The most important Othello event ever held in Britain was the 1980 World Championship. What secures its place in Othello history is that this was the first year that a non-Japanese player won the title, with the USA's Jonathan Cerf beating Mimura of Japan in the final.
Since then, the USA had gone 13 years without providing an individual champion, and Britain had gone 13 years without hosting the tournament. Both of these overlong sequences came to an end last year, with David Shaman winning this year's championship at the Kensington Palace Hotel. Emmanuel Caspard of France was second, having beaten the favourite, Japan's Nobuyuki Takizawa, in the semi-final. Philippe Juhem of France was third, and the USA (Shaman, Brian Rose and David Parsons) won the team championship by half a point from Japan, with France a further half-point behind.
I was greatly honoured to be asked to be tournament director, although I would rather have played! The amount of work this involved was not too onerous, as most of the brunt fell on the staff of Heather Tillbury Associates, a PR firm employed by Peter Pan Playthings, the hosts and principal sponsors of the event. A particular thank you to Catriona Rydell, who did most of the vital preliminary work.
While we're at it, I was delighted to have such a good turnout of Federation members and others to act as table referees. We usually had all but one of the games covered, and sometimes all of them. Thanks in particular to: Iain Barrass, Leslie Cagley, Elie Cali, Adelaide Carpenter, Aubrey de Grey, Colin Graham, David Haigh, Mike Handel, Clarence Hewlett, Tom Landry, Phil Marson, Eileen Piercy, Guy Plowman, Yuko Rose, Liam Stephens, Ian Turner and Mark Wormley, as well as those others who filled in for a game or two. Not to mention Emmanuel ``Chief Referee'' Lazard, my right-hand man.
All through the tournament, someone from Heather Tillbury was on the phone to newspapers, trying to attract some interest. Some papers sent photographers, a picture of 12-year old Jon Inge Holm playing bodybuilder Oleg Stepanov being particularly popular. But the overwhelming response was ``Get back to us if there's a British player in the semi-finals.'' Both Imre Leader and Joel Feinstein had prospects of making it through, but towards the end of the second day it was clear that Leader was well below his best (especially in endgames) and wasn't going to make it. Feinstein, however, spent most of the tournament in second or third position. Which brings us to the tournament's great British might-have-been.
This last-round game was effectively a quarter-final, with the winner certainly through and the loser almost certainly not. The opening is Joel Feinstein's version of the Rotating Rose, and it's all planned up to and including the X-square at 31. So the game progressed, until Joel found himself staring at this position with ten empty squares and an eternity on his clock. Time pressure, no: pressure, yes. Can you work it out? One move wins 34-30, one wins 33-31, one draws (not good), three lose 31-33 and one loses 30-34. It is of course essentially impossible, but for all that Joel managed to err in an instructive manner.
Joel played 51a1 52a2, and then tried again. After that, play was perfect, and he lost 31-33. So what's wrong with 51a1? To see that, let's have a look at the two winning lines. First off, there is 51h6 52g6 53f8 54g8 55g7 56h8 57f7 58h7 59a1 60a2, 33-31. Delaying a1 until move 59 in this line means that it turns all the pieces on the diagonal black, for good. The other side of the coin is shown by the second win, which starts 51f7. The main point here is the continuation 52g8 53f8 54g7, after which Black wins relatively comfortably with 55h8 followed by 57h7 and 59a1, sweeping the diagonal again. But if a1-a2 is played off first, then Black's move to h8 turns the diagonal at just the wrong moment. The perfect play line here is 51f7 52g6 53g8 54f8 55a1 56a2 57h7 58h6 59g7 60h8 30-34. (If you play h7 before a1 in this line, you'll lose the c2 disc.)
Apart from this point about the c2 disc, when could a1 be right? Well, Black always will want to play a1-a2 rather than a2-a1, so he has to worry about losing the diagonal to a white move to g7 at some point. So, is that likely? Well, it's not inconceivable: have a look at 51f7 52g7 53g6 54h6. 55f8 cuts the diagonal but only draws: after 56g8 57a1 58a2 59h7, 60h8 sweeps the diagonal again. But 55g8 56f8 57h7 58h8 59a2 60a1 wins 35-29. That's a line you have to see if you're going to play 51f7 with any confidence. But if your first move into the big region is going to be 51h6 or 51f8 (that's the draw), then there's nothing to be gained by playing a1, and there might be lots to lose.
For my money, the 51h6 win is a bit easier to spot. 51h6 52g6 53f8 is the nearest you have to a forcing line, so you have to consider 54g8 and 54f7 in reply. After 54f7, you in fact need to play 55g7 56g8 (if 56h8, then 56h7 gets on the diagonal) 57a1 58a2 (P) 59h8 60h7 35-29. As I said, it's essentially impossible.
For the record, 44h6 wins 33-31 for White, but play is otherwise perfect from 43 to 50 inclusive.
Our next game is another ``nothing to be gained: lots to lose'' error. David Parsons outplays his illustrious team-mate in the early midgame, and is winning in the last diagrammed position.
After 11g6.
After 49a5.
The 11g6 move is all the rage at present, with the idea being something like 12e2 13h5 14c5 15g4 16g3 17f2 18d2 19h4. I've yet to be convinced by all this, but anyway here Parsons tries something different with 12f7, which you'd have to say worked. Perhaps 17g4 is better?
Shaman got into some horrible positions, but worked up a little pressure, and at 50 it's not over. Parsons played 50a1 51b1 52a6, and was then lost after 53b8. His problem was that he could only get two of the three moves in the SE at the cost of the entire bottom two rows, so the mass of black pieces in the centre stayed largely black. Why is 52a6 better? There may be no obvious answer, but what is fairly clear is that there's no way it can be worse: White can play a1-b1 any time. The reason it makes a difference is that, after 50a6 51b8, White can play 52g7. Now if 53h8, White gets both a1 and b1, and even has time to get 54c8 in first. If instead 51a7, then White has a good reason to play a1, namely to get access to a8.
Back to the fascinating (at least to himself) subject of Philippe Juhem. Philippe scored 3.5 out of 7 on the first day, and seemed out of it, but had a perfect second day, including the only win against Takizawa in the Swiss. Here is his round 3 win against Ireland's Aiden O'Reilly. This was the first time Irish players have taken part in the World Championship, but surely not the last. Aiden in particular performed very creditably. Would Juhem have recovered if O'Reilly had shown a little more technique at the end here?
White to play at 52
White to play at 56.
A massively complicated game, with the win changing hands several times in the endgame. I claim 52h1 is poor technique, although the position is not the greatest illustration of my point, to be honest. The alternative is to play to b2. Surely h1, securing the North edge, is far better than b2, sacrificing it? Well, I would be willing to agree if Black had to reply to 52h1 with 53h2. But as it is, Black can leave h2, and instead secure two of the three moves in the NW, and (if he chooses) get the last move in the SW. The move 52h1 ``gives up parity'' and that is usually more important than a few discs. Looking at this position, my reaction is ``play parity, then get Black to play h2-h1 at the end.'' A perfect play line is 52b2 53a1 54a2 55h2 56h1 (P) -- sneaky, Black wants to pass so he'll get the last move in the SW -- 57c8 58a8 59b7 60a7 30-34.
As it happens, 52h1 does also win. After a couple of minor errors, White finally loses it at 56. 56b7, for the discs, looks tempting, but the game continuation reveals the problem with it. The power of the h2 square for Black is not just that he can play it last, but that he can play it, effectively, whenever he would like to pass on the rest of the board. 56c8 is the win, after which it turns out that Black should give up parity to get the discs on the diagonal: 57h2 58b7 59a8 60a7 30-34.
For the record, 47h8 48h7 49c8 50b7 51e8 (or c8-b7-h8-h7-e8) wins 34-30. 46c8 wins 33-31. Black has two drawing lines at 45; either take 45h8 and march along the southern edge, or play 45b1, after which White has to find 46b7! 47c7 48b2. 43e8 wins 37-27. This seems to me to be a very tricky ending, and it might not all be due to time trouble.
The top ten finishers in the tournament were remarkably dominant, beating the rest of the field 51-1. The one loss was Juhem to Johnson. As we've seen, there were a few other narrow escapes. Feinstein appears to have been saved by a flipping error against John Lysons, who had a very solid debut.
For that matter, the top one finisher in the Swiss was pretty dominant, although Takizawa did benefit several times from endgame errors by his opponents. Here is Imre Leader's contribution.
White to play at 46.
Black to play at 49.
Leader seems to be behind for much of the game, but hangs on in well, and now would seem to have chances. But can 46d8 47f1 48g8 really have seemed the way to go? At first sight, it looked to me to be tantamount to resignation, allowing Black both h8 and g7. Strangely, it's not quite so easy, and Black only has one winning move in the right hand position. We can soon narrow it down to 49b7 or 49a7, but which is better? In both cases, White will pause (i) play off h1-g1 at some point, to keep the East edge, (ii) take a8, allowing Black to wedge with b8, then (iii) take the remaining move in the SW. The significant difference is that, if you start with 49b7, the b5 disc stays black, whereas on 49a7 the b-column becomes all white, so that a move to b2 secures the column and also puts a piece on the second row ready for 60g7. Of course, you're going to get this right if your rating is (temporarily) over 2000!
After 46d8 47f1, 48g7 is correct, and looks to me like a clearly better try. This seems like a big sacrifice, but parity is the key again. Play should go 48g7 49h8 50h1 (again, leaving the pair h1-g1 until the last possible moment -- working out why 48h1 49g1 50g7 is worse is a complicated but fortunately unnecessary exercise!) 51g1 52g8 53b8 54b7 55a8 56a7 57a2 58a1 59b1 60b2, 32-32.
But White can do better yet. 46d8 seems designed to cut the diagonal at all cost, but this is fairly irrelevant, as Black is going to play f1, into the odd region, in any case. The move that leaps out at you is 46g7, and it's correct. It costs Black far too much to cut the diagonal, so it has to be 47f1, and now 48b8 (48d8 draws) 49d8 50g8 (this doesn't give up parity, as Black can only access the SW via h8; 50b7 is a 33-31 win, if you'd rather), and now Black has only 51b2 52a1 53a2 54b1 55h8 56b7 57h1 58g1 (another good reason for White delaying h1: he might be better off not playing there at all!) 59a8 60a7 27-37.
After 13 rounds, Takizawa had 12 points, Shaman and Juhem 9.5, Rose and Caspard 9. Accordingly, Rose and Caspard played off for the fourth semi-final spot. By all accounts, this was one of the most exciting games of the weekend. Here it is, along with the best games from the Sunday.
In the semi-finals on Sunday, Caspard beat Takizawa 2-0 and Shaman beat Juhem 2-0. In the final Shaman beat Caspard 2-0 to win the individual title. Juhem beat Takizawa in the 3rd/4th playoff game.
In the team championship, the full results were: USA 25.5, Japan 25, France 24.5, Denmark, Britain 22.5, Italy 19, Norway, Russia 18, Belgium 16, Sweden 14, Madagascar 13, Ireland 9, Germany 7. The USA owes a debt to Imre Leader and Jon Inge Holm, whose last-round wins over Ohyanagi and Takahashi respectively were vital.