<sup>this post has @badge-646464 as a beneficiary to support Hivechess every Friday!

Source: https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/chess/how-to/how-to-play-chess</sup>

Here I am again in a weekly post for Hive! This time we are a little away from the topic of video games, I've been playing and recording material to make post but I think this weekend something really exciting has happened, it happens that chess has recently been delighting me again after several years of inactivity, several years ago I could participate in various tournaments and I could even look into the eyes of some of the best players in my country, those days have gone down in history because I have stopped training but it turns out that Hive have been doing tournaments for quite some time and just now is that I come to know!

It''s not that I have been looking too much to return to chess, especially with the level I have now (pretty bad) but this community that manages @stayoutoftherz has come to me by the hand of other users who have told me about these tournaments, I did not expect the flame to be lit again but I had a bestial desire to just participate so on Friday I canceled the plans I had to create an account in Lichess, train a little the openings that I barely remembered and some tactical strokes that later would serve me and wait for the tournament to start, it turns out that I am better than I expected because I have had some pretty close games where I could win but I have also come up against users vastly superior to me, this post is a brief summary of some of the games I played, and I can not fail to recommend that if you like chess (or at least want to try playing) every Friday there is a Hivechess totally free to participate in!

^{Source: https://peakd.com/hive-157286/@stayoutoftherz/hivechess-tourn}

Warming up vs. Vasigo

If I remember correctly this was the second game I played after winning the first round, I was a bit loose with tactics in the last game so in this game I wanted to loosen up a bit and play several risky schemes, also in these two rounds I had some problems in the opening but I made up for it with a constant attacking game and a finish that I have loved, they play black and mate in two moves.

Beautiful combination and a checkmate that would boost me quite a bit in the rankings (I was in the top 3 at the end of this round).

Winning a WFM vs. perpz

This was a game that was from start to finish evenly matched, I had some opportunities to take advantage but I didn't take them, as well as she was a couple of moves away from crushing my position, in the end a Lady mistake where I could win material decided the game a bit, still after that I had to play calm and conservative to keep the advantage and transform it into a very sweet victory.

Checkmate is now unstoppable, very good game and again on top of the ranking, so far I was having an excellent tournament.

Starting to Blunder vs. realdeadleaf

We are already starting to match up with some of the top players in the tournament, but I still feel good, I played the opening decently and had some tactics in the middle game but I think I lost my way a bit with several pointless moves and the constant threat of the Blitz rush, this particular game I was under the clock most of it causing me to lose sight of a brutal tactical blow to my position which forced me to resign, they play white and win material.

Being crushed vs. blackswan21

This game is an absolute beauty, perhaps the best I played during the whole tournament despite having lost it at the end, I played the opening quite well, in the middlegame I found myself with enough resources to start an attack on the queenside and in general the position was balanced, but I did not count that on the other side of the board there was a real machine that with a queen sacrifice included would end up breaking my position, they left my position.

At this point white is lost, there is too much compensation for the queen sacrifice and the pinning of the bishop to my knight is lethal.

Picking myself up vs. ZGM_Samostically

I didn't have much faith in this game, I think I had just lost two games in a row and I doubted I could against another player with a higher rating than mine, but life gives surprises and chess many more, in the middle of an equal position maybe even better for the black pieces the opponent made a mistake and gave me his queen, a very anticlimactic ending for a fight and a position that looked quite complicated for me.

The game did not end there but it is true that it was easy from here to break the black pieces, I mean one queen more on the board is a lot when you reach a certain level of chess.

Closing quite successful vs. @jaki01

This last game was an interesting one, there was very little time left before the tournament ended so we both used berserk mode (which doubles points in exchange for cutting your time in half) and the truth is that I played pretty well every single phase of the game, of course the time crunch resulted in a draw after I determined that even though I had an advantage I wasn't going to be able to turn it into a win with the time I had, a draw is better than nothing but it definitely could have been a resounding victory.

My personal balance of this tournament

After the 15 rounds that I played in this arena I could be in sixth place, not bad to start in this series of tournaments, I think I must urgently train the openings because I had many problems with the start of the game, most of the time I had to raise from behind each of the games and that in chess is not very advisable, it is much better to know first hand the openings you play, know well the positions that you can get to so you can better attack your opponent.

I would have loved to record a bit of this tournament and share a bit of how my thought process is in each of these games, maybe I don't have the mind of a grandmaster but I think I can defend myself pretty well against some of the big fishes, even so there is a big difference between me and the first places, but that gap is something I will work to close as much as possible, for now a sixth place is great and I am excited to play the next tournament.

Yeey you made it to the end of the post :) thanks for joining me today!