Hivechess Tournament S12 Round 4: @samostically was the winner!

Dear chess fans,

yesterday in the fourth round of S12 we had also a fourth winner! This is rather unusual and happened only once so far (in S7, in summer 2021). The round was played as a 5+1 arena where no berserking was allowed. Again 21 players were participating.

This time @samostically could end up as a lucky winner, in a very close fight. I say lucky as he had not to face the season leaders @eniolw or @sawko at all (which is always helpful for the results😃). This is the reason I don´t like the Lichess arenas too much - the pairing can be so weird. Just one point behind him was @pamboy27 as second (like last time), ex aequo in points with @sawko as third and yet another point only behind @eniolw as fourth (who was the only one undefeated and had a performance of 2500!). In fact the ranks 2 to 5 were identical to last week.
Congratulations to All!

I think generally the lack of the berserking option brought the field more close together and made it more exciting. Maybe I will do this more often in the future although I couldn´t see more appealing combinations (but I haven´t checked out all 90 games).

In this position from a game between @eniolw (Black) and @vjap55 which went already quite bad for White, Black had after his last move Qf6 a quite unpleasant pressure on f2.

https://lichess.org/KSQlR0OJ/black#64

Here it was key to bring the White Queen back to the defence with Qb2, but instead Ne4? was played. The knight is an inferior defender here as it could be pushed away after Qd4x Re1 and f5.
White tried some active counterplay and played Qd7 threatening Qe6x with check...

https://lichess.org/KSQlR0OJ/black#69

...but unimpressed Black just took the Knight with fxe4, thus eliminating one defender of f2 and at the same time introducing another attacker. Even after Qd6x Kh8 and Qg4x White is hopeless due to Qf2x and the White rook is lost (plus his Knight), so White resigned.

Also a shoutout to @stranger27 for his 8^th place, his best result ever!
In his game (with Black) against @petreius he could grab a pawn early in the opening and hold on to it until a winning endgame, but in this position White (after Black had traded a pair of bishops) had a chance to equalize:

https://lichess.org/iDqpJUhm/black#88

The "Zwischenzug" Ng4: could have grabbed the pawn and rescue the draw because if Kf6 to attack the knight, White has the nasty fork Ne4+!
Instead White did recapture the bishop immediately (quite natural in a time scramble) with Kc3x and after g4 the Black extra pawn with the White king too far away was overwhelming!

Blunder of the day:
In the game between @petreius (White) and @pereu4ivatel, Black was greedy and quite randomly grabbed a pawn on b2. How was he then immediately punished by White?

https://lichess.org/hIaKI7wm/white#54

Link to the tournament: https://lichess.org/tournament/PndRcN8x

Season 12: 03 Jun to 05 Aug 2022 / Ranking after 4 rounds:

The rules you can look up in the S12 announcement post.

After 4 rounds @sawko is still leading in front of @eniolw, but by just two points (and since today @eniolw has an advantage in the average performance)! So all is possible. The gap to the third, @franu (Tz995), however is already 15 points.
Due to his absence (former) co-favorite @jaki01 fell back to the 6^th rank and is probably out of the race for the champion.

See you all next week - and keep practicing!

In the Candidates tournament after 6 of 14 rounds Ian Nepomniachtchi is single leader with 4,5 of 6, followed by Fabiano Caruana with 4/6. All other have 50% or less, and Alireza Firouzja (my favorite) is on the last place with only 2 out of 6. Who would have thought this?

https://candidates.fide.com/crosstable

Who will be the winner and will Magnus defend his title against him?