summer competition: Gert

Our summer competition has started again. This means playing draughts in a relaxed manner in a relaxing atmosphere. There’s really nothing at stake, which makes it a good opportunity to practice different playing styles and playing in a noisy atmosphere. We play in the bar area, and players of other mind games (bridge, go) also take a look.

My game against Gert was just crazy. My encirclement failed miserably and it looked like I was going to lose. At some point, however, he made a mistake and let me have an outpost on 37. He put one in on 18, but I exchanged. Then he put one in on 19, but he hadn’t seen that I could exchange again. Now my outpost became stronger and stronger, and with the sacrifice of one piece only I could make king. Unfortunately he could capture it after a couple of moves, analysis should make out if I could have done better.

In the resulting 5×5 position it didn’t seem that anyone could lose. In a 4×4 position my opponent offered a draw, and after thinking carefully I declined. I saw two more tricks I could play. In a 3×3 position my opponent saw the first trick, but he missed the second. And so, out of the blue, I won.

18-12? 41-47

38-32 47-24 and white resigned because of the threat 4-9, which cannot be prevented