|1.f19 - White chooses a very strong opening, inviting a swap 2.j15 - Black lets White keep the advantage 3.m12 - White stands aside, handing the advantage to Black 4.o175.m166.l167.f158.g129.q1710.q1611.r1512.r1413.d10 - Black builds his line, and White is helpless to stop him. |14.e11 or |14.f10 would have made victory easy for White, but |14.c12 has one flaw, and White exploits it: 15.g13. A little misadventure to right side, and then White closes in on the upper left, but misses his |35.e736.f537.d5 shot and hands victory back to Black.
On 2020-09-14 at 13:03, bob440 said:
yeah, |14.c12 was a horrible blunder; looks like |14.e13 would have pretty much sewn it up
but (particularly in retrospect), |18.e8 looks a bit sketchy, too. I think |18.e6 would have been better
the table shows a 54% edge for |1.f19 -- it's an advantage, sure, but very strong?
On 2020-09-16 at 03:34, EvetsATL said:
Bob, when you say the "table shows a 54% edge" what table are you talking about?
On 2020-09-16 at 03:38, EvetsATL said:
Alan or Bob, what should have been White's second move? Why was 3.m12 such a bad move?
On 2020-09-16 at 11:42, bob440 said:
the table is the Twixt First Move Statistics compiled by Alan Hensel -- see his player info page at https://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/info/player.jsp?plid=2674
well, Alan might (and likely does) have a different idea, but I think you need something more directly between my 1st move and the right border -- N14, O14 and Q14 all look playable
On 2020-09-16 at 22:42, Alan Hensel said:
I probably shouldn't have commented on moves 1 and 2. It's hard to say anything definitive about the first 2 moves. The statistics were compiled many years ago. I stopped when I became disenchanted. The numbers kept jumping around. I realized that what constitutes a good first move depends a lot on what you can expect for a 2nd move. And what constitutes a good 2nd move depends a lot on what you can expect for a 3rd move, and so on. It's no accident that TwixtBot's idea of what's swappable is very different. TwixtBot doesn't swap F19. It thinks it's weak. But then, TwixtBot's ideas of a good 2nd move are very strange.
Bob has the right 3rd move idea. |3.m12 does nothing to block the J15 peg. It lets Black form 2-5 gap (very strong) across the bottom with |4.o17. You can think of a good blocking distance as starting from the 0-2 gap: |3.L15, for example, and then spots proceeding away from that: |3.m15, |3.n15, but with some preference for moving away from the nearest edge, so |3.n14, but usually within or close to the triangle with a 1/2 slope (so n14, p13) - approximately, of course. With experience you'll be able to judge that better. I don't think I would actually do p13, but m14 might be okay. There may be enough space on the other side, too, with the help of the strong F19 peg: |3.h14 happens to be a 2-5 gap from F19. That looks like something TwixtBot would do.
On 2020-09-18 at 12:15, Peyrol said:
After |35.e7 black could try a tricky move 36.d6 which threatens to double link at F5. But then white can play a tricky move right back with 37.d5 which threatens to connect around black's D6-E8 group with either F9 or C7. This kind of sequence happens frequently. I call it a trickyback sequence, where each player extends their group to threaten to connect around the other group. Actually black is not even threatening to connect E8 to H6 here. White didn't even have to play D5. after 37.h4 white threatens to connect at H8 or at F9 and black cannot block both of those. So this is not the best example of trickyback.
|33.e7 34.f5 35.d4 36.c4 37.b5 38.e3 39.c3 40.c2
2.j15 - Black lets White keep the advantage
3.m12 - White stands aside, handing the advantage to Black
4.o17 5.m16 6.l16 7.f15 8.g12 9.q17 10.q16 11.r15 12.r14 13.d10 - Black builds his line, and White is helpless to stop him. |14.e11 or |14.f10 would have made victory easy for White, but |14.c12 has one flaw, and White exploits it: 15.g13. A little misadventure to right side, and then White closes in on the upper left, but misses his |35.e7 36.f5 37.d5 shot and hands victory back to Black.
but (particularly in retrospect), |18.e8 looks a bit sketchy, too. I think |18.e6 would have been better
the table shows a 54% edge for |1.f19 -- it's an advantage, sure, but very strong?
well, Alan might (and likely does) have a different idea, but I think you need something more directly between my 1st move and the right border -- N14, O14 and Q14 all look playable
Bob has the right 3rd move idea. |3.m12 does nothing to block the J15 peg. It lets Black form 2-5 gap (very strong) across the bottom with |4.o17. You can think of a good blocking distance as starting from the 0-2 gap: |3.L15, for example, and then spots proceeding away from that: |3.m15, |3.n15, but with some preference for moving away from the nearest edge, so |3.n14, but usually within or close to the triangle with a 1/2 slope (so n14, p13) - approximately, of course. With experience you'll be able to judge that better. I don't think I would actually do p13, but m14 might be okay. There may be enough space on the other side, too, with the help of the strong F19 peg: |3.h14 happens to be a 2-5 gap from F19. That looks like something TwixtBot would do.