VCT 3 -Trivia & Gallery

VCT 3 journey has been amazingly exciting so far! As we enter the Quarter Final round, and things start getting serious, let us take a look back to see a few milestones achieved in the Group Stages of the tournament.

Highlights:

Black or White - Although there were concerns raised on selection of colors in the games, 33 matches were actually won with black pieces and 23 matches were won with white pieces in the Group Stage. 4 matches were drawn out of total 60 matches.
Women power - Two female players out of total 24 players have won the maximum number of prizes in the tournament (of a historically patriarchal game - chess). Both have already won 2 prizes each. No other player can achieve that in VCT 3.
Throughout the day - Match timings in VCT 3 have covered almost two thirds of a day, ranging from 8:30 am in the morning to 11:30 pm in the night. And we have seen practice matches happening even at 2:30 am in the night!
OP calculation - New qualification rule introduced in VCT 3 which had to be referred to decide qualification positions in Blue League.
Giant Slayers - Beating higher rated players became the trend in VCT 3. There were several occasions where players have beaten 400+ higher rated opposition with the top crossing 700 mark.

Fun facts on Color Selection :

Like Group Stage, even in the Playoff matches, more matches were won with black (3) than with white pieces (1).
Sandy (Blue) and Shouvik (Yellow) won 3 matches in their respective Leagues, all with black. They jointly have the maximum number of wins with black.
Maddy on the other hand won all 4 matches in Group Stage with white and is the player with the maximum number of wins with white.

Fun facts on Accuracy :

Our bottom ranked two players (as per chess.com ratings) were the only two players out of 24, who had their accuracy repeated in the league matches. Accuracy repeated for Akash (19 - on Matchday 2 and Matchday 5) in Blue League and for Prateek (37.4 - on Matchday 1 and Matchday 5) in Green League.
Neha is the player with the most deviation in the accuracy scores - Her highest is 94.5 and lowest is 8.4 in 5 matches.
Matcho is the player with least deviation in the accuracy scores - His highest is 96.6 and lowest is 87 in the Group Stage. Worth mentioning here about Sayak as well, whose highest accuracy is 95.8 and lowest 83.6.

Now some fun facts of the Leagues.

Red League :

Red League is the only League where all the players won at least one match.
Red League is also the only league where no match ended in draw.
Red League finished their matches before other Leagues in all the 5 matchdays.

Blue League :

Till the very last match of the group, 5 out of 6 players were eligible for qualification. Incidentally that was also the last match of the Group Stage!
Blue League is the only League where the qualification order is not as per final table standings.
Still Blue League is the only League where the Average Accuracy is in descending order at the end of the Group Stage!
Shibu won two matches in the tournament. One against the highest rated player in the tournament. And the other against the lowest rated player. This is an unique achievement in any sports event anytime!
Highest average accuracy after the Group Stage is achieved by Matcho - 90.88, only one to cross the 90 mark in 4 Leagues.
Blue League is also the only League to have two players with average accuracy above 80.
Blue League not only had the highest rated player (Sandy) and the lowest rated player (Akash), but also ended with players with highest average accuracy (Matcho - 90.88) and lowest average accuracy (Akash - 23.12) in the tournament.

Yellow League :

Nandita is the only Fighter to qualify for the Kockout Stages from all the Leagues. Also she made Yellow League as the only League with a Fighter at the top position.
Aneek is the only player to have two draws in the tournament. Also note that both the draws were because of stalemate situation in consecutive matches.
Yellow League is the League where most number of 'upset' matches happened. In 5 out of 15 matches, players have beaten opponents of higher ratings (Atleast 100+ rating at the time of the match). This is excluding the two matches that ended in draw between players with 100+ rating difference (Nandita-Aneek & Aneek-Anustup).
Highest accuracy achieved by any player in the tournament is 98.7 by Sudipta. Lowest accuracy is 4.5 by Arka. Ironically, Arka had beaten Sudipta in their head to head match in Yellow League.
The 2nd highest accuracy - 98.5 and 2nd lowest accuracy - 7.1, have been achieved by Shouvik and Arka respectively, again both from Yellow League.

Green League :

Green League 3rd position (Jongs) was decided before the other qualification positions of Green League or most of the positions in other Leagues. Infact it is second only to the Red League 1st position (Irfan), decided after Matchday 4.
Longest match ever played in VCT - Jongs vs Sayantan match on Matchday 5 went on for 56 mins. The match eventually resulted in a draw. But chess.com engine gave up on the analysis after a point of time!
That match made some notorious mark on VCT as it also has become the only match in all 3 editions of VCT where both the players ended up with same accuracy. The accuracy was identical for Jongs and Sayantan - 81!

VCT 3 Gallery: