Tag: ETHZ

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Passed Events

End of semester FS22 tournament

To celebrate the end of the semester, we organized one last blitz tournament on the 31 of May in the HG.

As the first players joined in and registered for the tournament, they proceeded with a few warm up games. Soon though 24 players would have joined the tournament and everyone was ready to start.

It was Matej who started the tournament in a dominant manner with four wins in the same amount of games. We were already familiar with his skills and many of us might have already though the tournament win was his. However, we were all surprise to see him beaten in the fifth game against Henry who was the clear underdog as he had lost his first game. This unexpected win meant that five players (Matej, Henry, Markus, Ritvik and Vincent) where now tied with four points out of five.

The last two games were not enough to decide a winner and it had to come to the Buchholz points. It was Matej who got this extra help from his previous opponents and Henry got the second place, both with six points. Markus took third place thank to a good Buchholz. The final rankings are available at the below.

Thomas, our president left to the top 3 players: Henry, Matej and Markus.
Final rankings

We hope to see you next semester for new tournaments and events. Stay tuned, we’re cooking up pretty exciting stuff. In the mean time have nice holidays and gl for your exams!

Categories
Passed Events

Polychamps II

And bETH Harmon ist just a little better than her opponent.

Following last year’s success, we decided to reiterate the Polychamps, the annual chess confrontation between the EPFL and ETHZ. It took place on the 3rd of May 2022. The format was mostly the same a lichess team battle arena in 5’+3”. However, the number of participants was limited to 75 as we learnt from the last edition that having balanced teams was very important. The number of players reached 143, less than last year, but it didn’t stop top tier players to tune in. Remembering their loss from last year, EPFL players were eager to take their revenge. However, from Zürich’s side, we all knew how it would end.

Livestream started a few minutes before the tournament and one of our best players FM Theo Stijve, a Computer Science student at ETH, traded his role as our lead player to commentator. He did a fantastic role of analyzing and commenting the games. Trying to keep up with insightful and precise analysis, Paul and Jean accompanied him for the stream as biased consultants, as for them being Welsch or Bourbine changed your game valuation drastically.

Could we add a no fork rule in the arena ? knights are too tricky

chacha_lulu

As soon as the tournament kicked off some interesting rule changes were proposed as some players were feeling the game did not fit their taste.

refusing en passant is a federal crime, like tax evasion

augusto_jc

On a more serious note the tournament was very tight all hour an a half long. Initially EPFL took a serious lead thanks to GontranDemiSel getting an impressive streak on his first 9 games, Bezerking in every single one of them. Although he was stopped by Spirit_Of_Light in his 10th game, he finished top of the table when it comes to the individual classification.

After this thriving start from La Dame Blanche, it would really take a great effort from our team SKETHZ to come back. But thanks to our incredible density of strong players this was done in a fantastic manner. Seven of the top ten final classification where from team ETH. Special shoutout to mateodezpolo who came in clutch winning all his game but the first two he played.

All games can be seen and replayed on https://lichess.org/tournament/xoRtOybY

This year’s edition was heaps of fun thanks to all the players and organizers. We can already tell you this great tradition that is the Polychamps will continue for a 3rd edition next year already, in a very new and exciting format. Stay tuned for the news!

Categories
General Passed Events

November Tournament

After our first tournament a few weeks ago, we organized a second tournament for chess lovers at ETH on Tuesday. On this chilly evening, it was great to see about 30 players gather around in a transformed seminar room for playing 8 rounds of good old chess.

What time was it? Game time.

The first rounds seemed to be business as usual for our top player Noah and many might have thought he was heading to another clear win of the tournament. But this déjà-vu feeling was soon interrupted in the third round when his brother Jan got the best of him. All cards where shuffled when Mateo topped Jan in the fourth round. Mateo continued his invincibility until the sixth round, where he finally succumbed to … Noah. This lead to a thrilling end of tournament with 3 players scoring 5 points out of 6. After two more round, only half a Buchholtz could separate the top two players and Noah managed to take the win again.

Kudos to all players and we hope you all had fun!

The final standings.

Despite many hurdles (booking of the room, making the gathering acknowledge/accepted by ETH, carrying 24 chess around Zürich, …), we’re super happy to be able to offer such (free) tournaments and hope to do so more often next semester. Special thanks to Thomas who organized most of the tournament and Yves who directed it. Thanks to ASK Réti too who graciously loaned us the boards.

Follow us on Instagram to see some pictures of the tournament !