Schwarzer König vs SK Réti

In May last year, we convincingly won our first over-the-board team match against SK Réti. Because the event was great fun (and because we like winning), we decided to make it a tradition and organize a second edition, this time on our own turf in the ETH main building. Six players from each club were selected to battle for a very nice trophy in what was, officially at least, a friendly match. Could we take home the win again? Or would SK Réti get their revenge?

Our players were selected in a small Lichess tournament, where 18 players took part. Things got pretty chaotic after the Lichess servers went down in the middle of the first round, but with some furious reloading and praying, we managed to fix the issue and resume the tournament. Across five rounds, nobody remained unbeaten, but five players managed to come out on top: Giulio, Felix, Damien, Lawrence, and Luís. Our sixth player, yours truly, decided to award themselves a wildcard, because they would obviously have crushed the qualification tournament anyway (Okay, admittedly, I would not have, but such are the perks of being the organizer).

Fast forward to 7pm on the day of the match, and our first opponents started trickling in. Unfortunately for us, one of the first to walk into the room was none other than Lukas Oestmann: a strong chess player who played in our club just a couple of years ago. With a traitor on their side, and a very strong one at that, we knew things were going to be tough. Still, there is nothing like a good challenge. 🙂

We would play two rounds with a 10+5 time control. The first round started after a short delay because one of the players from Réti thought that HG was in Hönggerberg (I assure you, any confusion was purely accidental and absolutely not part of our match strategy). It was a tough round, and only two of our players managed to take home a win. Unfortunately, since I was one of the last to finish, victoriously I might add, I cannot really comment on the quality of the other games. But we will simply imagine that everyone played like true grandmasters, as is required when representing your own chess club.

Going into the next round, we had a clear goal: we needed to win at least four games. We… failed miserably. Only 1.5 points made their way to our side in the final round, bringing the overall score to 3.5-8.5 and making SK Réti the deserved winners of the evening. We like winning, but losing is also acceptable as long as there are enough snacks and a few good laughs. Let’s beat them again next year?