Hivechess Tournament S12 Final Results: @sawko is the new old champion

Dear chess fans,

the final round of S12 was played yesterday, an 80min. 4+1 arena with 23 players and an average rating of 1891 (the highest in this season!).

Hive account@jaki01 was the lucky winner, his fourth win in S12 - same as Hive account@sawko. It was a very close race, Hive account@eniolw was leading for quite a part of the tournament, but Hive account@jaki01 at the end could overtake him. I said lucky winner, because while Hive account@eniolw had to match up 4 times with Hive account@sawko, Hive account@jaki didn´t have to face this tough opponent at all! Third was Hive account@sawko, followed by Hive account@emic (emichessmaster) and Hive account@fcastro177.
Congratulations to All!

In this position from Hive account@jaki01 (Black) against Hive account@eniolw White has some pressure along the h-file but Black can claim a solid advantage if he plays e.g. gxh5, because also the f3 square is attacked.

https://lichess.org/Dkrpnajb/black#31

The plan to simplify is good in principle, but Black played Qf4+?? and after Qxf4 Rxf4 hxg6 White suddenly has a winning advantage! Black tried Bxf3 to lure the White rook away from the h-file where he pins the h pawn, but consequently White recaptured with gxf3!

Black played h5 (the best move), but a few moves later that h pawn will fall and White´s g pawn will be the game winner.

In my first game (with White) against Hive account@kreur I blundered already on move 9 with f3. Do you know why this was a blunder?

https://lichess.org/RJoTltOV/white#17

Because the f3 pawn can´t be defended after Bxf3! The knight is pinned and if gxf3 Qh4 is checkmate! Fortunately my opponent had overlooked it! I could keep my extra pawn and later won the game.

Result table of S12 R10:

Link to the tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/aWhLdoe5

Season 12: 03 Jun to 05 Aug 2022 / Final Standings:

Rank	Hive name	Lichess name	Rating	Rounds played	Points	Performance
Winner	Hive account@sawko	CM sawkito	2400	10	234	2289
2nd	Hive account@eniolw	eniolw	2392	9	210	2360,1
3rd	Hive account@franu	Tz995	2183	10	183	2154
4	Hive account@rosmarly	rosmarly	2031	9	167	2018,5
5	Hive account@stayoutoftherz	stayoutoftherz	2062	10	167	2045,7
6	Hive account@vjap55	vjap55	2168	9	160	2096,4
7	Hive account@jaki01	jaki01	2351	7	153	2226,7
8	Hive account@pamboy27	pamboy27	2219	8	146	2110,6
9	Hive account@pereu4ivatel	pereu4uwatch	2036	10	132	1994,9
10	Hive account@samostically	ZGM_Samostically	2144	6	100	2076,6
11(+4)	Hive account@fcastro177	FCastro17	2114	5	91	2168,8
12	Hive account@stranger27	stranger27	1723	10	90	1759,8
13	Hive account@lighteye	lighteye	1724	10	89	1732,3
14(+2)	Hive account@emic	emichessmaster	2067	5	85	1955,5
15(-4)	Hive account@petreius	petreius	1975	6	85	1891,2
16(-2)	Hive account@rodrook	rodrook	1398	10	84	1625,4
17(+2)	Hive account@b0s	Da_k1ng	1538	8	63	1626,4
18	Hive account@maciejficek	XM9000	1518	8	51	1598,6
19(+2)	Hive account@fiona777	fiona777	1483	9	43	1537,8
20	Hive account@falcout	falcout	1531	5	37	1590,6
21(+1)	Hive account@vasigo	vasigo	1288	10	37	1412,9
22(+2)	Hive account@mypathtofire	mypathtofire	1361	6	19	1423,5

^{All players with less than 5 participations do not qualify for the prices (50% rule) and thus are not shown.}

All the results are listed here:

The rules you can look up in the announcement post.

No surprise and major changes in the last round, Hive account@sawko was the convincing champion of this season. It was actually not that clear as it looks now - until round 5 where Hive account@eniolw was missing, and since then there was nobody who could challenge Hive account@sawko anymore. How close it was can be better seen by looking at the average points achieved per round, which was 23,4 by Hive account@sawko and 23,33 by Hive account@eniolw (third was Hive account@jaki01 with 21,86). I hope next time Hive account@eniolw can participate 100% to have a fair chance for the champion title. Or maybe we should adapt the rules and delete one - the worst - result from all players, to compensate for one-time (technical) failures or misses? What do you think about this?

The bronze medal went to Hive account@franu (Tz995) - for the first time he landed on the podium, thanks to his very solid performance. For the first time also Hive account@jaki01 is missing from the Top3, but with only 7 out of 10 rounds a place on the podium is not feasible given the many strong players.

In the close race for the fourth place in the last round I could catch up with Hive account@rosmarly and we ended up with equal points, but since I needed one more tournament to achieve the same points, the fourth rank deservedly went to Hive account@rosmarly!

Congratulations to the winner and all participants!

Special price

The special price of 15 Hive for the highest performance in relation to the own rating went to Hive account@rodrook with a difference of solid 214,9 rating points! Congratulations as well!

As always, the prices will be transferred in app. one week, after the payout of this post (and any other posts using the Hive account@badge-646464 beneficiary).

Season stats

In total most players ever (67!) participated in S12, but we had on average only 24,4 players participating per round (in S10 it was >30!). Many players participated only once or twice, which is sad. So all in all only 22 players (less than a third) qualified for prices (in S10 it was 40, but with less strict rules). On the other hand, the pricepool will dwarf the one from S10 (477 Hive) and could get close to 600 Hive. So the average price per player will be quite juicy! Most likely I will keep it that way, I want to incentivize players who play regularly.

The average tournament rating of season 12 was 1851,9 (slightly higher than last season).
Again 8 players (mostly the usual suspects😀) had a 100% participation, well done!

Thank you all for your participation & engagement (and the upvotes)!

And thanks to the other posters for streaming (which was this season quite rare), tournament reports, putting Hive account@badge-646464 as beneficiary and advertising this event in your blogs!

The Hivechess Hall of Fame!

@badge-646464/the-hivechess-hall-of-fame

Hive account@sawko is now single leader with 5 champion titles, followed by Hive account@jaki01 with 4 titles!

Other chess tournaments here on Hive:

Day	Tournament	GMT	Host(s)	Active
Thu	Blitz Blunder Barrons	19:00	Hive account@the-real-betman	✔️
Fri	Hivechess Tournament	19:00	Hive account@stayoutoftherz	❌
Sat	Chess Tournament	19:00	Hive account@schamangerbert	❌
Sun	Chess Brothers League	19:00	Hive account@chessbrotherspro	❌
Sun	PIZZA CHESS	21:00	Hive account@cryptoniusraptor	❌
Mon	Checkmate Coin	19:00	Hive account@hive-129589 and Hive account@petreius	✔️
Daily	dR-960	17:34	Hive account@antipops	✔️

I am signing off (chess-wise) for a summer break, but somewhere end of August S13 will start! Stay tuned, keep practicing and enjoy the remaining summer!

Question: Would you prefer a round robin tournament for the next season, like in S11 or the usual format? Or 2 parallel events, one for 2000+ players, and one for <2000 ones?
And what do you think about a registration fee? Would you pay e.g. 2 Hive upfront to participate?
Any other suggestions for S13?