Season 9 of the ZH League

Season 9 of the zh team league was a shorter three-week season in anticipation of the upcoming 2021 Crazyhouse World Championship. But there were still four powerhouses in TheFinnisher, zyxon, blitzbullet & Kleerkast leading the four teams. As in previous editions of the league, board 1 played 2 games of 5+5, board 2 played 6+6 all the way down to board 7 playing 2 games of 11+11 zh. So there were 28 players in all as well as three alts who also got a match. For the second time in zh league history, we had an unbeaten team winning every game. The other three teams (Pocket Play, Okei Boomer & Zatramp) each secured one match win, separated only by tiebreaks (number of games won by each). 

Congratulations to Zhumbawamba for winning the Grand Slam in Season 9 with 6/6 match points and 30/42 game points (an impressive 71.4%). 

The winning team was made up of TheFinnisher, terra87, Bleichkind and jrpadhi on boards 1 to 4, Marlonc & abunickabhi sharing board 5, Zaraza & fgalla sharing board 6 & adande1 with his now legendary mate-dodging on board 7 (how is it that his opponents can never finish him off?). Congratulations to the Season 9 Champions! 

Individual shout-outs go to TheFinnisher top board 1 with 5/6, terra87 & LegionDestroyer equal-top board 2 with 5/6, Bleichkind top board 3 with 5/6, okei & pepellou sharing top board 4 with 4/6, Andrey2888, new to the league, was top board 5 with 5/6, no_seigen, also new, was top board 6 with 4/6, and last but not least adande1 was top board 7 with 5/6. 

As for season-wide statistics, Black won only 44% of games with the disadvantage for Black most pronounced on boards 6 & 7. On board 2, however, Black upset the odds with a 2-1 win ratio, and even on board 1, it was a tie. Crazyhouse is still not too one-sided a game, even at the highest levels, and even in slow time controls.

Full results may be found both in this Season 9 Google Sheet as well as on the zh league website. 

Thanks to all the participants who helped self-organise the league this Season despite some technical difficulties on the website, and to all the spectators who watched and commentated on the games live in lichess chat.

Puzzles based on the games in Season 9 will follow as usual on this blog.

Keep playing crazyhouse, and keep your eyes on the calendar in the right sidebar for upcoming matches once the 2021 Crazyhouse World Championships get underway!

—okei