Lichess Liga - How much chess is enough chess?

Hello everyone.
These days Lichess Liga Team Battle is ongoing chess competition in which anyone who is available from our Hivechess community tries to participate and represent our Blockchain team.
And it sounds nice until the competition starts and somehow chess is somehow less fun then in our standard Friday tournaments.

Photo by @stayoutoftherz.

To back it up little ,for those who are not familiar, here in Chess community we have Friday chess tournaments which already had 20 seasons (each season is 12 rounds each Friday) organized by @stayoutoftherz.

After 20th season finished there is a bit longer brake until 21st season start. So basically we were without chess tournament whole May (only one day of chess with Chess960 at the end of May if I remember correctly).
These chess tournaments are somewhere between 60 to 70 or 80 minutes of chess depending on time control.

You can check here more info about Season 20:
Season 20 Hivechess

Worth noting is that before we had two tournaments weekly.

And these tournaments are fun. At least for me. If you are free, you stop by and play some chess. Win, lose, blunder to me it is part of the game.

For now we had 2 rounds of Lichess Liga Team Battle with 4 days apart from each other. Next round is today. However Lichess Liga Team Battle came somehow as joyless chess and tiring event.

Why is that so? How much chess is enough chess question pooped up.

Like I said for me chess is fun game. You look to win against your opponent. But if I make some nice move and lose still it is fine by me. I does not have to be win to have fun.

However Lichess Liga Team Battle is team battle and I think there is more pressure on you when you play.

First round was so tiring for me. I think I did not used to playing 1 hour and 40 minutes of chess. So after 1 hour mark you are tired. You have to concentrate to your each move and all your games are important.
So not getting used to longer tournaments was most probably problem at first place. And to think that chess matches on highest level chess tournaments are played several hours with one opponent and only one game is quite hard thing to do.

Second reason that Lichess Liga Team Battle seems so hard is chess player field. Here on Hivechess Community we have players on different levels of chess knowledge. Everyone can find someone on their level and game is more interesting like this. Our tournaments have several groups according to player strength.
Lichess Liga Team Battle have such a strong field. We are at Liga 5 and most of the players are above 2000 Elo.

But also there is another part of the problem. Somehow I am getting used to all these so called problems. After and during first round I was so tired but some round was quite better in that sense. And having to play against stronger player is challenge so you give your self in more. This is the reason that second round was easier to play - at least for me. And when we talk about rating. During these two rounds I gained around 105 Elo points (Elo pints are points for measuring your chess level skill). So may Elo was around 1450 and this was reason that stronger players underestimate you. They blunder or loose on time. So you get more points when you defeat stronger player and lose almost none (not sure if you lose or not lose points at all) when you lose your game.
It is encouraging for me to compete against stronger players and sometime you may get surprise win.

Now I will go over some games from round 1 and round two.

We managed to stay first two round in Liga 5. Top 3 teams move up to Liga 4 and last 3 teams go to Liga 6. We did not yet play with our best players on one place so maybe Liga 4 can be in our reach.

In this game https://lichess.org/GAC3K2LQ/white#123
I was losing until I this Queen trade where I went for pawn hunting and then exchanged the major pieces.

Queen swap with check

Pawns hunting and getting rid of one pair of rooks. After he played e3 I took pawn on e3 with rook and exchanges rooks. At this point you can see evaluation bar on my side.

This is the end. He was 1848 in rating and my rating at the time of the game was 1467.

Next game is funny one. I think you should play till the end. Even when you are losing and maybe try to go for a stalemate. So my opponent was low on time and I went for a run with a king. Intersiting in previous game I tried to avoid the same thing and I think he was going maybe for a stalemate.

This is position at move 40. He took my last last pawn and I went for a walk with a king. Best thing in these positions is to leave on piece for your opponent to be able to do moves beside king.

Also he had 20 seconds. I played fast putting pressure on him

And this is last position. He had around 5 seconds left. He was 1703 in rating while playing this game.

https://lichess.org/GQUi86zD/black#107

And some games from round 2.
This is a long game against 2000 Elo player.

He made blunder here.

After pawn move he went for a d8 check and after exchange it was rook against knight.

Pawn push and promotion. And he lost one knight.
Rest is Rook vs knight.

https://lichess.org/ELa13Y9G/black#71

And last game is win on time.
Strong opponent with 2158 rating. He went berserk against me. I think games where your opponent berserk even being stronger couple hundred points are somehow close. Of course you have to play as fast as you can to put pressure on your opponent.
Here difference was 655 points since I was 1533 at the time.
Well playing on time is a part of game so we got win.
He was winning but not fast enough.

That is pretty much summary of these two rounds in Lichess Liga Team Battle. New round is starting in less than a 5 minutes. If not this round if you are into chess try joining next round this week.

Link to the tournament:
https://lichess.org/tournament/L33ciH81
Lets see how this round goes