Round 3 of the 2018 Crazyhouse World Championship is drawing to a close. This year-long event organised by FischyVishy will determine the 8 candidates who will join last year’s runner-up TwelveTeen from Canada and third-place IM opperwezen from Holland in a 9-round-robin Candidates tournament later this year, the winner of which will face incumbent crazyhouse World Champion JannLee (Justin Tan from Australia) who won last year’s inaugural Championship. The format for qualifying to the Candidates is a double-elimination knockout, each match comprising 10 games of 3+2. If a match is tied at 5-5, 2 more games are played, and again, until the tie is broken. Round 3 saw 16 matches in the winners’ bracket and 48 matches in two elimination rounds among players who had already lost an earlier match, and facing elimination if they lost again. So that’s 64 matches in all and we can only hope to give you a taste of all the action.
The story of the round was the upset of much-loved streamer and lately turned Grandmaster penguingim1 (American teenager Andrew Tang) at the hands of FM amaidel (the talented Russian Anton Maidel from St. Petersburg).
In game 3, amaidel found a nice mate (Puzzle #1):
penguingim1 responded with a mate in 8 combination in game 4:
Coincidentally, this match was the only action in round 3 of the Crazyhouse World Championship caught on stream by JannLee who commentated on games 5-10 at the back-end of one of his training videos.
The first 9 games all went to white, with Vempele joking after 6 games that now the players were just playing for fun as White had already progressed to the next round. It looked odds-on that amaidel would win as Black in game 8 but for a defensive blunder. Which two moves maintain your advantage here as Black (Puzzle #2)? Can you refute the alternatives?
amaidel bounced back from his error to take game 9 as White before breaking the deadlock in game 10 to take the match 6-4. The story of game 10, annotated here, was the downfall of penguingim1’s f4:
The biggest comeback of the round was from GM Arka50 who was 0-4 and 2-5 down against atamek, but managed to tie the match at 5-5 only to fall behind 5-6. But with three more wins in a row, he took the match 8-6. Like all the round 3 winners he is only two more wins away from a possible place in the Candidates! Hailing from Switzerland, he was the Atomic World Champion in 2017, now testing his mettle in crazyhouse.
It is instructive to see how Arka50 went wrong in game 2 from a nice position which led to atamek taking control of the first half of their match. 23. RxN brought the black bishop onto a dangerous diagonal and Black took control. But notice how Black has no diagonal pieces, while white has plenty, so an attack on the dark squares would have quickly decimated Black’s position:
In game 6, atamek found a nice mate (Puzzle #3):
Arka50 hit back in kind in game 12 to equalize the match for the second time (Puzzle #4):
Looking back on the match, atamek will rue especially his opportunity in game 10 when 5-4 in the lead:
The match to be long-remembered was the titanic struggle between Fumitoks and NM blitzbullet (real name Jalen Wang), a Candidate last year who was unfortunate to only tie JannLee 5-5 in their head-to-head in the 2017 tournament because in game 10 he had auto-queen on. Fumitoks and blitzbullet had never played before (at least not on lichess) and Fumitoks won the first three games including two games as black, so blitzbullet knew if he didn’t already that he had a challenge ahead of him. In game 3, blitzbullet ceded both position and initiative with 23. Nec5. To maintain both, what would you play instead as white here?
Fumitoks found a really pretty mating sequence to take a 5-2 lead:
This left blitzbullet one game away from relegation to the elimination bracket, but he won the next game with a pretty mate of his own which turned into a four-game streak to lead 6-5. For Puzzle #5, find the blitzbullet mate:
As spectators, it looked like the fun was over for Fumitoks, but the latter wrapped up game 12 as white with a scintillating attack on the dark squares. Look at 19. @g5! and 20. Nfxe5! smashing through black’s position:
White continued to win the next eleven games. Game 14 was a crazy time scramble with blitzbullet as black dominating almost the whole game, but for one moment in time pressure, before losing on time whilst up four pawns, a rook and a queen and just dodging checks.
As the match wore on, players began to resign games when they thought their position was hopeless which is uncommon in crazyhouse because without a mate in sight anything can happen. But white kept winning! In game 24, blitzbullet got the edge as Black, but then lost it again. On move 21, Fumitoks played @e6 to block the e-file, but after BxP, he needed PxB RxP QxR to maintain initiative. Another interesting idea, however, perhaps even stronger, was 21. @h7:
So blitzbullet won game 24 as black to seal the match 13-11! Epic match!
garnek123 against profz was also a huge match-up. For Puzzle #6, where should garnek123 have stepped with his king to avoid the mate that followed?
garnek123 took the match 6-4 with strong play. In the following position there was an even shorter mate to the one he found. Can you spot it?
Now let’s step up the difficulty of the puzzles a little. Mugwort beat Kleerkast, also 6-4 (see his recap video), but he missed a mate as White here (Puzzle #7):
Any crazyhouse fan should follow Mugwort Crazyhouse as well as of course JannLee Crazyhouse and helmsknight on YouTube for elite crazyhouse content. There is also okei's crazy house where some CWC live streams have been uploaded lately.
Returning to the action, IM lovlas found a nice mate against xuanet (Puzzle #8):
But xuanet was not to be outdone and won their match 9-1 including finding mate here (Puzzle #9):
IM lovlas did however miss a mate along the way (Puzzle #10):
FeegLood - ciw was a battle between a chess grandmaster and a crazyhouse specialist, and as with mathace - larso in round 2, the chess player came out stronger. ciw found many pretty moves. For example, can you guess what he played here as White (Puzzle #12):
FeegLood also stepped the wrong way in a complex position. Where is safe for the white king (Puzzle #13)?
However, FeegLood came up with the goods including this pretty finish (Puzzle #14):
Another thrilling encounter was between mastertan and terra87. Can you find terra87’s mate here (Puzzle #15)?
As Mugwort commented during the match: “I feel like terra makes a concerted effort to play positionally and controlled but the game always ends up completely chaotic”. In one game, mastertan dominated the whole game but with a mis-step of his king to e6, terra87 had a freaky mating opportunity:
Our choice for game of round 3 is this terra87 - mastertan rollercoaster, annotated below:
Another candidate for game of the round was this masterclass by IM HighContrast against TCubesAK:
TCubesAK fought back to tie the match at 3-3, finding mate here (Puzzle #16):
Although, TCubesAK had the last word, winning game 10, HighContrast proved too strong overall taking their match 6-4, including an accurate finish here finding mate in 6 (Puzzle #17):
There were other great matches, like Vempele defeating pknm 6-4, littleplotkin defeating TaylorEternity 7-3, gsvc putting up a really strong showing taking down apterigo 8-2, sexy_and_I_know_it defeating arjelol 7-3, and most impressive of all retardedplatypus123 taking down the higher-seeded B0N0B0 surprisingly comfortably 6-2. For the full results of both the winners’ and elimination brackets, see the table below.
To see what matches lie ahead, check out the draw and the calendar of upcoming matches. All matches can be viewed on the TV of the respective players on lichess.org and you can join in the live voice and text chat in the House Discord. Do join up! And do keep playing and watching crazyhouse!
—okei (with MMichael)
Key to Puzzles
Puzzle #1: Q@d7 Kf8 Nxe6+ PxN @g7++
Puzzle #2: Be7 or Q@e7; R@e7 as played falls to @d7+ Kd8 N@f7+ RxN Qe8++
Puzzle #3: R@g1+ RxR Ng3++
Puzzle #4: Qd1+ NxQ N@e2++
Puzzle #5: N@f3 Kxh3 (gxf3 Q@g2++) Q@h2 BxQ QxB++
Puzzle #6: Ka5
Puzzle #7: QxN+ KxQ NxQ+ Kf7 (Kf8 R@g8+ Ke7 B@d8+ Kd6 Q@e7++) Q@f6+ Ke8 N@g7+ Kd8 Nd5+ @e7 Qxe7++
Puzzle #8: QxR PxQ B@f6+ @g7 R@g8+ RxR PxR=Q KxQ @f7+ Kf8 R@g8++
Puzzle #9: QxR+ KxQ N@e5+ Kf8 @g7+ NxP PxN+ Kg8 (KxP R@f7+ Kh8 Bf6+ @g7 Bxg7 Kg8 N@h6++) N@h6+ KxP R@g8++
Puzzle #10: N@f6+ opening a hole on g7, followed by N@e7+, @g7+ and B@h6+
Puzzle #11: Qxf3 PxQ Qxf3+ Bf2 @g2 Kg1 @h2 Kxh2 B@g3 Kg1 @h2++
Puzzle #12: N@g1!
Puzzle #13: Kd1! (Ke1 Bxe3! and Black is better)
Puzzle #14: Ne2+ Kh1 Nxg3++
Puzzle #15: N@g2+ RxN (NxN Nfxg2+ and Black exchanges queens with check) Nhxf3++
Puzzle #16: R@h8 KxR Bhg7+ Kg8 N@h6++
Puzzle #17: R@d8+ QxR QxQ+ KxQ N@c6+ PxN NxP+ Kd7 N@e5+ Kd6 Q@c5++
An interactive study of all the puzzles & positions found in this blog may be found here.
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