-(Bruce A. Moon)
Winning a Hive chess tournament is an achievement, but defending it the next week is an entirely different challenge. Over the past two weeks I've been able to do that. Securing top spot in the Chess960 hive chess event and most recent, the hive swiss standard 4+0 chess tournament held yesterday. It was particularly close-I finished first, but on tiebreaks, as another Hivean finished on 8/9 too.
Adapting To a New Style
I can't lie my approach was a bit different yesterday. Due to the absence of the beserk button, I had to play alot different. I rely on my fast, aggressive play on a normal day, but without beserk, I tried to be more solid and wait for the wins to come to me. I used my time and played standard lines, it helped me., the change in style proved to be efficient as most of my games didn't end in a blow out, it was more of grinded victories.
A Tough Battle against @stayoutoftherz
A prime example of the style of play I used is my game against our Hive chess host. From the start, I had no real advantage—he plays the Caro-Kann exceptionally well, and his solid play made it difficult to find weaknesses.
(Note to self: avoid 1.e4 against him next time.) If berserk had been an option, I likely would have lost due to the difficulty of breaking through his position quickly. However as the game wore on, he made a small positional mistake, allowing me to exploit the only weakness on his side before he could take advantage of mine.
In tight, maneuvering positions like this, knights are often superior,and I was a bit fortunate I exploited his postional weakness first. It was a hard-fought game overall.
The One That Got Away
Of course, no tournament is perfect, the only game I lost was a complete demolition from start to finish. @maestroask came at me like it was a revenge mission. No matter what counterplay I tried, he already had the answer. It was frustrating but only reminded me that in chess, sometimes you just get outplayed.
4 pawns down and nothing to show for it - his next move was Kg2 making sure I resigned few moves later
Conclusion
Winning two weeks in a row feels good, especially in different tournament style. I usually don't enjoy swiss because two losses and it you probably won't even get second place. In a arena,losses dont count much if you can go on a long winning streak and maybe play faster or in beserk mode. This tournament was a close call, but in the end, my adaptation and strategy worked. On to the next challenge, see you next week!
_I am @samostically,I love to talk and write about chess because i benefited alot from playing chess.
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I do not even know how to play chess, and I am hearing about this hive chess for the first time. That shows how inactive I am on the blockchain. I guess the the hive chess is not for me afterall, but the way I keep finding out about new things that I never knew about in the blockchain lately keeps pointing to the fact that I have been too unserious