Round 10 - Playoffs 2 of 2016 US Tak Open

With the second round over, the first set of 8 people has been eliminated, bringing us down to the top 24 players.  Interestingly 3 of the 16 games ended in a tie-breaker. While this may not seem like a lot, it really shows how closely matched some of these players are and will be important to look at as part of the post-tournament analysis.

In addition, next week will feature more exciting matches. I personally am looking forward to the match between NohatCoder and SultanPepper. Whoever you may be rooting for, the tension is palatable.

One of the games I particularly enjoyed this past week was the first game between Gray_Mouser and SuperJujuAwesome:

Round 9 - Playoffs 1 of 2016 US Tak Open

With the first round of the playoffs, there has also been quite a bit of additional media surrounding the tournament games. Both BenWo and Baweaver have streamed some of the matches to their respective channels. For myself, I found it particularly helpful and interesting to watch through parts of a game, try to figure out what I would move in certain situations and what responses I expected. Playing these out - either physically, digitally, or mentally, I believe can help a lot to familiarize with various patterns and trades.

Perhaps one of the most pernicious and difficult patterns for players - even at this level - is Tinuë. By the time one notices the tinuë, it's usually too late. And the Road to Tinuë is often not so straightforward. There's a really interesting example of this in this week's match-up between Kakaburra and Doodles:

Round 8 of 2016 US Tak Open

With the Swiss stage complete, we have our line-up for the next stage of the tournament - the final double elimination. I want to offer a sincere congratulation for all of you who participated, regardless of whether you moved on or not. If you have managed to make it to the next stage, well done! I'm excited to see this play out. For the everyone else, I have seen a lot of improvement in play from everyone and some great matches. I want to compliment all of you for raising the bar and level of play and providing a challenge and I hope to see you continue to play the game, give feedback on the current tournament, and participate in future tournaments.

This week, I decided to explore the game between Ally and Turing. These are fairly experienced players, who are exploring the meta and tend to be quite intentional about what plays they make. So, in reviewing their game, I was hoping to find what moves lead to Turing's eventual loss. In my high-level overview, I've noted a few places where I play slightly differently, or I would explore a different line than the ones Turing and Ally chose. You can follow this commentary, as usual, at the following link and in the viewer below (https://goo.gl/Cu1bTa):

Round 7 of 2016 US Tak Open

As we close in on the last match of the Swiss stage, tensions are rising. The last match could make or break a lot of player's inclusion in the next round of the tournament. Regardless of whether you've made it or not, I wish to congratulate all of you who have stuck with the tournament thus far and played through all the rounds. As of the time of writing this, over 360 matches have been finished as a part of the tournament.

This week, I wanted to look a bit deeper into the first game between nebel and r_so9. I've covered neither of these aplayers games but .Based on their current rankings and the game played, though, they seem to represent of mid-tier players. As with my last post, I've included brief, high-level comments on the full game (https://goo.gl/61mf60):