Brilliancies and Oopsies - Round 2 2025 Chess.com Daily Chess Championship

Hello everyone!

I'm Artem, and this is continuation of story of my path in the biggest tournament on Chess.com! First part is available here. 

Unlike the first blog, here I won't describe all the games, I'll focus on just a few, but I'll start the story with a description of the group. In the formation of the new round I was much less lucky than in the first round: I'm not a ranking favourite in my group, and the national master will fight for getting further, so the chances of getting further can be called ‘extremely small’, but maybe at least luck will be on my side?

I will start the description of the games from the "brilliancy" part, and each game will be better than the previous one (I will finish the story with the best game in my life, I apologise for spoilers, I just wanted to stimulate a little interest). At the end you'll find a selection of what I missed in the games (we're all human, and even a long counting doesn't save you from missed opportunities).

Game 1: lib_rl 1 - 0 djuroot. It was a tough game, in a difficult position I saw one tricky saving line and game went directly into it! 

Game 2: Joy-Girl 0 - 1 lib_rl.  The game was intense and hard for me to play (probably mostly because of Catalan, and I'm not the strongest Catalan player as for black). Opponent simpled the position to early and missed one quiet move that flipped the game, but still I was forced to calculate till the end due to some stalemate ideas.

Game 3: djuroot 0 - 1 lib_rl. In this game one beautiful tactical resource was spotted and somehow it appeared on the board. Could you solve ingame puzzle?

Game 4: joey_punzalan 0 - 1 lib_rl. The game of my life. I don't know if there will be prettier tactics in my career, but if not, I won't worry about it. Pure cinema!

And now it's time for Oopsies part. There won't be any harsh blunders, only some miscalculations, but still I was a little upset after analysing games.

Game 5: capybara_meme 0 - 1 lib_rl. In this game there was a real reason, not to rush for material advantage as calm moves would be able to get me in better situation.

Game 6: ZachRavel ½ - ½ lib_rl. In this game I offered a draw in a more favourable position, as the result of the match had no bearing on anything, but the main thing here is that I forgot the basic ideas of moves in the opening and missed an easier win.

This is a little story with its ups and downs about my second round, let's see how far I can go The resulting table of my group looks like this (I got lucky that NM skipped some of his games)

By the way, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I have a Youtube channel, where chess videos are released every other day, and twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) you can see me on Twitch! I'll be glad to see you there!

Thanks for your attention everyone, hugs to all!