Saturday HiveChess S2R13- 4th Place!

Greetings to all chess fans! I played in the round 13 of Hivechess Season 2. It's a weekly chess Arena blitz tournament which run for over an hour. It starts at eleven pm our time and ends at midnight. The time control for this round was five minute blitz with an option to go on "berserk". Going berserk will give you half the time (two and a half minutes) but will give you an extra point if you win.

An update to the candidates tournament: The candidates tournament is over and twenty year old Javokhir Sindarov won it with a wide margin. The top three players Caruana, Nakamura and Pragg seem not at their best in the tournament and didn't come close to Sindarov who dominated the event. He will challenge the world champion, Gukesh in a battle of young champions in December this year. Gukesh made history when he won the title in 2024 at eighteen years of age. Now we will see a battle between young chess stars for the title. Who knows, Magnus Carlsen might be enticed to come back to challenge the winner.

Back to Hivechess, I managed to to slip in fourth place behind the usual top three winners. I lost to @jaki01 twice and @stayoutoftherz once along the way. I managed to steal a win from a strong 2200+ Elo player who went berserk against me but soon time caught up with him. I won against lower rated players but also lost to @stranger27 whose Elo belies his real playing strength.

My favorite game in the tournament against a 2200+ Elo player. I blundered a pawn early in the opening but recovered it when my opponent blundered back in the middlegame. Soon I took advantage of my lead on time and steered the game to a winning endgame with an outside passed pawn on the b file.

Thanks to @sam.chess @samostically for hosting and congratulations to the winners!

Tournament link: https://lichess.org/tournament/MfqJFmHe