Round 13 - Playoffs 5 of 2016 US Tak Open

This past week saw a number more exciting games. SultanPepper and Unsweet have successfully locked themselves into the top 3 for this playoff.  Trailing behind them are other playtak veterans: Simon, Abyss, NohatCoder, Turing, Ally, and Simmon. Personally, I'm particularly interested in watching the upcoming match between Turing and Simmon.

As a bit of a prelude to this, the game I'm focusing on this week is the second in the match between Turing and Tayacan. This week, I wrote a brief, high-level annotation of the game that can be found at https://goo.gl/1co2QM or in the viewer below:

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):

Analysis: Tak Open Finals R1: applemonkeyman vs SultanPepper (1/2)

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...

The next match in the Tak Open finals that I'll be looking at is the first game between applemonkeyman (white) and SultanPepper (black):

Analysis: Tak Open Finals R1: Gerrek v Simmon (2/2)

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...

The next game in this series is the second in the match between Simmon and Gerrek, this time with Gerrek as white and Simmon as black:

Analysis: Tak Open Finals R1: Simmon vs Gerrek (1/2)

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...

The number of games in the tournament is quite massive, so with the current state of the tournament, I am shifting focus to comment the Finals matches. Granted, this still will wind up with 14 matches (for 28 games) to comment, which is still quite a bit. As such, if anyone wants to pitch in their own comments, feel free to get in contact with me and I'll set you up with a game not currently being processed.

To kick this off, I will be looking at the first game between Simmon (white) and Gerrek (black):

Analysis: Open Tournament A: Simmon v. Maron

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...

To continue my series of analysis of games from the Open Tournament, I want to move onto the second game between Simmon and maron, with Simmon as white and maron as black. (Note: While it is important to consider the context of the game in the match, I am analyzing this and other second games in of their own merit and play).

Analysis: Open Tournament A: ts52 vs. 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...

In this post, I am continuing my analysis of varied games from the Open Tournament. As there are a lot of games to look at and each one may take a fair bit of time to analyze, I will continue to update as I can, but it may be a while before I get into any particular game. I may also collaborate with others to help with this task. 

One final note: In the course of (all) my analysis, I am using a tool I designed to help delve into particular lines and variations: https://github.com/nqeron/TakAnalysis. For the moment, the functionality to attempt to annotate moves is a bit weird, so I'm primarily using it to ask TakticianBot for its move recommendations. For more details on how either of these work, feel free to send me an e-mail.

With that note, I'd like to delve into the next game:

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: