Another Tak beginner’s tournament, this time I hoped to review each match as I went, but of course by the time I’ve gotten started, a few days have passed and I’ve already lost most useful insight I might have had.
I probably would have had more to say about these games if I’d reflected & reviewed right after the games, but a solid opening match for the tournament. Two hard caps in game one was a unique development.
Another Tak tournament from US Tak Association right on the heels of the beginner’s tournament wrapping up. This one was a quick blitz tournament, Something I’d played probably a handful of times before today.
With fourteen players, the tournament consisted of nine rounds, clock at 3 minutes with 5 second increments, and a Komi of 3 points to black on a flat win. I rounded out my nine games at second-to-last, but had a great time, and was happy to have scored at least a couple points over the nine rounds.
First pairing of the tournament, and missed the road threat across the bottom of the board. Of course saw the missed threat as soon as I played. Blitz is an unforgiving beast.
This was probably the most interesting (and longest) game. I wasn’t sure throwing the capstone’s stack at 21 was the right move, but I think glad I did it later. I was able to keep up the pressure of road threats in the NW quadrant for a bit, but nothing that could stick— Reiman was cutting them off right and left, and then I was down to a few seconds on the clock for quite a bit, so I was just placing flats without being entirely sure of the count. With the +3 komi, it ended with a tie, the only one of the tournament, I think.
My brain was not functioning by this one. A straight line down the middle is just the worst kind of loss to see on the board. Somehow I thought I was being clever not capturing with 9. 2c4>. Trying not to think about this one any more than I have to.
My only win! The citadel in the middle was a nice position to gain, I think, then bi-directional road threat at the end gave me the missed threat.
This was one I definitely wanted to review after the fact. I had a great match with Ineria during the tournament last month, and was looking forward to this pairing especially during the blitz tournament. And it did not go well for me. By the time I dropped my cap (in a terrible location) at move 11, I was pretty sure I was already in trouble, and I’m not 100% sure where it all went sideways for me (or if there’s ever one single point like that), but on reflection:
14 b3 might have been more disruptive, but if I’d survived and we kept moving towards flats, would have been a liability as white.A surprise opening from Reid, not going for the normal opposite or parallel corners. Was wondering a few moves in if I should have made my initial road threat in the B column, but I suppose that would have likely meant granting Reid’s highwaymen control of C3 & C4. Looking back, why did I not place a d6 instead of Cd4? Might not have changed much, just a slightly earlier capture to break up that road. Somewhere along the line I realized I was going to lose the capture war(s) over B4 and B5, and then I was going to have nothing to stop Reid’s road.
Interesting, Ally here went for the off-center road threat I was considering in the previous game. As I’d assumed above, that did give black (me) the chance for a citadel in the middle of the board, but this is not entirely a center control game, so that only got me so far.
In that final move, I had realized I was going to lose the stack war over B2, but had miscalculated that white already had enough stones to throw up the B column and win. If I’d kept capturing and Ally had to use C2 to capture the stack would no longer be enough for a road with a single throw, but it still might have been tough to avoid Tinuë within a few moves, as I had so little in place on the left half of the board.
Another deviation from the “standard” openings, an edge crawl, less common in 6×6 games. I think I was pretty fried by this point. Not sure what else I have to say about this game except that even being able to make a couple weak threats at moves 13 and 14, I felt like Moreton never lost control of the board here. 17. f2+ might have been a better move than uselessly throwing 3d4>12, but with the cap right there I don’t think would have really won me anything.
A very satisfying game to finish on, even if I lost on time. I look forward to watching/hearing Simmon’s self-commentary on the match when he posts it. Simmon has been putting out quite a bit of content for the Tak community, including commentary for the last few tournaments at his YouTube channel. The early capstone-in-the-middle-of-the-road at 5 Cd2 was in direct response to not having a good place for my cap in my game with Ineria previously, but I don’t know how much it actually got me. The back-and-forth of the stack wars row 4 reminded me of playing some of the bots, which can sometimes go pretty wild on large stacks.
One of those throws in there (maybe 21 6e4+15?) probably took thirty seconds on its own as I debated what I was doing with it, how many stones I was dropping where, and then mis-clicked and had to retry a half-dozen times to get the right stones in the right place. After a bit more back-and-forth I was down to a no banked time for my last few moves, and the clock ran dry as I was partway through throwing that e4 stack.
I should separately introduce what Tak is, and why I have come to love it, but that’s a longer story to tell.
I’ve been playing Tak for almost five years now, about as long as it’s been around publicly. The 2019 Tak tournament at Gen Con ended up being the highlight of the trip for me (surprising myself coming in at sixth place, cash prize and everything), and after that, I joined the US Tak Association, who put on tournaments both live and online.
At the tail end of 2020 I competed in the 2020 Open and didn’t do particularly well, but enjoyed my time getting better playing the 6×6 game, and quickly signed up when a beginner’s tournament was announced— Despite playing the game for as long as I have, the road to getting that much better has been a slow one.
This week I played two of my pairings, one of which was recorded with commentary. I lost both games to not taking in the state of the board well or quickly enough— on the first, I missed my opponent’s threat, on the second I missed both my own win as well as my opponent’s win that quickly followed.
I’ve taken a note from another player and started reviewing every game I play, win-or-lose, so you, too, can watch both matches with step-by-step commentary by other players from the community.
I also reviewed game 2 on ptn.ninja, which includes a few comments, as well as playing out alternate branches the game could have taken.