It's been a while, Hive.
Hi! As you can see on the account, my name is . It's been a while since I last posted on Hive, much less in this chess community. I remember that Steemit was still active and there were some weekly tournaments that I really liked.
Luckily for me, they're still active, but this time as a team battle against each other. Of course, I'm part of the Hive Blockchain team, which I was surprised to see in such high positions. I usually play chess every now and then, but on chess.com. I don't remember having played on lichess for a while.
But I decided to join the team and play anyway.
I was lost on the platform. Actually, a few weeks ago, I tried to play one of the internal tournaments held by the team, but I don't think I had yet reached the minimum number of games played to be allowed into the team, so I insisted on playing blitz and rapid games to reach that threshold.
Once I was accepted onto the team, there was a tournament the next day, and although I wasn't sure whether to participate, I did anyway. I arrived a little late to the party, but I had some good positions. This post isn't about bragging about how well I did in the tournament, but rather about re-establishing this account after so long.
The one below is one of the positions I had in that tournament. It seems like I'm only a few moves away from dying, but in chess, one thing that's very important is the initiative and whoever controls the tempo. A game can change the outcome depending on whose turn it is to play, and in this case, it's White's turn after Bg2.
It's not an easy task to see the sequence, but I'll leave it there for you. For you to solve, at the end of this post I'll give the answer to gain a decisive advantage and settle the game nicely.
The arrows are a bit tricky, but it's still a pretty educational sequence for those learning to spike.
Anyway, I had a good result in this tournament. I had to stop playing early because I'm the father of some very demanding cats and I have to take them out for walks at those times, but I'm sure if I had stayed I would have scored a few more points for the team.
Many problems with the timing also caused me to struggle with some positions; fortunately, it works in both. senses, if you play quickly or in this case your opponent decides to cut their time, you can use that to your advantage.
A miscalculation by my opponent leaves them without a piece. It's a decisive advantage, and it's just a matter of converting the point.
I hope to participate in more tournaments and support the blockchain team. Thanks for letting me participate. These are my stats at the end of the tournament.