Simon Williams, aka the GingerGM, is surely one of the most colourful characters in the contemporary chess world.
So when a notification popped up last Saturday that he'd be streaming a 1 hour chess tournament on his Twitch channel I popped over to have a look... Lotsa fun and a pretty good bunch of players at the top, including British champion David Howell...
Last night the 3rd tournament was played. I hesitated because (1) I've never been involved in an online tournament before and (2) I'm terribly bad at speed chess! But I couldn't resist it - free and easy to join, all levels of player welcome, so next thing I knew, I was stuck in, busy losing game after game!
Gradually, I got used to it and began to build advantageous positions - only to lose on time, time after time...
Then, to my surprise, I actually won a game - and recorded the moment for posterity!
I was playing on the Chess.com screen while listening to Simon commentating on his own games on Twitch.
I was fully expecting to end the hour on zero, right at the bottom of the pile, but that victory got me up to 134/177 players...
Then I managed to win another game with less than a second remaining... so I finished on 2/15 points and in 121st place, so I felt chuffed about that, compared to my expectations...
Three-minute chess in a 60-minute online open tournament is a blast. It's free to join, and there's no commitment to stay the course. When you finish a game you can click a button when you are ready to dive in again.
Want to play the next one? It is taking place at 1pm BST, Saturday 25th April 2020.
How to take part:
Join the Ginger GM fan club: https://www.chess.com/club/ginger-gm-fan-club
Enter the tournament here: https://www.chess.com/live#r=186168
You can follow along on Twitch:
See you there, next Saturday!
David Hurley, aka the #PubChessBluffer
Chess blog: https://easychesstips.com
hi @hirohurl, I had a similar experience here in the chess community, losing a lot on time. I never consider Blitz/bullet (speed chess) before. In my first game I was completely lost in whats call a 960 variant game however I did win a game before it was over.
I’ve been a big tournament (city&Post) winner in the early 70’s but my play have decline greatly. However I am really enjoying this brand new challenge of blitz and bullet chess. I spend lots of time playing/ practicing but appear to have a memory and focus problem.
We have two tournaments here in @jaki01 chess community. One on Friday and Saturday. If your tournament doesn’t conflict with either of them I will certainly join and play. Also consider joining @stayoutoftherz Friday tournament and @schamangerbert Saturday Steemchess tournament. There is some great competition; but I am not part of that great competition yet. :)
It took me a couple of games to calm down and get into focus!
Thanks for the heads-up about the Friday and Saturday tournaments. I will certainly check them out.
Welcome to The Chess Community! :)
Thanks for you interesting tournament report!
Thank you, @jaki01 ! I will be checking out your tournaments shortly...
Please time show in UTC or Greenvich time.
BST 13:00 = UTC/GMT 12:00.