Blogs

Playing in US Chess League

dretch
| 5

This year is my second year playing for the Dallas Destiny team in the US Chess League. It is an online league where the games are played at chess.com this year, or at least the ones I've been involved in so far are. Currently we are first place in the 16-team league, having 4.5 out of 5 match points. Personally I have played 3 games and scored 1.5/3. I have already dropped more points than the entire first year that I played, when I scored 9/10, but it is OK because a lot of teammates are having good performances. Also, in Week 4, the game I played with black against Denys Shmelov won the Game of the Week contest.

Below, I annotated the game that I played in the most recent match, in Week 5. I was black in this game as well. In the Game of the Week vote (which takes place among 3 games selected out of the 32 played each week) it missed out on 1st place by just one point. The annoying thing was that neither of the judges who ranked it last presented any comments explaining his decision, unlike the other judges. Not that there was anything super-special about my game this week.