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LICHESS Marathon

hi all, I want to share my experience regarding the last event hosted in this site which is the MARATHON, first of all I realized that the only chance for me to get trophy is to play more, as a patzer I will lose a lot of games , so this was basically my strategy u know, being the turtle rather than the rabbit :) and it worked ! (played 20 h and 31 min >> u can see this in my profile because I never played in lichess before and the marathon is my first playing experience !)

I prepared for this a couple of days before the event, playing a lot of physical exercises and practicing a lot of meditation and of course increasing my hours of sleep :) at the day of the marathon , I had everything prepared near the table, I mean regarding the snacks and the drinks, after every hour of play I did some stretching and massage to my neck and some eye exercises (btw this is the FIRST time ever I hadn't experience headache after sitting for a long time in front of my laptop ! I believe the most important thing that helped me was holding my nerves and emotions , I used to get angry when losing a game , in this marathon , I lost some games where I had a winning position either by a slip of mouse ,time out, or because of the frequent internet interruptions in my area, and I just accepted it ! for me this was my real win ,I spent a whole day playing tough mental sport remaining cool never cursed or get angry ,just play and trying to have fun.

,,, I will be glad to hear from you a lot of feedback regarding this very awesome event !
Kudos to you for having such discipline! With such preparation/focus/etc... you used just to *prepare* you're probably gonna a nice big trophy after a few marathons :P
Holy crap. That sounds like an awesome setup! Nice preparation, man.

I really haven't been bothered with the physical side of chess, and I'm definitely going to start incorporating stretching/running/sleeping(more than 2 hours a night :3) into my routine.

Snacks, drinks, 24 hours of blitz chess... what more could you want?

Congratulations on your first rated tournament, you've managed to secure yourself a very respectable rating. Best of luck in your future chess endeavors!
hey, well done man :D sorry for the swindles in our games lol
very impressive performance almost making it to the top 10, congrats!
THANK you all for this encouraging comments :)
I had to admit there were some flaws in my plan, the last 5 hours somehow I lost interest and begin to lose many many games (lost about 150 points in this period ) even if I wasn't getting tired !,, next time maybe I think of a "major" refreshment activity to do, for no less an hour, I don't know, maybe playing a hourly bltiz tournament !
@ Aljaberi. You asked for feedback. I'm honest. Here is mine.
* A patzer is a poor chess player. You're either lying or mistaken.
* Your Training rating is 2087, Bitz is 1853. (i'm 928 & 1523).
* i came 145/2,258 players. i prepped, i endured. i don't gloat.
* All the things you did to prepare are the things you should do.
* You're often angry when losing & wanted to 'win' this picture of a blue globe so badly that you were could not afford anger.
* we all lost games b.c of mouse slip, time out, or disconnect.
* you posted in Lichess Feedback. your message is about you.
Its not hard to get to the 50 top player,
Im a weak player in blitz, was 1300 yesterday and I managed
to get to the top 100 and most of my games were terrible
I even did not manage to checkmate with queen up or a pawn promotion with one minute left or seconds remaining,
I also played kingcrusher and He played very bad chess imo,
so all you had to do to get to the top 50, its play 24 hours straight which is what I did but since I am a real patzer in blitz
I did not get there, did not worry much as I was just curious how would I handle 24 hours.
It was a very pleasant experience despite the harsh comment I just made, there are good players in blitz but I think they are good players in blitz because they are usually good at slow time controls and not viceversa, time management is an skill but I think its easy to learn, so the hard part would be to improve your slow chess, I know this because I improved yesterday 300 points in blitz almost 400, now my rating is almost ok despite that I still play awful, so you cant compare both ratings pools blitz and classical if you do it is at least inflated by 300 400 points
depending the point of the curve you choose and the length of the classical, so very good experience so far as an amusement novelty but I cant really consider it chess, I do hope however that they will make more marathons as It was a tremendous sucess with more than 2000 people playing,

Also I had no preparation physically or mentally at all, I just logged in as usual in lichess, saw that the marathon was gonna start
and I felt a little lazy because I knew if I were gonna play it I would do the 24 hours as Im pretty competitive which is what happened.
Most good players could beat me with bersek and that doubles the points and halfs the time, that looks like a solid strategy if you are good, so I had plenty of zeros in the games and even make it in the top 100 why?
Well because most players did not bother to play 24 hours, few of them did I believe, still the top 50 might be hard as the points were almost doubling at the top ladder, so its hard for me as Im actually bad but any 1700 1800 player I think can make it.
See
http://en.lichess.org/BzM3IvaE#80
he was third in the tournament I think, I dont make things up
I admire a lot kingcrusher for giving a lot popularity to chess
and spread it in youtube but its a different type of game, they dont play solid moves, most players play the clock, which is what I did yesterday as a challengue It was fun
did not know what to play against the french defence so I tried the fianchetto I think its called the kingside attack, I also faced many sicilians even solid positional lines with e6 and I forgot to play c4, plenty of players played c5, at leat the strong ones but they could beat me with solid normal stuff I saw a lot of 1950 2200, I tried to mix up my game playing the dutch defence even d4 as white as It feels repetitive to play the same opening during 24 hours so It was plenty of fun but I can say that I did not learn anything really as I did not do post analysis which is what I like to improve my game, I maybe had 2 or 3 creative games which I spoiled latter if I find them I might post them,
so everything I played, the sicilian dragon as well, what else, scandinavian as white even alekhine defence, I think its a good idea to play something like the london system as It does not tax a lot the tactical ability for the 24 hour period
But its easy to play 24 hours as you can play almost automatically the hard part is trying to play for a win, that is concentrated as losing gives you zero points
and they did not resign in a lost position because of the time
so you really had to push the whole game if you wanted to win.
If you are competitive you will love this type of challengue and if You are not you can still play some hours, there were some connections problems which I find them understandable not too much to moan about it, +99% of the time was good plust its free event, I dont know I like it.
This is a hallmark of how good lichess is doing the site, you can easily find this when you pick up a random gaming site and they annoy you with adds or jave applets etc and they dont have almost members, now from a number perspective lichess has to be very proud of what it has accomplished, thibault does not like to brag about it but its really an acomplishemnt,
they have had to put a lot of effort to manage the pairing, everything even the trophys that they make
I have no idea of programming but It has to be difficult to handle the servers and all that stuff, in fact I think they did a marathon which failed the first time, so thank a lot for all the effort you put to make it work so smooth,
can I see the code of the tournament I want to learn programming as a hobby as well?

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