My best tournament – shared 1st out of 355 players, PR 2033, 7-0

9 months ago I joined a Lichess rapid tournament for players rated under 1700 in rapid, which I was at the time. Game 1 was over rather quickly, and I had the momentum from the start:

Convincing win in the Petrov, with an extra sacrifice for good measure! 0-1.

Game 2 saw me playing with the black pieces for the second game in a row, so I decided to play the Sicialian defense this time, as it was something I had recently started preparing.

Convincing win in game 2! 0-2, preparing for game 3.

First game with white, got the advantage early on and never let it go. 3-0 start and at the moment was in 44th place.

Game 4 – another with the white pieces, literally ended in 10 moves and I move up to 15th place:

You have to be more careful than that! 4-0 to start the tournament – performance rating is at 2249.

Game 5 and I’m starting to get nervous, but the adrenaline is going and I barely survive the following game:

barely survived that one! Move up to 4th place, 5-0.

Game 6 is a change of pace, as the game is flawless: 0 inaccuracies, 0 mistakes, 0 blunders. A model of clean, efficient play. I’m in 1st place but being chased by another player.

Still in 1st place, this makes 6 wins in a row: performance rating is down to 2100. 1 game to go …

The last game would have me playing with white pieces, and again I play a nearly flawless game: 2 inaccuracies, 0 mistakes, 0 blunders. But in the meantime, the formerly 2nd place player has a marginally higher performance rating than myself, so despite having the same amount of wins, he takes the podium at first, leaving me as the tied- runner-up.
So the tournament ends after 7 straight wins and a performance rating of 2033.

I really hope you’ve enjoyed looking at this series of games, someday I will share the first rapid tournament I won and the first blitz tournament I would finish in a 3-way tie for 1st.

A link to the tournament @ lichess: https://lichess.org/tournament/Y2DhFZaQ I(

Screenshot of the final podium:

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