Rookly Recap Take Two!
- 2 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Howdy! It’s The Chess Friends!
For the past few months, we played on team WIISER in our second (Winter) season of Rookly, a chess esports league for grades K-12.
If you don’t know what Rookly is or how it works, check out our previous popular blog where we recapped Rookly's Fall Season: https://www.chessfriendsbooks.com/post/rookly-the-power-of-friendship!Â
As before, our team consisted of the 3 of us, plus Odbayar, Deeksha, and Siana, with our grades listed below:
The Legend Vivaan: 2nd Grade
Siana: 3rd Grade
The Myth Sarang: 7th Grade
Odbayar: 7th Grade
Deeksha: 7th Grade
The Man Benji: 8th Grade
Rookly Winter Regular Season 2026
As we mentioned before, Rookly has 8 divisions, which group school chess teams based on their geographical locations. During the regular season, the teams compete with each other within their division (or, as they are also called, leagues), each week ranking points for every win of their four top performers.
First, let’s take a look at the standings with the top five teams in each league, taken from the Rookly Blog:
The top six teams from all the leagues combined are:
6) Macon ECHS in Franklin, NC, winner of the French League with 148 points;
5) Moreland Middle School in San Jose, CA, second place of the En Passant League with 152 points;
4) Hackley School in Tarrytown, NY, second place of the Rook League with 155 points;
3) Upper St. Clair in Pittsburgh, PA, winner of the Knight League with 157 points;
2) Scarsdale MS in Scarsdale, NY, winner of the Rook League with 161 points!
And… the ultimate winner of the Rookly Regular Winter Season 2026, with a whopping 219 points, shattering the Rookly record, also the winner of the En Passant league, from Seattle, WA…
Drumroll please!
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Badabadabadabadabadabadabada---- Boom!
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WIISER!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, thank you very much!
Most notably, there are two players who not only had most wins in the regular season, but also broke the highest win totals in Rookly history:
WIISER's own The Myth Sarang with 97W and Odbayar with 94W! Bravo!
And WIISER's Deeksha is the only player in Rookly in the last 2 regular seasons to not lose or draw a game!
After the regular season was done, it was time for the playoffs! There are two playoffs in Rookly: team and individual, and top teams and top scoring individuals receive special invitations to participate. All 6 of our players qualified individually, and so did the team.
Top Teams Tournament
In the Top Teams Tournament, 36 teams with 144 total players participated. The arena format lasted 90 minutes where we played as many as we could fit 10-min games with no increment per side. As usual, a point was granted for each win, and the scores of the top 4 players on a team were added to make the total.
The team that emerged with the most points was... WIISER!
Here are the top 10 teams, from the Rookly website:
The Man Benji won every game he played, winning a whopping 11 games! The Myth Sarang played 15 games, going 13-2. Vivaan played 14 games and won 9! Siana played 11 and won 8!
41 raw score (with the 3 point bonus for winning) is another Rookly record!
Top Individuals Tournament
This year, Rookly split the individual championships into three separate tournaments, K-5, middle school, and high school. From WIISER, Siana and Vivaan played in the K-5 arena, while Deeksha, Sarang, Benji, and Odbayar played in the middle school one. The same 90-min-long arena was used, with one tweak: once you’ve lost 2 games, you don't get to play anymore in that arena!
In the K-5 Top Individuals Tournament, Siana and Vivaan were among the other 71 participants. Vivaan scored the most wins of all, 8, before being eliminated after two losses. Technically, he finished in 4th place, but if you look at the number of most wins, Vivaan is our winner! Siana did awesome as well, getting 4 wins and finishing in the top ten!
In the Middle School Tournament, Deeksha, Sarang, Benji, and Odbayar competed among 212 other participants, and all 4 of them survived the full 90 mins without getting eliminated! Odbayar had 5 wins, Deeksha 6, Benji 8, and Sarang 9! Officially, Deeksha took 8th place, Benji took 4th with 8 wins and 1 draw and no losses! Sarang, going 9-1-2, took 1st because he had better tiebreaks than the other player with 9 wins!
Most importantly, we had a lot of fun, enjoyed playing with our friends, and making many new ones. Throughout the season, it was neat making real life OTB connections with friends we’ve met and played over Rookly, both locally and nationally!
By the way, Rookly is running a summer league! All our K-12 readers, please consider joining! http://rookly.com/tournament?name=summer-league.
Don't worry if you have a team or not: Rookly will get you on one!
Before playing, though, check out these tips from The Man Benji who has played 162 Rookly games!
Top Opening Traps to Be Aware Of
These opening traps happened to everyone on Rookly, almost every week. We’ve been there (trapping and being trapped), so we wanted to prepare you for these tricky situations.
By far the most common one is the Scholar's Mate. I do not play it, but sometimes someone would try to trick me. I don't mind: even GM Magnus Carlsen recently said this opening was the best to learn for beginner players. Let’s see how we should defend against it.
The line starts like this:
1.e4 e5 2.Qh5
This "bringing your queen too early" Qh5 move should set off alarm bells in your head. Let’s look at this:
White is attacking our e5 pawn and eyeing our weakling on f7, which is only defended by the king. First things first, we have to defend our e5 pawn, and most logical is:
2… Nc6
It also develops that knight. White will follow up with
3. Bc4
It can be tempting to play a developing move like 3… Nf6 attacking White’s queen, but look closely! Black’s f7 pawn is still under attack, and taking it with White’s queen would be checkmate! We have to stop this threat, so the best move would be
3… g6!
...attacking the queen. White has to bring it back, likely going
4. Qf3
Hitting our f7 pawn once again, but now we can play
4… Nf6
Blocking the attack on our pawn once again. Just playing all these defensive moves gives Black a slight edge! They developed both their knights while White wasted time with a bunch of queen moves. Here is a Gif showing it all, shoutout to Chess.com and Lichess for the photos!
The next opening trap is not really one where White threatens mate or anything scary, but it is more of a mental trap. It's when someone playing Black decides to repeat all the moves White plays. But, if White plays the right moves, it can lead to a quickly losing position for the Black side. Here is one example:
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5
This position is still theoretical. It comes from the Petrov Defense, which usually leads to quiet and slow build-up positions. There is a catch, though.
3… Nxe4 is a mistake for Black. At first it doesn’t look wrong. Black is just re-taking a pawn, right?
Noooo! White can play
4. Qe2
threatening that Black knight. Many players would see the threat and drop the knight back with
4… Nf6.
This is a huge mistake, because White can play a discovered check:
5. Nc6+!
and easily winning the Black queen next. Here is another Gif!
My recommendation is maybe stay away from the Petrov just for now. Develop the other knight on move 2 instead.
The last trap I’ll show today is a bit deeper line, and, if Black falls for it, it’s so bad that their position becomes cooked, barbecued and fried. This may or may not give you a clue about the name of this trap, but it’s called the Fried Liver Attack! It starts like this:
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4. Ng5.
White knight attacking the f7 pawn!
4… d5
Yes, Black sacrificing the pawn by attacking the White pieces. White has to take that pawn, but...
5. exd5 Nxd5?
is a mistake for Black, which lets White uncork the Fried Liver combo, with…
6.Nxf7!!
Look at this! White sacrifices the knight! If
6… Kxf7, 7. Qf3+
And if Black wants to defend their knight, they must play
7… Ke6.
Sure, the computer only gives this a +1 advantage for White but look at this attack! White can play a chill move like 8. Nc3 putting pressure on Black’s pinned knight on d5. This is almost surely winning against any human! Here is the Gif:
If you want to know how to play against The Fried Liver Attack, check out the crazy Traxler Counterattack or something more chill like the Polerio! Let us know if you want us to cover those in our next blogs!
Happy Rooklying!
Three Cheers, Fellow Future Master Chess Friends!
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The Man Benji, The Myth Sarang, The Legend Vivaan
