1. After 15 d8.
Avid readers of our international tournament reports may recall the sultry conditions in which the second Brussels Open took place last year. Though hugely enjoyable in every other way, it was held in a sports hall with a greenhouse-effect roof (in both senses) and minimal compensatory ventilation, with sartorial consequences that don't bear repeating.
This time, our excellent organiser Serge Alard secured a venue which was ideal not only in that respect but also in location, being a room in the same building where most of the players were staying. (By the way, if any of you out there are tempted to travel to a foreign Grand Prix tournament but find the expense to be your main disincentive, I can recommend Brussels as one where the accommodation is very cheap and convenient. As usual, the best way to make arrangements is to contact one of the regular British travellers.)
The tournament was smaller than last year, comprising only twelve players, but that made Serge's job easier because (like all Grand Prix tournaments) there were eleven rounds, so an all-play-all draw for the whole thing was possible before play began. Four of the competitors were clear favourites: David Shaman and Imre Leader from Britain (well, sort of) and Marc Tastet and Dominique Penloup from France. I'll spare your suspense by revealing that they did indeed finish in the top four places; but they had some setbacks on the way. All except Marc had tough games against me, for example. True to form, however, I only converted one of these into a result: 33-31 against Dominique.
The two I didn't convert, against Imre and David, form the main subject of this report. I'm not normally so egotistical (he lied), but they shared a relatively rare feature, which is worth knowing about because it can allow someone to beat a much stronger player. There is a name for the mistake by the strong player that leads to this sort of game: overevaporation.
Overevaporation means having too few pieces. As anyone who has read Brief & Basic knows, it is basically a good idea to have not many pieces during most of the game so that one has more manoeuvrability: thus, overevaporation means taking this so far that it becomes a liability. This is only rarely a danger, but rare positions do occur in which, having happily secured a winning position out of the opening, one false move introduces the risk of one's being wiped out in a few moves. Slightly less rarely, one can get to a position where no such wipeout is possible but the person with few pieces can never work his way into positions that allow him to take lots of discs at the end, which is of course the whole point of minimisation in the first place.
So to my game against Imre. It was an opening that we've played a few times before, and Imre deviated at move 15.
1d3 2c5 3e6 4f5 5f6 6f7 7c6 8c7 9b6 10a5 11c8 12d6 13d7 14e8 15d8 -- see Diagram 1.
1. After 15 d8.
2. After 18c4
The main problem with his move to d8 is that he is already devoid of moves to the North, and will probably have trouble playing out the East in a tempo-gaining way, so to offer me the South edge is to risk running out of moves quite badly if anything unforeseen happens. Sure enough the game continued 16b8 17b5 18c4, leading to the position in Diagram 2.
Ostensibly I have let him off the hook by breaking through to the North. But I have gained more than I've lost, because I now have an unpoisonable spare move at a4 (or a6), and also a response to e7 of f8.
We now played 19e7 20f8 21a6 22a7 23g4 24a4, reaching the position in Diagram 3.
3. After 24a4
4. After 25g6 26h6
5. After 25g6 26f4
If Imre can survive till the endgame, he now has the chance of a very big win because of my lack of access to a8 or b7, which he can expect to get both of, along with their surroundings. But that's a big if ... At this point, he has: a move at g6 which looks harmless, one at b3 which unpoisons f4 so is probably losing, and one at b4 which allows me to a3 and b3 -- running him out of moves quickly. So he chose g6. Here I missed the fairly obvious kill. I must go to h6! See Diagram 4.
Crucially, I'd have extracted him from access to b3, which might have allowed him to survive despite my quiet f4. Now, how might he avoid giving me most of the board? The following is obviously far more than I could have worked out over the board, but each individual move is pretty natural once you're in the evaporating frame of mind.
27h7 h8 b4 f4! with a wipeout in three moves \c
27b4 f4 h7 h8 f3 h5 b7 e3 g8 a8
b7 e3 f3 h4 g8 a8
27g7 g5 b4 a3 h7 b3 h5 c3 b2 c2 b1 d1 d2 e2 f2 f1
h7 e3 c3 h8
f3 g8 h5 f2 f1 c3 b3 b2 b1 a1
c2 b1 b3 b2 d1 a3 a2 a1
h5 c3 c2 f3 b3 e2 g3 h3 d1 f1 e1 f2 g1 d2
e1 f2 f1 d2
f1 f2 e2 d2
g3 e2 b3 h3 d1 f1 e1 f2 g1 d2
e1 f2 f1 d2
f1 f2 e2 d2
d1 f1 b3 h3 e1 f2 g1 d2
e2 f1 d1 g3
b3 f2 d1 e1 g1 d2
Well, that's the fictional version. In fact I went 26f4, as in Diagram 5, which is the same idea but didn't quite work. I battled for a while, eventually taking g2 and g7 and winning the South edge, but it was in vain. MOAN ....
So to the game against David: different opening, same story. The game started as a standard Cat, with an unusual move 11 and probably a wrong move 12, allowing David some nice quiet moves.
1c4 2e3 3f5 4e6 5f4 6c5 7d6 8c6 9f7 10g5 11g6 12e7 13f3 14c3 15h6 16g4 17f6 18h4 19h3 20h2 -- see Diagram 6.
6. After 20h2
7. After 24g3
8. After 40c2
At this stage it looks as though Black is just plain winning. His discs are nicely embedded in mine, in contrast to the previous game. But now he decided that it would be nice to get a move on the South edge, and in so doing he made his life a lot harder. After 21h5 22h7 23d8, I played 24g3!,reaching Diagram 7.
Suddenly it becomes hard for David to avoid taking all my block of discs in the centre. The next few moves make this clear:
25f2 26f8 27d7 28g8 29e2 30e1 31f1 32g1 33d2 34c8 35b8 36d1 37c7 38c1 39d3 40c2 -- Diagram 8.
He has avoided doing so only at the expense of leaving me a flat wall which he must now break through. He's also had to play the South edge in a way that stops him from sacrificing a8, because he has no means of access to e8. As in the previous game, I have taken the high risk approach in my corners of the board so that if he can get to h1 and g2 he should win easily; but he can't. We now had 41b2 42b3 43b6: see Diagram 9.
9. After 43b6
10. After 44a6 45b5
It turns out I had a win here. I don't curse myself so much as in the previous game for missing it though: it is not b7 (what I played), nor a6 (which looks very good to me), but a1! The winning line is:
44a1 45b4 46a4 47a3 48b5 49a5 50g7 51b1 52a6 53h8 54e8 55h1 56a2 57g2 58a8 59b7 60a7, 30-34.
After 44b7 David has access to e8, so he can sacrifice a8 by flipping b7 with a6, and if I don't take it he can grab the diagonal with g2. That's what happened in the game. After 44a6 45a5, 46a4 works: 47b4 48b5, or 47a2 48b5 49b4 50a7. But after 44a6 45b5, we have the position in Diagram 10. Black always has ways to win, though he must take care: for example, 46a5 is met by a4 but not b4, and 46b7 by a7 but not a5. Ho hum. Better luck next time.