Live Chess World League: A Season to Remember!

Main event of Season 4 is almost coming to an end. Let's have a recap of this season.

Record-breaking Season

Many teams have gone through ups and downs in this season. Some teams made remarkable turnaround while some others just ran out of gas in the later stage. We've observed an overall 20% increase of players compared to the 1st stage which I've summarized in my earlier article.

Maximum Boards

**Slightly better record was expected from Div.2

Most points earned by the teams across formats

Ukraine just dominated the entire season in all formats. Being the 2nd best team of the season, Russia had almost 17% of points difference from Ukraine! But the other divisions (especially Div.2) got some close contest. Some of the stats are available here.

Russia vs Ukraine: The Super-Final! 

Match of the season! 763 unique players joined across the formats and 57 of them were titled players! Still 22 Ukrainians might be upset as they didn't get paired in any format 

Uncertainty is another exciting feature of live team matches. You never know how many opponent players are going to appear! @Midav_Veahkar missed the trick by mentioning their expectation of 300 boards. It just worked as an easy target for Ukraine!

Rapid960 match got the minimum difference of 50 points!

Russia definitely got the quantity. Perhaps they should play little earlier. Credit goes to them for making it a closer contest than the previous meeting on September. Ukraine managed 284 (Bullet), 345 (Blitz) and 225 (Rapid960) boards!! Russian FM played the bullet match on 200th board! As a response, Ukraine went even further by placing IM on 326th board of the blitz match!!

Russian lower boards didn't have a good time in any format

Our Russian friend Dmitry (@Nevfy) performed some in-depth analysis for bullet and blitz matches on his blog.

This rivalry is creating records beyond the reach of other teams. Congratulations to the unbeaten champions! Perhaps its time for @AlexanderMatlak to reveal some of his secrets behind this success  

Quiz time! What's the maximum number of boards on a live team match, without any involvement of Russia or Ukraine? Answer on comment 

Best Performers

Div.1: IM Alexey Palekha (Ukraine) @rainspistols

So many good games. He scored 49 points out of 60 matches but lost his very last game of the super-final under time-pressure. Interesting one!

Underpromotion was the only way to save this match!

Div.2: Marian Tudorache (Romania) @Tudorache_M (36 points out of 40 games)

Bishop+Knight delivering checkmate in 960! So many players didn't even find it in standard chess.

Div.3: Emir Kahvedzic (Bosnia) @kraljdavud (27 points out of 32 games)

Div.4: Jasur Madjidov (Uzbekistan) @Jasur_Madjidov (14.5 points out of 18 games)

When two admins are paired against each other, that's the way to win! (7th round)

Quite unique position! Placing all the pieces on the diagonal

Special thanks to @ivoshm for providing this list. His team Czech Republic also had a great time, as 4 of their matches went down to the last wire! 0.5 points here and there, any of those could be draw!

Play-off Scenario

Div.1 and Div.2: Kazakhstan vs Peru

Simple equation. Winner will join Div.1 in Season 5. Kazakhstan's recent form makes them favourite in this match. It's never late to win a game of chess  Kazakhs proved it literally by winning at 1:45 am (local time)!! 

Romania lost their play-off spot to Peru at the very last moment! That's why we always say, "Do not close your account before the season is over".

Div.2 and Div.3: 4 teams will fight for 2 promotion spots in Div.2.

Qualifiers and Eliminator. Much like the CPL/IPL format in cricket!

Div.3 and Div.4: I'm expecting no less than 4 promotion spots. We just have to wait until January for confirmation regarding this.

Div.4 Semifinals

Blitz event is still going on! Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan have reached the final with convincing win over Turkey and Puerto Rico respectively.

Semifinal pairings & results

We are expecting a closer contest in the final. Meanwhile, let's try a puzzle from the semifinals.

All the semifinalists are playing LCWL for the first time! Even Aussies were on top 4 upto 7th round! Therefore, Div.4 is definitely a good starting point for the newcomers. Hopefully Germany and Poland will take some motivation from them. Even Spain can take the example of Iran who had a great comeback season!

Fischer Random

How random it is? 959 different starting positions and 14 of them were repeated in the super-final (180 boards)! Though I didn't expect any repetition  

Surely Russian and Ukrainian admins are fans of Chess960, as both of them qualified for World Fischer Random Chess Championship! But the same doesn't go with other teams. In case of Canada, participation rate dropped almost 53% compared to standard blitz! Surprisingly (or ironically), Team USA Live suffered their only forfeit loss of this season in Rapid960

U1600 Blitz

Not getting paired in the main event due to low rating? Or, too afraid to lose points for your team! Well, U1600 blitz is there for you. 820 players participated in U1600 matches and 342 of them didn't get paired in the main event!

Argentina fully utilized this event by registering an average of 20 players per match! I personally encourage everyone to participate in the main event. Maybe you'll be paired against an IM on the 326th board  I saw an Iranian titled not getting paired against USA on the 60th board!

Chess.com loves Twitch streamers!

Div.1 got some excellent streamers including IM @mikhaillushenkov (Russia), FM @zibbit (Iceland), @JeffusLeMalinus (France) and @UAArtur (Ukraine) who are doing great service for their teams.

NM @SL0M streamed at 6am (Rochester local time!) for Bosnia couple of times and I really enjoyed his commentary. Bangladesh also got 2 regular streamers! Div.4 has the only streamer from Turkey who always likes to commentate 

S4 in Numbers

2 Unbeaten teams so far! Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

5 Matches of main event ended as draw! (max. of 34 boards)

15+ Streamers have streamed LCWL matches from 8 different countries!

35 Teams have registered players with 76+ different flags!

221 Titled players! 108 of them played for either Russia, Serbia or Ukraine!

216 Points are exchanged for cheating. Those who lost the most number of points, please accept my condolences.

4930 Total unique players including U1600 event!

Concluding Remarks

Remarkable season so far! With attractive prize features, participation rate has increased beyond our expectation. Besides, plenty of actions out of the boards made it an eventful season for the admins as well. England-Australia (mini-Ashes!) or India-Pakistan rivalry, we've got to see all of them! Such rivalries have enough potentials to enrich the environment of LCWL in the coming days. Rapid Cup (Standard 15|2) is still open for registration which is planned to start on this weekend. Season 5 might start on February. So, new teams have enough time to prepare themselves & join this exciting league

Thanks for reading. Wishing you all the best!