Game: karlw vs. wmbekking 05/17/2019
Posted:
May 21, 2019, 3:51 AM
6...L11: P2 diverges from the main line of the wedge (6...L10). This is both a good and bad idea. It's a good idea because the main line wedge has been all but solved as a win for P1 since forever, with nearly every single halfway decent move after 6...L10 7. F12 attempted (the most successful historically probably being J12), so a P1 with access to the db can win with little to no independent thought. It's a bad idea because 6...L10 is the main line by virtue of being the most testing defense, and ...L11 is less popular most likely because it has some glaring flaw.
7...H8: P1's stone on J10 is probably as good or better than on J11 where it is in the main line, and P2's 3-stone structure can't be that much better than many of the structures resulting after P2's completely free 7th move in the main line (he already capped on move 6), so I would say P2 is now worse off here than in the main line. Does P2 have a better 7th move? I'm not sure, but I would consider J11 as an obvious candidate.
8. H12! I believe this is the aforementioned glaring flaw in the L11 variation. I played 8. J11 J12 9. J9 against haijinx and squeaked out a win (https://pente.org/gameServer/viewLiveGame?mobile&g=50000000301489&w=579&h=429 ), but I didn't like some of the complications that arose in my analysis, so I went back to the drawing board. This move stuck out to me because P1 can just ignore P2's atari moves by playing G12-J11-H13-etc., and the resulting initiative is so strong that being down a cap is illusory. I then checked the db and saw that brf had some success with it, which was enough to convince me.
8...J9: As stated above, if P2 plays for captures, then I just ignore and play G12. If P2 blocks the the potential on the 12th rank, then I just play G11. Two threats and P2 can't stop them both, so P2 must play offense.
11. L10: Captures dictate the play now. Capturing on G11 now hands me a capture with initiative...
11...G11 ...but what else is there to do?
12...H8: Captures are at 4-4, but it is my move and I have no weak stones, while P2 has four stones which might as well be on four different boards. The world is my oyster.
13. J12: There's no safe defense against J11. If P2 plays J11, I play K10 and gobble my last pair in a few moves.
Summary: wmbekking's move 6...L11 is an interesting sideline of the wedge, but after the cold-blooded 8. H12!, P2 has little hope for survival. 7...J11 is a possible alternative if P2 doesn't want to abandon this defense entirely.
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Re: Game: karlw vs. wmbekking 05/17/2019
Posted:
May 23, 2019, 7:06 PM
Thanks for playing and providing this analysis, Karl. I appreciate the effort you put into this.
I did hum and ha most before L11 (move 6). I figured J11 would lose more quickly than other more than other moves.
I guess what you are saying is the by move 8, the game was already lost for P2. I did not anticipate that move by you. Definitely, I never would has seen it in a million years
I was feeling pretty good at move 8 J9 because I could at least make some open threes. My strategy from the start was to take as many pairs as possible to hopefully at least give it a good try.
Re: Game: karlw vs. wmbekking 05/17/2019
Posted:
May 24, 2019, 1:29 AM
Yeah, my 8th move is what you would call a "quiet move" in chess. They are notoriously hard to anticipate in both chess and pente. In chess, they usually happen in the middlegame and endgame and are usually in the form of a retreating knight move or the famous "mysterious rook move." In pente a quiet move can be more or less characterized as any move that doesn't create an open 3, a 4, or threaten a pair, or defend against such a threat. This leaves us primarily with moves that build "potentials," the most common of which being a 1-point jump O * O.
The opening is thus a series of quiet moves by both sides, interspersed with maybe a capture trade or two, until one player (usually P1) tries to "cash in" on their potential and make a series of threats toward pente. This quiet move occurred well into the middlegame, however. I was able to get away with it because as I said in the analysis, your stones had insufficient offensive coordination, so I could afford to take the time to build up my structure before the final attack, as opposed to "cashing in" by playing, say, J11 immediately, which probably still works but is harder.
I've been planning on writing a post one day about the right and wrong time to cash in. It's one thing that I see a lot of intermediate players mess up on: they play a building move when they absolutely need to cash in, or they try to cash in before their structure is strong enough, and so all they do is give their opponent more stones on the board for the inevitable counterattack once their initiative runs out.
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Re: Game: karlw vs. wmbekking 05/17/2019
Posted:
May 24, 2019, 11:45 PM
That would be great if you would do that. Because you advanced players seem to cash in early whereas I always thought you don't make an open three until you think you can keep the initiative to a win.
