Hivechess S13 Final Results: @maestroask is the new champion

Dear chess fans,

the final round of S13 was played yesterday, an 80min. 5+1 arena with 30 players again and an average rating of 1756.

As a small surprise @samostically ended up as deserved winner, his very first win in S13! Runner-up was @wildthougts, his best result so far! Both had 100% of their games berserked. Third was @lucianosky (Pavarotty) and only fourth and fiveth, ex aequo in points, the leading players @maestroask and @sawko, respectively. Congratulations!

In this position from winner @samostically (Black) against @wildthougts White had just blundered Ne5!

https://lichess.org/Yir2O5Av/black#25

Why it is a blunder? The knight can be taken with Nxe5 and can´t be retaken because the leaving knight on c6 exposes a hanging queen on a4 and if Qxd7 the same knight just takes back and Black is a full piece up. I show it here because this is a very common theme in many openings everybody should be aware of and it is shocking that a >2200 player falls for it!

The biggest upset in R10 was this victory from @sammy00 (migmag) with White against the 683 points higher rated @iammanythings1 by checkmate.
In this position after Rd1 Black had to retreat the twofold attacked bishop, but not to capture on e6, as happened in the game. As consequence of the greed White exchanged the rooks and grabbed the bishop for free after Nxe6.

https://lichess.org/SlcD31c0#51

So @sammy00 earned 1 Hive and 5 LEO for the second time this season. Well done!

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

Season 13: 02 Sep to 04 Nov 2022 / Final Standings:

The rules you can look up in the S13 announcement post.

All the results are listed here, the deleted results are shown in red:

No surprises in the last round, @maestroask was the convincing new champion of this season with the most solid performance (3 wins and 5 second places!). Our sixfold(!) champion @sawko had to settle for second place, 14 points behind. Both are a class on their own, as the gap to the bronce medalist, @samostically, was already 25 points. Nevertheless, also a third place is remarkable in this strong field and with his win today, @samostically had kept the overhand in front of his pursuer @lucianosky (Pavarotty) who ended up with the unlucky 4^th rank! If he, or the 5^th ranked @wildthougts would not have missed a round, things could have been very different.

Congratulations to the new champion!

Special prices

The price for the biggest rating gain during the tournament (10 Hive plus 50 LEO) could be achieved by @pokerarema (ragnarokgame). Between the first and the last round he gained 337 rating points. Nobody else could come even close to this.

The price for the highest average performance in relation to the own rating (10 Hive plus 50 LEO) goes to @grafo07 with a difference of 335 rating points!

The following players won the prices for the "biggest upset" per round (1 Hive plus 5 LEO each): @lighteye, @vasigo (2 times), @fiona777, @sammy00 (2 times), @andzhi, @stranger27 and @emic. @falcout unfortunately didn´t participate 4 times and so his price is forfeited and goes back to the overall price pool.

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 @chesspricepool beneficiary).

Season stats

In total most players ever (88!) participated in S13 (21 players more than last season), and - even better - on average we had 35,3 players participating per round (so far 24,4 was the record). Unfortunately many players participated only once or twice (51 which is a sad record too). So all in all 34 players (39%) qualified for prices. The pricepool will be a record-breaking >970 Hive (in S12 it was 630 Hive) plus the 525 LEO. So the average price per player will be quite nice!

The average tournament rating of season 13 was 1835,8, lower than last season but it shows that Hivechess attracts new and not yet that skilled players, too - as it should be.
This time 13 players had a 100% participation (last seasons it was 8) and 6 more showed up 9 times, well done!

The introduction of the deletion of the weakest results worked well and I think I will keep it in future. The most brutal deletion was the one from @jaki01 who lost 30 points. The more often one participates, the less likely such a high number will occur. Another reason to show up as often as possible!

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

And thanks to the other posters for streaming (which was this season quite rare again), tournament reports, putting @chesspricepool as beneficiary and advertising this event in your blogs! And special thanks to @anomadsoul who already promised to sponsor 500 LEO for prices also in the next season!

The Hivechess Hall of Fame!

https://peakd.com/hive-157286/@badge-646464/the-hivechess-hall-of-fame

@sawko is still single leader with 6 champion titles, followed by @jaki01 with 4 titles!

Other chess tournaments here on Hive:

Don´t forget today (Saturday) the SCCL by @schamangerbert and tomorrow Sunday the Rising Crust Tournament!

There will be a small break, but S14 will start quite soon, with some major changes! Stay tuned. In the break there will be also a fun tournament which for sure will surprise you...