknight's formidable lead in team scoring, how we're doing with the promotions and demotions of the league, and other generally interesting things.
Unfortunately for you, you don't get any of that. @Rankrotten bribed me, when he offered this job, with partial ownership of some bridge in Brooklyn, NY, that he's getting, to only cover his games. He requested that they be shown as flatteringly as possible. So, in twenty-four liga games this month, I (very flatteringly) present one win, lightly notated.! Statements as to whether or not it was his only win will go undisclosed.
I'd planned for an entire section on how amazing Rank was here, but since further showing of games may or may not disprove statements that may or may not say that Rank may or may not have only had one win, and I'd rather not risk losing my shares in that bridge. So that's all you get for Ligas this week. All hail Supreme Ruler Rankrotten, who definitely and for-sure-dly gets many many wins, beyond number, because he is very winning-y!
The Endgame
It has been made known unto me, by those who are possessed with the humours, that it is considered among scientific experts a good thing to be "funni." Those who have possession of these humours, who make "laffs" when I do not comprehend them, claim to be "funni."
Quite evidently, I am not "funni," neither do I cause people to make these so-called "laffs." However, I feel a certain sense of responsibility to indulge you in your inane urges, so I am asking those who know of these arcane arts to help me with such things. I will repost a so-called "meim" each week during this section, and offer credit to whomever sent it to me. If I feel I have made an exceptional "meim" myself, I will post it as well, but I am not possessed with humours, and I doubt my ability in this art form.
Okay, I don't know what the absolute heck I just wrote, I'm not going to change it. I'm on a "writing high-" where you get so caught up in your writing that you love every bit of it, and get progressively flowerier and dumber. In twenty-four hours you'll want to break your screen because of how dumb you sound, but I'm not there yet. :)
The point is, I'm going to be reposting chess memes, jokes, and humorous things that you guys want to put in here, and occasionally create some content of my own. I'll also be setting up betting lines and some other random fun stuff each week, depending on what I think of.
I'll tell one of my favorite chess jokes this week to start things off:
"There once was a chess master with a dear friend, both of whom were decently strong IMs. One day, the friend passed away (they were both quite old), and the chess master was sad (we'll call him John). Later that week, John heard a voice- it was Fred (what I'll call the friend)! 'Fred,' he asked, 'what is it?' 'Well, John, you should know that heaven's great! There are all these tournament halls, and you can play all the great champions of every day and age! I'm playing in a team battle on Saturday, against Lasker!' 'Wow, that sounds amazing!' 'Oh, Saint Peter just tapped my shoulder. He wanted me to let you know that you've been picked for his team on Saturday as well. You're already scheduled, so get ready to play Black against Capablanca in a few days. I advise against the Marshall.'"
Groans may commence.
Betting lines for next week's THINK League Two games! If these are popular, I'll do it for more, but I'm starting small.
@BorisOSpasky (+2) vs @ligemerrill
@pn2206 (-2.5) vs @jaggerdog
@cheesecake_assassin (-1.5) vs @custardshark
I think that's it for today, folks. Next week will be longer, have more stuff, be bigger and better in every way, but I'm testing the waters this week. Please give criticism!
See you next week!
