Analysis: Open Tournament, A: nqeron v. Simmon

Note: The analysis and positions described are for the 6x6 game. Extend the principles and ideas to the 5x5 and the 8x8 at your own risk...

Last month held the first ever online Tak tournament, the Tak Strategy Summer Invitational Tournament. In the wake of this, a more recent tournament has arrived, dubbed the Open Tournament. In contrast to the previous tournament, the pool of participants was open to any participants (though restricted to 16 total). In addition, whereas the summer invitational was scheduled with a live stream following - along with commentary - this tournament is schedule-free and none of the games have been commented on - in any form. Due to this absence of commentary, so far, I thought I would offer some of my own insights into the games of the tournament.

Before starting, however, a few things should be clear. My analysis is not intended as an end-all and be-all of analysis. Rather, it is intended to be a jumping off point - my own subjective evaluation, subject to scrutiny, criticism, and input from other experienced players. In the same regard, it is not intended to be complete. There is a lot that could be said about specific games and the strategies or possible lines - too much to be covered in individual analysis pieces. For the sake of brevity, and to highlight the more interesting moves, I probably won't discuss every position or idea. Where there are interesting ideas that fall out of scope, I will attempt to delve into them in more in-depth posts.

Finally, note that all the games will be oriented to the a1 and lower right triangle, using the idea of collapsing board symmetries. (As a result, while the games will be identical, the PTNs used here and those listed in the archive may have different orientations).

Without further ado, let's delve into the first game that I'll be looking at:

Strategy: Negative Placement

Usually, in the game of Tak it is most beneficial to be laying flats. There are cases, however, when placing a piece can make a position worse. I encountered this recently in a game I was testing my mettle against a bot: ditaktic v. TakticianBot