Online League: March

This year's first season of Offerspill Online League went by rather quickly, and now a new season is underway already. There are now 71 achievements to be unlocked - check them out here and get started!

Check out our YouTube channel for content and inspiration for your endeavours in the Online League - maybe some brilliant wins by the World Champion will get you going.

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If you are not familiar with the concept we'll provide you with the necessary details right away. Members of Offerspill Chess Club can compete in our weekly tournaments to earn achievements, gain experience points, and win prizes. All tourmaments are all-play-all, but the players are split into rating groups in the standings section. In this way, the league is competitive while it is possible to compete for prizes in a rating group suited for your level.

Read more about the league here.

World Champion Magnus Carlsen frequently play in Online League tournaments



Our Online League is exclusive for Offerspill Chess Club members.
Become a member of Offerspill here.

In this article we have tried to summarize the season with some fun stats, games and results.

Tournament statistics

Our tournaments were well-visited in March.

Now, let's have a look at the winners in each rating group.

All players

No big surprise here, guys. As usual, Gvein proved too strong over the season and won comfortably - a kind of performance we have become accustomed to from him!

The winning performance included 24,069 experience points with 14 tournaments played. TraintoBusan claimed second, closely followed by two grandmasters - impressive!

Top 5


Even though Gvein won a lot of tournaments this season, winning is not enough to score enough experience points to win the overall league - you need the achievements. One of those achievements is the quite fun "king of the hill" - reaching the centre of the board with your king within the first 10 moves and winning the game. This one is quite risky as you can find your king in a lot of trouble early on.

Let's see Showmethemoney1 pull off this tactic against league winner Gvein:


U2000

Unlike the overall group the race was on from start to finish here. Ultimately, Puddingsjakk won after having played 13 tournaments and an impressive 16,418 experience points. Astralex and Flugg made up the rest of the podium with 15,218 and 14,768 experience points, respectively.

Top 5


Puddingsjakk also had a go at the "king of the hill" achievement - with success! This is what makes the Online League so much fun; your opponent might decide to go for some risky achievement like this one. Still, you have to punish him. Luckily, for Puddingsjakk, this little adventure went unpunished by Talexander.

...but even though Puddingsjakk managed the achievement it didn't work out so well in an earlier attempt, like this one:


U1500

A lot of moves, games, tournaments - and a clear winner. Congratulations to Allix for a comfortable win with 8898 experience points. Also, the winner played 10 tournaments which was a group high - the second highest number of tournaments played was 3!

Top 5


Standings and statistics aside - it's time for a couple of fun games.

The prize for "quickest checkmate" goes to cash 1981 and Johannanas. It takes two to tango, after all.


Johannanas is a player full of venome, though, which was proved in the following game where Black launched a ferocious attack:


Recently, we wrote a short article on the Halloween Gambit, which is a slightly dubious but fun gambit to play in a practical game. The opening was linked to an achievement and proved popular in the league.

The risky Halloween Gambit


Ultimately, Allix and PusheenMeow had the most faith in this slightly speculative opening. Both played the opening a whopping 6 times, which might give us a big hint about the style of these players - watch out for tricks!

We also recorded a video on the stubborn and solid Alekhine's Defense in relation to one of our thematic blitz tournaments. Results from the tournament are available here.

TraintoBusan, a frequent visitor and participant in our tournaments, proved to be the player most fond of this opening. Coincidentally, she already plays the opening so it was not a big surprise to find out TraintoBusan found herself in the Alekhine's Defense 44 times! Astralex and Mennyhagen played the opening 10 and 11 times, respectively - it looks like our members needs to warm up to the Alekhine.