July Shield '26

Having forgotten to buy myself a beer... Wait, am I in a time loop?
Anyroad, it's the Shield again and I was observing rather than trying to fetch it myself.

The current Shield holder is @ihatespaMMers -

• So, 6 hours of Atomic, here we go!

@ReChesster starts his run with a loss while @Mr_Board_Master produces a nice 9 game streak but then bumps into @Tatum_goat.

Soon enough Re manages to shake off his nerves and assume the leading position.

• Entering the 2nd hour, Re is ahead by 21 points.

Meanwhile there comes the Wolf and cautiously (not berserkingly) wins 16 games in a row; but then @AtomicOverseer inflicts the 1st loss upon him -

By the way, look how tenaciously Wolfram resists in a bad position... I wish I had half his patience and a tad of his inventiveness.

• 2 hours in, Re is ahead by 58 points.

And we witness the Clash of Goats -

@Natso outfoxing Wolfram!

• After 3 hours a bunch of 2200+ players pause which makes life easier for ReChesster - he repeats the 16 game streak of Wolfram's and then extends it to 19 games!

But @nanasquare doesn't allow it to continue -

• After 4 hours of play Re is 110 (!) points ahead of @Maracker, his closest rival.

Yet one brazen sacrifice leads to a loss in the game between the two -

Meanwhile, @AtomicOverseer is bewailing his poor performance in the chat (after beating Wolfram and Natso).

• An hour before the finish line, Re is still more than a 100 points ahead.

Beating Maracker in 12 moves with black -

Meanwhile, @AtomicOverseer is still complaining (in the middle of the game with Re!)

Weird endgame they got! -

Another notable game - Emma beating the World Champion:

And finally we have our Shield winner!

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Last month's attendance (650) was not surpassed (583)
But the average rating is slightly better (1486 => 1503)

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I asked the winner to share his thoughts.

@ReChesster:

Looking through my own games there really wasn’t a lot of special games. One game that was pretty nerve wrecking tho towards the end was this one

Qb3 was a bit of a brain slip and got me in a pretty bad pos, and later on losing, but towards the end we both got into time trouble and started premoving, and by some miracle my rook somehow found his way to the king and I survived xD
if I’m also allowed to take games from others here’s a really nice idea I saw from Wolfram-Natso

blacks goal is to open the h file, but playing h4 alone would allow white to push g4. So natso played bg4 first to prevent that and then pushed h4 to make sure he could open the h file. You probably saw this game, but I really really like that idea
Ah yea what might also be smth to share is that I got 6 out of 8 games as black against floppa which really annoyed me lol
the same can be probably said for atomicoverseer, where I got all but one game as black
so pairings against strong ppl were in general not very favorable for me
Bc I got a lot of blacks
well that’s everything noteworthy for me I think :)

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And we have just got an exclusive picture of Re celebrating in his natural habitat -