Losers Chess Championship 2023

20 Feb 2023523 viewsEnglish (US)

Details about the 2023 Losers Chess Championship

On 3rd January of this year, I felt like we needed to popularise Antichess variants a bit more. Therefore I made a forum post asking people that if an antichess variant tournament happened, which variant they would prefer. Losers chess is a variant which was also played on FICS before along with Antichess, Atomic, Crazyhouse and Bughouse. Naturally, it turned out to be the most popular one. Therefore preparation for the tournament and registration started!

In the rules of the tournament, I said that "if the tournament has less than 16 players, it won't happen". I was very lucky to receive 17 registrations. So, the tournament kicked off on 25th January. Unfortunately, one of the registered players closed his account right before the start of the tournament. I was sad that the tournament would have to be discontinued, but @MagnusXL sent a message that he wanted to participate. So, he was added to the participants list and the tournament continued.

The tournament had lots of strong players registering for it, most notably the losers chess legend @firebatprime. The pairings are handled by challonge, where at the first round, they give the lowest seeded player a bye (if odd number of participants) and if 2n players are there, they pair 1 vs n+1, 2 vs n+2 and so on. A surprising fact was that 6 of the 8 matches of the first round were between players who were both 2000+ rated in antichess.

Round 1

As expected, many players register for some tournament and fail to schedule or play matches. So, only four out of eight matches were played, the other 4 ending in a forfeit. The first played match was between @Erwin-Schrodinger and @SriMethan, which ended in a convincing 10-0 victory for Erwin. They played within 24 hours of the first-week pairings being announced. A surprising result was of the match between two excellent antichess players, @firebatprime and @Kotov_Syndrome, which ended in a 9-1 victory for the American player.

Since the tournament was announced, @Douthy has been regularly playing Losers Chess with other players on liantichess. This practice paid off when he won 7-3 against @MagnusXL.

We got to witness the first very close match between @Tetiksh1Agrawal and @Raicosta, where after 9 games, Rai was in the lead with 5-4. The last game looked like it would end in a draw, with this position (Rai was black, Tetiksh was white):

Here it was black's turn where he could easily just keep shuffling pieces and force a draw. But he blundered by pushing his e and f pawns which helped the Indian player to get rid of one of the two annoying pawn blocks and win the game in the end.

A sad moment happened when @Sridhar75 withdrew from the tournament because his university's internet did not allow him to open lichess or other chess websites. Hopefully, Lichess will fix this.

Round 2

Due to Sridhar's withdrawal, there were 16 players active in the tournament for this round, which meant nobody would get a bye. In the first played match of this round, we had an exciting 5-5 draw between @Douthy and @Schizophrenic_Energy. The second played match too ended in a 5-5 draw, which was @Tetiksh1Agrawal's second draw of the tournament in only two rounds. This match too was almost in the hands of his opponent @MagnusXL who sadly missed a Knight promotion in the last game which led to Tetiksh winning the game with a rook promotion with a check.

The third match too was a close one, between @Erwin-Schrodinger and @firebatprime, where firebatprime was leading 5-4 and found the brilliant move Kf3 in this position:

which led to the American player winning 6-4.

Only these 3 matches were "played" in this round, with two matches being forfeited by both players (failing to schedule) and two matches ending as wins for one person as their opponent failed to cooperate.
In this round, @Royal-Desperession withdrew from the tournament for undisclosed reasons which granted his opponent an automatic win in this round.

Also after this round, two people had failed to schedule twice and hence were eliminated from the tournament. Therefore only 13 players were left standing at the end of the round.

Round 3

This round had many interesting matches. The first played one was between @Douthy and @mental_suicide where the Azeri player secured a convincing 7-3 victory over the British player. The second played match was between me and @firebatprime. I was scared from the start, which led me to blunder this easily won position in the first game itself:

In the game, I played Ra7 instead of the winning Ra8. I knew what the idea was and while calculating I thought both work the same way. What I failed to notice is that Ra8 puts black's king in the corner, which forces black to capture with either Knight or the Bishop when I play Ba6. FBP took advantage of my blunder Ra7 which allowed him to play Kxa3 on the next move. This blunder lowered my confidence and the match ended with a 7-3 victory for FBP.

A surprising result in this round was when @Tetiksh1Agrawal beat @Kotov_Syndrome 9-1. This match was actually not going to be played and they were going to do a draw by mutual agreement. Had it happened, it would have been Tetiksh's third draw in as many rounds.

The 4th played match was a close one, between @Erwin-Schrodinger and @Raicosta, which ended 6-4 in favour of the former.

At the end of the round, two more players were disqualified from the tournament for failing to schedule for the second time.

Round 4

Now only 11 players are left. In this round, @Erwin-Schrodinger and @Douthy played within 2 hours of the pairings being announced. It ended with a close win for Erwin, who won 6-4. Another game played the same day was between @Tetiksh1Agrawal and @mental_suicide. In this match, they first played 5 games, after which the score was 2.5 each. Tetiksh had some connection issues so they resumed the match later that night. Nobody would have expected it but the games after their 1-hour break were all won by the Azeri player! This gave him a 7.5-2.5 win and a hefty lead on top of the tournament standings table.

The third played match of this round added drama to the top of the table, as it was the first time @firebatprime was denied a match win by @schizophrenic_energy who was leading after 9 games but did the mistake of giving up too many pieces without giving up all of them. This forced the match into an easy endgame for FBP who won the last game to end the match in a draw.

The 4th match of this round was between me and @MagnusXL. It ended with me winning the first 8 games and then losing the last two, to have the final result of 8-2.

Round 5

In this round, 11 players still remained. As expected, @Erwin-Schrodinger didn't need any time to finish the match as he played with @Schizophrenic_Energy within 4 hours of the pairings coming. The match ended as a 6-4 win for the Russian.

The most awaited match was witnessed in this round, between table toppers @mental_suicide and @firebatprime. The match was very close but ended as a 5.5-4.5 win for the Azeri player. The match was at 4.5 each when it went into the last game. It was anybody's game, until FBP blundered this position, with Nf2!

The Azeri player punished it with the discovered attack by a5 and won the game.

The third match was between me and @Tetiksh1Agrawal. I didn't know what came over me but I played worse than trash, and the match ended with a 7-3 win for Tetiksh. The match between @Raicosta and @kotov_syndrome was played towards the end of the week, resulting in a 6-4 win for the Brazilian player.

Round 6

This was the last round of the swiss stage. One more player forfeited, so only 10 players played this round. By the start of the round, it was clear that the table toppers @mental_suicide and @schizophrenic_energy had already qualified, with Both of them being assured of a top 3 finish. In the first played match, @firebatprime asserted his dominance over @tetiksh1agrawal and beat him 7-3. This made sure that the top 3 would be @mental_suicide, @schizophrenic_energy and @firebatprime, not necessarily in that order.

The second match was between me and @erwin-schrodinger, where I blew a 5-3 lead and lost the last two games to end the match 5-5. This assured me of a top 6 finish, and a high chance for @erwin-schrodinger to stay in the top 6. The only situation where Erwin wouldn't have been in the top 6, was if Douthy beat Raicosta, and MagnusXL beat kotov_syndrome 10-0.

In the third match, @Douthy beat @Raicosta 8-2, which sealed the #4th spot for me and #5th spot for Douthy. The next match was between @MagnusXL and @Kotov_syndrome, where Kotov made a strong comeback from being 1-4 down to win 6-4. With this result, @Erwin-schrodinger qualified as #6 to the candidates.

The last match was supposed to be just a formality to decide who would be #1, #2, and #3. Unfortunately, the Russian player did not show up at the scheduled time, which led to a 10-0 win for @mental_suicide.

This marked the end of the swiss stage, and now it would be the candidates stage. The qualified people to the candidates stage are:
Group A: