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Game number: Main Page
White: Alan Hensel    Black: David J Bush
twixt.ch.15.1.1 (LG) | This game (LG) | Download JTwixt file
On 2007-08-07 at 22:32, Alan Hensel (info) said:
|1.c11 is one of my favorite first moves, though it's a little uncommon. Even so, by |7.o15, the opening had turned into a nearly normal dipper formation. This is followed by a long period of awkwardness, as there often is in games without a clear early advantage.

Anyway, at |7.o15, my Y formation is stem-down, though the left branch is a little dubious. David detected this and attacked the right stem directly. I found |9.d6 at that point, but decided to try to strengthen my connection from p9 to the bottom first. So flipping my Y took a few moves, but as of |13.d6, d6 is the stem peg, and I have a threat to connect across to p9, and a threat of an 0-3 block at g16. Now this was a more real Y threat, and David did the more customary thing by putting a defensive peg between its branches at |14.k18.

It's still a little awkward, but I decided to shut down his path on the right. I really wasn't sure about |15.q16 at all, and maybe it would have been better to bring out i14 right then.

The point of |17.n8 was the direct threat of k5, which is instantly fatal to David's connection to the right side, and the indirect threat of k11, which I could use eventually to make my way down from d6. He responded to the direct threat, which he must, with |18.m4, and then I had a hard choice to pick a peg south of d6 that would support my threats to the right and across his stem. I don't remember exactly why I chose |19.f9, except that other choices that I considered, like |19.e10, had responses that I found awkward (like |19.e10 20.g11).

Well, David decided to reopen the lower branch of his stem-left Y with |20.n18. I don't think he was anticipating |21.i14. Thanks to the Medcalf defense, |25.d21, my path to the bottom is alive. The middle, however, was still soft, and David attacked it, after sketching in some support at f5 and g14. At |37.d11, David had 2 choices: |38.d9 or |38.d13. I'm pretty sure I win them both. The other line is probably the more obvious: |38.d9 39.e8 40.e11 41.f12 42.c11 43.e10 44.d13 45.e14, so David chose wisely. There was a real chance I wouldn't see |43.g9, and I almost didn't. That was a real tight spot, and I don't think there is anything else I could have done. Whew.

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