Lucy is a much stronger player than me, and after10.i17 I thought I was losing. By 15.r16, however, I kind of thought I had tricked her, and that my position was good. But Lucy started an attack way on the other side of the board, and brought it around to provide support for the hole I thought I had found on the lower right. Did she have the situation in hand the whole time? Or did I somehow miss a chance to hold my advantage? In any case, I thought it was a really nice sequence by Lucy.
That's a cool move. I didn't get it at first, but it's basically a Medcalf thing. 23.u924.u1025.t1226.v1227.r7. It certainly seems to work. Wish I'd thought of it.
On 2007-10-28 at 18:22, Alan Hensel said:
Yeah, it does have a Medcalf flavor in this case, because of the R11 peg, but I found it by recognizing the pattern of a tilt crossing (S9) of a flanking peg (T7) on an 0-2 opposition (P6 : P8). For that pattern, U9 is the strongest response I know of. I first found this move in my Ch.13 game with nie_wiesz.
It's basically a shortcut for the more typical |23.r724.r525.u526.s727.u928.r9, except that it avoids allowing your opponent to get that R9 peg in there. That was a critical difference in my game against nie_wiesz, but in this case, thanks to that Medcalf-like sequence, it looks like it's just a clean shortcut.
But where I recognized that pattern, you seemed to respond instead to the pattern in the T8 - S9 - R11 lineup, where the strong responses are typically S8, S10, or U10.
After some further clicking around, I think that was your mistake. I think your high-level analysis was basically correct: you did trick her, you had the advantage, and you missed your chance to hold on to it. And you're right, it was a really nice sequence by Lucy, and a very good game overall.
It's basically a shortcut for the more typical |23.r7 24.r5 25.u5 26.s7 27.u9 28.r9, except that it avoids allowing your opponent to get that R9 peg in there. That was a critical difference in my game against nie_wiesz, but in this case, thanks to that Medcalf-like sequence, it looks like it's just a clean shortcut.
But where I recognized that pattern, you seemed to respond instead to the pattern in the T8 - S9 - R11 lineup, where the strong responses are typically S8, S10, or U10.
After some further clicking around, I think that was your mistake. I think your high-level analysis was basically correct: you did trick her, you had the advantage, and you missed your chance to hold on to it. And you're right, it was a really nice sequence by Lucy, and a very good game overall.
-- 27.r7 28.q8
--++ 29.p10 30.r5
--++ 29.s5 30.p10 31.o10 32.q12 33.n13 34.k16 35.p14 36.p16 37.s18 38.r15 39.s14 40.s13
--27.u14 28.v15 is basically the same.
So it looks like Lucy could have won anyway after 23.u9. But white could have won with 17.p7 instead of n7.