Round 5 of the Crazyhouse World Championship

For those players who had won four straight games, round 5 was the final hurdle in order to secure a place in the Candidates with the loser of round 5 still having a second shot in a final elimination bracket match. For those who had lost earlier in the tournament, they had had to win two games per round in order to progress.

Instead of embedding puzzles as in previous recap threads, I invite the reader to try to find the winning moves in a “practice against the computer” study.

Blitzbullet - gsvc

NM blitzbullet won 6-3 against IM gsvc to be the first player into the Candidates. Particularly impressive was game 5 in which blitzbullet sacrificed his queen for a piece and a pawn to launch a successful attack via h6. In another game, however, there was a key intermediate move he missed which would have enabled the bishop on g7 to be taken in such a way that it would be too dangerous for Black to recapture.

In another very instructive position, gsvc defended the knight on e5 with a pawn, but can you see why the pawn cannot recapture on e5?

Blitzbullet duly converted. If gsvc had defended with a bishop however, then the bishop taking on e5 would still have guarded f6. IM gsvc would live to fight another day in the elimination bracket.

The elimination of Andrew Tang

The American GM penguingim1 famed for his prowess at hyper and bullet chess had previously suffered a surprise loss to FM amaidel from Russia in Round 3. He got his campaign back on track with a 7-3 win against the strong Swedish bughouse player pknm and 6-4 against the Atomic World Champion GM Arka50 from Switzerland. But he was dismantled 6-0 in some sharp games with the Australian crazyhouse specialist Mugwort. This was live streamed on my Twitch, and Mugwort also gave his own post-match commentary. In game 3, Mugwort in fact missed mate by promoting to queen on f1 in the following position, in so doing leaving penguingim1 with a mating opportunity which he missed.

In the end, Mugwort himself lost 1-6 to IM gsvc in a Candidates decider, which meant that the Paraguayan International Master joined blitzbullet as a Candidate.

The withdrawals

Another fascinating encounter was between mastertan and GM FeegLood. The crazyhouse specialist from Australia beat the grandmaster 6-4 (see in particular game 4) after which FeegLood withdrew, which meant xuanet advanced from the elimination bracket unopposed after a 6-3 win against burpcow and a 6-4 win against garnek123. 

The withdrawal of allyouneedisluft left littleplotkin without a Round 5 opponent and so a place in the Candidates. (littleplotkin had in fact earlier faced HighContrast in Round 5, but the latter was eliminated on suspicions of external assistance. For an instructive take on this sad affair, you can play Spot the Move on some of the positions which one might speculate could have raised suspicions.) 

Finally, the withdrawal of IM larso as well as allyouneedisluft paved the way for Kleerkast (the conqueror of ciw) to become a Candidate if he could overcome terra87 (who beat FM amaidel). He prevailed 5.5-2.5 to book his place. One game was particularly sharp. Kleerkast missed a difficult mate, but with his king being hunted, terra87 stepped the wrong way. Kb6! was safe, but Kd6 ran into mate and Kleerkast duly converted.

The elimination of Vempele

The fourth undefeated Candidate in round 5 was sexy_and_I_know_it who beat Vempele 6-4. Meanwhile, Fumitoks who lost to blitzbullet bounced back with an 8-2 win against crosky, a 6-4 win against the very strong profz, 8-2 against TCubes and a brilliantly played 8-2 win against ArtofDeception who had previously overcome retardedplatypus123.

Vempele ended up losing 2-6 to Fumitoks. Game 5 was particularly memorable. Although there were certainly faster mates, Fumitoks chose to play it safe and only sacrificed the queen for the mating attack when he saw for sure that it was working.

Vempele, the master theoretician, was humbled and closed all his lichess accounts including his duplicates. We hope he returns. Fumitoks, for unrelated reasons, subsequently chose to withdraw from the Candidates Tournament insisting there should be 10 Candidates as originally stipulated and disrespecting the inclusion of JKtheBullfrog as a second wildcard by FischyVishy. JKtheBullfrog had been included by the tournament director as a wildcard replacement after IM opperwezen withdrew citing lack of motivation to play this year. But with the help of cajoling from World Champion JannLee, LegionDestroyer and opperwezen’s many fans, he agreed to re-join. This led to two wildcards and strictly speaking a change to the original format. Needless to say, there was overwhelming public support in the crazyhouse community for all 11 Candidates to play. To encourage this and as a show of appreciation for the Candidates, JannLee has set up a crowdfund, so every Candidate who completes all their matches will receive their share of the pot.

Puzzle Study Links

At the beginning of the blog, I shared a puzzles study link . The solutions to these puzzles and how they played out may be found here.

Candidates Tournament

The Candidates tournament is now underway with the 7 remaining Candidates who qualified alongside NM TwelveTeen, IM opperwezen and JKtheBullfrog. The calendar of upcoming matches may also be seen on the right. Thanks to LegionDestroyer & MessyAnswer for setting up a spreadsheet where we can now easily see the latest standings which I am keeping updated.

Finally, all 22 of the CWC Candidates Matches played so far have been live streamed on Twitch and uploaded to YouTube. See here for the full playlist of commentaries on the 2018 CWC (most recent first). Please do subscribe on YouTube and Twitch to all the streamers involved.

10+10 spin-off of the Lichess4545 League

Organised by Zher0 over Slack these past seven weeks we have had the first ever Lichess ZH league as a spin-off from the Lichess4545 league. Each week, players played two games of 10+10 crazyhouse, one Black and one White, against their assigned opponent. 15 players participated and crazyhouse veteran FischyVishy was the expected leader with 6/7. I myself escaped many near deaths to go undefeated except for my two games with Fischy and so tie for the lead. Because I lost our head-to-head, I expected that would settle it, but under lone-wolf tiebreak rules one would add the positions of all but your weakest opponent and this would turn out in my favour. However, since the league is still in its infancy, we shall forego such complications and I’m happy to claim a share in the win. The second season is expected to start in the coming weeks.

At the link are 25 mating puzzles taken from games in the league which you can practice against the computer. Click on this Lichess Study link to play out your solutions. There is also an answers link with shortest solutions at the end of the blog. The puzzles get more challenging. Some of the more difficult ones are reproduced here:

gokuba - colwem: Black to mate

DAAL - Forhavu: Black to mate

avas_goridze - FischyVishy: Black to mate

akselm - HighonPotnuse: Black to mate

DAAL - avas_goridze: White to mate

Forhavu - gokuba: Black to mate

okei - Forhavu: Black to win

seb32 - yago666: White to win

okei - Zher0: Black to mate

Play out your own answers against the computer. Answers are also available in this separate study.

—okei

P.S. Since writing this blog, I made the first ever Lichess crazyhouse puzzles stream where I work through these puzzles live on Lichess. More puzzle studies based on Crazyhouse World Championship highlights are linked in the video description.

Introducing the Candidates of the 2018 Crazyhouse World Championship

2018 marks the second iteration of the Crazyhouse World Championship (CWC) organised by chess variants pioneer FischyVishy on lichess.org. The inaugural championship in 2017 saw 8 Candidates qualify for a Candidates Tournament (results displayed courtesy of crosky).

There was then an epic showdown between the top two: JannLee (real name Justin Tan) from Australia, long regarded the best at the game (and whose streams every crazyhouse player has enjoyed and learnt from) and the young Canadian NM TwelveTeen, the man JannLee fears most. On midsummer’s day this year TwelveTeen momentarily hit a rating of 3000 on lichess.org surpassing his previous best. Also this year, he has overtaken JannLee in their overall head-to-head score between each other. But back in 2017, it was JannLee who prevailed 31½-28½ in their 60-game final spread over three days. There were long streaks when TwelveTeen dominated, tearing up the board with his attacks, then JannLee fought his way back with masterful play. Day 1 was tied 10-10, Day 2 JannLee came back from a 2-8 deficit to again tie 10-10, but on Day 3 JannLee pulled clear 11½-8½ to be crowned the first ever Crazyhouse World Champion.

Since February 2018, the search has begun to find the Candidate to challenge JannLee. It is worth mentioning that as well as the title, there is moreover a $1000 prize pool at stake, generously donated by organiser FischyVishy. The time control this year is 3+2, partly because without increment last year there were times when interesting 3+0 games degenerated into flagging battles. 159 participants signed up, whittled down to 128 through a special qualification tournament, and these 128 have been taking part in a double-elimination knockout, just finished last weekend, so just 8 Candidates remain. These 8, along with TwelveTeen from Canada (last year’s runner-up), International Master opperwezen from the Netherlands (third place from last year) and wildcard JKtheBullfrog from America (who taught JannLee the game 20 years ago on FICS and has recently taken it up again on lichess) will compete in a round-robin Candidates tournament, the winner of which will be this year’s Challenger to JannLee. Matches will be 10 games (no tiebreaks in the case of a draw) and the time control is 3+2.

The players are responsible themselves for organising matches against their assigned opponents and notifying the time they have scheduled in the CWC forum so that it can be added to the crazyhouse calendar and fans can watch on lichess. At match time, click on the tv icon on the profile page of the player you wish to watch. Some of the games may also be live streamed on Twitch and spectators can also engage in live voice and text chat on the House Discord (users must type .iam cwc and .iam zh in join or click these roles in role-assignment to access the crazyhouse channels). Some of the match commentary may be streamed and posted later to YouTube and match reports of the highlights will be posted on the Crazyhouse Chess blog:

https://zhchess.blogspot.com.

TwelveTeen will surely be the favourite to face JannLee again for the title, but let us meet all the Candidates for the 2018 CWC:

blitzbullet

First to qualify was NM blitzbullet (real name Jalen Wang), 4th in the Candidates last year, who will always be famous for game 10 of his Candidates match against JannLee last year when instead of sealing a famous victory with 23. gxf8=N+! which led quickly to mate, he had autoqueen on and promoted to queen (not check!), falling victim to a JannLee counter-attack and a 5-5 tie. The importance of initiative cannot be under-estimated and generally speaking, blitzbullet is the master of initiative. On his road to the Candidates, blitzbullet went undefeated in the double-elimination knockout defeating theLAZYmd (the founder of the chess variants House Discord), squeaking past Fumitoks 13-11 in an epic battle that took seven tiebreaks to decide the winner (see the Round 3 recap), beating the very strong FM garnek123 needing another tiebreak, before defeating IM gsvc in Round 5 to seal his place. With his queen under fire in game 5 against IM gsvc, can you guess what blitzbullet played?

Of course 17. Bxh6! NxQd2 BxNd2 and there followed a successful attack on the black king via h6. As we shall see, he will have to lock horns again with both Fumitoks and IM gsvc in the Candidates.

mastertan

Also again in the Candidates this year is the young Australian crazyhouse maestro mastertan after victories against terra87, Arka50 and GM FeegLood. He is well-known for his masterclass Light & Dark: A Visual Guide to Crazyhouse. As an example of this in action, notice how 9 out of his next 10 moves starting with 30. … @e4 targeted the light square weaknesses in GM FeegLood’s position.

sexy_and_I_know_it

sexy_and_I_know_it is a mystery within an enigma, progressing serenely if not smoothly with outright victories against Karagialis, arjelol, larso & Vempele. He is known to hail from Europe and since 2016 has been known as one of the experts of crazyhouse opening theory. With mathace, ciw & Vempele all eliminated, he remains the last of the known crazyhouse theoreticians among the Candidates. When larso made an elementary opening error in game 10 of their Round 3 CWC match, sexy_and_I_know_it was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and took full advantage:

littleplotkin

The fourth Candidate so far undefeated in this year’s Crazyhouse World Championship is FM littleplotkin, a 19 year old from Canada who until recently was a National Master, now a Fide Master. Despite playing with a touchpad, he is feared for his speed under time pressure, combining chess vision with innate tactical nous to launch lethal mating attacks. He has racked up a 7-3 victory against TaylorEternity and 9-1 against fellow young Canadian retardedplatypus123, but by far his toughest challenge was advancing 6-4 in Round 2 against an in-form KyleLegion, the popular young Bulgarian who was second to JannLee in FischyVishy’s 24 hour Crazyhouse Revolution earlier this year, before winning opperwezen’s 24 hour ZH Endurance Marathon. As a challenge, try without looking to find the mate FM littleplotkin found here against KyleLegion:

xuanet

From the elimination bracket four Candidates also advance. The first to do so was xuanet, also a Candidate last year. Despite losing to IM gsvc, he beat burpcow and FM garnek123 to secure his place. Hailing from Catalonia, xuanet is a player with real flair and along with TwelveTeen a master of attack. If JannLee is dangerous if he has a knight in hand, xuanet is dangerous even with only a pawn. Without looking, can you spot the mate he found in the following position against FM garnek123 after the latter played 21. NxQb6??

Kleerkast

Next to advance was Kleerkast from the Netherlands who lost to Mugwort in Round 3, but fought his way back into contention after victories against emrty, gekkokamen, ciw and terra87. He was excellent at applying positional pressure and exploiting any defensive mistakes. Illustrative of this was 18. Bc3! in the following game against terra87, recognising the Black king is stranded in the centre and if queens are traded the White attack is faster. Later in the same game, terra87 stepped the wrong way with 29. … Kd6?? instead of Kb6! which was safe, and Kleerkast duly converted.

Fumitoks

The seventh Candidate to advance was Fumitoks from Russia with scintillating play against both ArtofDeception and Vempele despite just falling short against blitzbullet earlier in the tournament. Known for his unconventional style and predilection for 2. Qh5!?, he is proving himself to be a match for anyone. Of particular note, was 10. 0-0-0! in this game against Vempele and although 20. Rxd8+! would have led to a swifter finish, there was no way of stopping the attack via d7.

gsvc

Last to qualify, but by no means least, is International Master gsvc from Paraguay, the only South American in the Candidates. Despite also falling to blitzbullet, he overcame Mugwort from Australia 6-1 in a Candidates Decider, although the score does not reflect the closeness of the encounter. Can you see the mating idea IM gsvc spotted in the following position?

22. N@d6 or N@f6 both open up the e file and lead to mate.

These 8 will be joined by NM TwelveTeen, JKtheBullfrog and IM opperwezen.
  

TwelveTeen

The first automatic qualifier to this year’s Candidates is the Canadian prodigy TwelveTeen who was a National Master since a very young age. If JannLee is compared to Botvinnik, TwelveTeen is likened to Tal for his sacrificial and attacking style. One mis-step in defence and he is a monster at finding mate and even in lost positions, he is always looking for a trick to make a comeback. In last year’s Candidates he won every match apart from his 5-5 draw against JannLee.

Check out this pretty finish to a recent bullet game against JannLee. See if you can calculate an idea for mate before looking:



JKtheBullfrog 

JKtheBullfrog, although new to Lichess, has been playing the game longer than almost anyone. He is bug legend jkiller from FICS. His openings are strong and his positional understanding and piece-play are second to none. We look forward to seeing this tactical wizard for the first time in competitive match-play against other top crazyhouse contenders.

As an example of the man in action, check out this almost flawless game against TwelveTeen:
 

opperwezen  

The third player to automatically qualify for this year’s Candidates is IM opperwezen (real name Vincent Rothuis). This young International Master from the Netherlands picked up the variant only 2 years ago but rose quickly to become one of the strongest crazyhouse players out there. Finishing third in the first edition of the CWC in 2017, he only lost to TwelveTeen and JannLee, drawing against mastertan and winning against the remaining four, finishing half a point behind the eventual champion Justin Tan.

His style? Creativity! He is much loved by the wider chess community for the freshness he brings to the game, epitomised by the study games he creates, the rook lifts and the openings involving early promotion. See for example this friendly game with FM littleplotkin. He is also now a streamer, posting recordings to YouTube including playing blindfold or with special piece sets and commentating on crazyhouse. In Lichess titled arenas he is regularly a contender for the podium positions, outperforming most grandmasters, though he still struggles against World Champion Magnus Carlsen himself. opperwezen has played almost 20,000 crazyhouse games on Lichess and holds an 1826-3452 lifetime record against JannLee, notably surpassing 5,000 games between them recently. This year’s contenders will have to watch out for this immense player, capable of anything.

Here is a game from just last week in which, after many failed attempts, he managed to overcome the latest version of Stockfish 8 in ultra crazyhouse (15 seconds per player without increment):

This completes the line-up of 11 Candidates for the 2018 CWC.

May the games begin! JannLee “the final boss” awaits…

—okei (with LegionDestroyer)

JannLee & TwelveTeen versus TheWorld

Last weekend, on Saturday 28th July at 19:00 GMT, there was a special crazyhouse event pitting the top two players of the game JannLee from Australia & TwelveTeen from Canada against “The World”: a host of strong crazyhouse players chatting over Discord voice & text and choosing their moves by consensus. The time control was 20+15 to give time for collaborative thinking, 3 games would be played so there would likely be a decisive winner, and critically the starting position was randomised, so it was effectively zh960, in order to avoid games following down pre-prepared opening theory. Because zh960 is not yet implemented on lichess.org, the games were played on the chess variants site: http://chessvariants.training. 

On the day, the players who could make it to join the World team were: LegionDestroyer, opperwezen, theLAZYmd, TheLoneWolf, Kleerkast, crptone, KyleLegion, h-bar, mathace and Karagialis, with littleplotkin, gsvc, TcubesAK, and Antic dropping by.

Game 1: https://chessvariants.training/Variant960/Game/cohel1bt

Game 2: https://chessvariants.training/Variant960/Game/8juughca

Game 3: https://chessvariants.training/Variant960/Game/yx56h3gn

I imported the games to lichess: 1 2 3 and made a study.

JannLee streamed his negotiations with TwelveTeen on his Twitch (to which every crazyhouse player should already be a subscriber) and exported the video to YouTube:

Meanwhile, theLAZYmd streamed the negotiations from the World’s side over Discord, which you can make out despite some technical issues.

TheWorld: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/290379958

Finally, here is a Lichess study of the three games, with some of the critical lines discussed, which might continue to be updated with the help of its contributors.

https://lichess.org/study/QFWUGFjV

Kudos to the organiser LegionDestroyer for organising this fantastic event. Do join the lichess team thread as well as the House Discord to get updates on future such events. We hope that more crazyhouse 960 and more team events of this kind will be played in future!

–okei

Spot the Move! #1

We have shared a lot of mating puzzles from the Crazyhouse World Championship matches and we shall see a lot more in future in dedicated blog posts illustrating different mating themes. We have seen puzzles such as the following: Can you spot a mate for White here?

But in order to get to such a position where mate is possible, it is important to create weaknesses in the opponent’s position, to find good positional moves, to win material with tactics, to open up key files or diagonals and to evade mating threats ourselves. So in this blog, we shall play “Spot the Move!”. 

It comes with a sad twist because all the positions in this blog are from games of HighContrast, an elite crazyhouse player who was marked for using external assistance in some of his games, or maybe he is just a beast of a player. Either way, we hope to transform something good out of the drama by creating some puzzles for beginning to intermediate players. More advanced players can judge if any of these moves raise suspicion, but the real reasons for HighContrast being marked are not even necessarily the moves he made, but other factors which will likely never be known. We wish HighContrast the best regardless, and if innocent that he can clear his name.

See how many of these 27 puzzles you can solve! Best moves are below.

Puzzle #1 ...Nd4, White to play!

Puzzle #2 ...gxf6, White to play!

Note that @e7 is losing instantly, as Qxe7 gives Black the diagonal he needs for mate: NxQ N@h3+ gxh3 Nf3+ Kh1 @g2+ Kxg2 Nh4+ Kg3 Q@f3+ KxN Bxf2+ RxB @g5+ Bxg5 fxg5+ Kxg5 h6+ Kh4 B@g5++.

Puzzle #3 ...Bg5, White to play!

Puzzle #4 ...@f7, White to play! 

Puzzle #5 ...Nf6, White to play!

Puzzle #6 e4, Black to play!

Puzzle #7 ...Bxc6, White to play!

Puzzle #8 ...Bb4, White to play!

Puzzle #9 ...Nb6, White to play!

Puzzle #10 ...Ndxc4, White to play!

Puzzle #11 ...Be7, White to play!

Puzzle #12 ...Kxc8, White to play!

Puzzle #13 ...gxh6, White to play!

Puzzle #14 ...Bxg5, White to play!

Puzzle #15 ...B@h6, White to play!

Puzzle #16 ...N@f4, White to play!

Puzzle #17 ...N@g4, White to play!

Puzzle #18 ...Bd6, White to play!

Puzzle #19 ...Qh4+, White to play!

Puzzle #20 ...B@f6, White to play!

Puzzle #21 ...Qxg5, White to play!

Puzzle #22 ...Qxg2, White to play!

Puzzle #23  Rg1, Black to play!

Puzzle #24  Rxg2, Black to play!

Puzzle #25  @e3, Black to play!

Puzzle #26  Rg3, Black to play!

Puzzle #27  N@d3, Black to play!

Key to Puzzles

Opening Puzzle: N@f7+ Kd7 Ne5+ fxe5 Qd8++
Puzzle #1: Qxf6!

Puzzle #2: N@e6 (Bh5 is also good, but NOT @e7 as explained in the blog)

Puzzle #3: B@h5+/B@g6+

Puzzle #4: d3 (Bxf7+ followed by d3 maybe even stronger)

Puzzle #5: R@h8+

Puzzle #6: dxe4 (opening the d file and exchanging queens); f2 is falling, sac on g3 and mate is coming soon

Puzzle #7: N@e5 (Ne5 also good)

Puzzle #8: c4!

Puzzle #9: N@f4 (N@f6 even stronger)

Puzzle #10: Bh4 (B@g5/B@d3/B@e4 also good moves) 

Puzzle #11: B@f6! (the stunning B@g8!! possibly even stronger)

Puzzle #12: Q@a7! is #7

Puzzle #13: g5! (novelty, good opening prep!)

Puzzle #14: Qh5!

Puzzle #15: @g7!

Puzzle #16: B@h8+!!

Puzzle #17: Qxg4! (novelty, great opening prep, f3 is the follow-up)

Puzzle #18: Ne4

Puzzle #19: Kg1! (because if @h3 gxh3 gxh3 QxN)

Puzzle #20: @g6! (BxN also very strong)

Puzzle #21: d4! (good opening prep, played only by JKtheBullfrog)

Puzzle #22: hxg7! (stronger than Bf3)

Puzzle #23: Bb4! (B@e4! also strong, both moves are about light square domination)

Puzzle #24: Qe7+!

Puzzle #25: B@h1! (@f3! followed by B@e4 possible even stronger)

Puzzle #26: @h4! (BxN followed by @h4 possibly stronger)

Puzzle #27: PxR! (threatening R@g1+ and gxf2+, Black’s attack is faster although BxN+ first is arguably better)

An interactive study with the positions of all the puzzles can be found here.

—okei