RK December 2021 Monthly: A Recap
After a semester-long absence from the world of Racing Kings, Francis920 returns to play in his first major RK tournament in many months...
...and I actually didn't do terrible!
The December Monthly was a fun experience overall for me and a good return to Racing Kings after a much too long break during the first semester of my school year.
I approached the tournament with modest expectations and mainly tried to have fun and get some good wins in.
Early Momentum
A familiar opponent in Texas_Trump proved to be a saving grace in Game 1 as I played a fun little Ng3 line that was recommended to me in the House Discord (Side advertisement for the House; it is an amazing variants community and you should totally join if you are not already a member). I was very surprised and pleased with my result in that game and approached Game 2:
with some confidence, even though I was taking on the mysterious Chemist_00. I had another very exciting game in which we played the standard Bishop Symmetry line that morphs into a rook sac and easy development for both sides. I triumphed in the end as well and was feeling pretty good heading into Game 3...
... and then I played IMakeManyMistakes. Needless to say, I was the one making many mistakes in my first loss of the tournament against one of my all-time favorite RK opponents.
Mid-Tournament Games
From then on, I got into a rhythm, having good performances (by my standards) in Game 6
(a slugfest with the Chemist again in which we both made monumental blunders due to time pressure but in which I still managed to come out on top), Game 9
(another loss to IMMM where I defended against the Rf4 variation of the Kg3 line to some success early on, until I blundered with 16 seconds left by blocking my bishop's diagonal, allowing IMMM to pin my rook to my bishop and eventually take the win), and Game 10
(a win against an up and coming 1800 named john_33 in which I played one of my signature Nc3 lines extremely well by my reckoning and got a clean win).
Final Struggles
Game 11 was a sad performance, as I took on IMMM for the third time and almost eked out a draw before bowing out due to time-blunders once again.
Game 16 was my first loss to a player other than IMMM, to OliverAshStardust where I got confused as black in a Nxc2 line and couldn't find the right moves to avoid a loss.
I followed this up with an ugly loss to the Chemist where I once again lost a drawing position due to time constraints:
By this point in the tournament, I had reached my peak and the last few games were poor showings by me against several more 2000s level opponents such as Doooovid and cicinio64.
I had to cut short my tournament participation after my 24th game to go see a showing of Spider-Man: No Way Home with my family (it is an amazing movie that everyone should go see if they haven't already), so when I returned, I saw that I had gotten 13th place out of 146 participants. IMMM won after defending a late charge from the Chemist, with Texas_Trump coming in 3rd.
Afterward
A 2090 tournament performance with 24 games played and an average opponent rating of 2027 was satisfying enough for me, with a 50% win rate and 96% berserk rate (the lone game without was a game vs the Chemist where I forgot to hit the berserk button in time, although I would go on to win that game, proving that maybe you DO play better when you don't cut your time in half...).
My main takeaways from the Monthly are that I need to do some extensive work on my handling of the game under time pressure, as I lost at least 5 games due to time pressure in some form or other. I am starting to explore other new lines such as Bd4-Ng3 and Kh3, so if you have any suggestions for some killer lines that I should learn, please feel free to message me them!
I am very excited for the upcoming TURKL Season 2, as well the 2022 edition of RK1440 OC, as well as any miscelleneous tournaments I can play in in the coming months, so hopefully I can do well in those events as well!
Thanks for those of you still reading after all of this, I wanted to share my thoughts on the Monthly and check out what this new blog feature is all about on lichess! Here's to 2022 being the best year yet!
Stay safe everyone,
-Francis920