European Grand Prix 2016 - Warsaw
winner: Takuji Kashiwabara
Marc Tastet (2nd), Takuji Kashiwabara (winner), Tom Schotte (3rd), and Francesco Marconi (4th)
We invite you to take part in the EGP in Warsaw on 21st - 22nd May. Please register by sending email to the following address [email protected]. Entry fee 50 PLN. The tournament will be held at the headquarters of TMGU ul. Białobrzeska 4a, Warsaw. We plan to organize a tournament for children on 20th May.
Top 15 players EGP 2016 after 4 stages
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European Grand Prix stage 5 in Warsaw, Poland
Tom Schotte will want to erase the miserable zero points he won in Copenhagen EGP from his memory.
Takuji Kashiwabara so far qualified for 1 final (Cambridge) and is 100 points behind. He won the Polish EGP in 2014 (Krakow) Francesco Marconi took a break after his victory in Rome, but he is back in the EGP race. Marc Tastet really needs some big scores if he wants a spot in the top 3. Bartek Sury can shatter some EGP dreams by securing the 200 points in Polish hands. In Krakow 2014 he finished 4th. |
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A great first day of tournament for Francesco Marconi, he won all his games. Just 1 point behind him, MarcTastet on second place. Tom Schotte is only half a point behind Marc, as is Bartlomiej Sury. Takuji Kashiwabara takes the 5th place with 5 points.
Results after 7 rounds:
1: 7. pts [469] MARCONI Francesco (36) {ITA} 2: 6. pts [512] TASTET Marc (2) {FRA} 3: 5.5 pts [465] SCHOTTE Tom (2795) {BEL} [427] SURY Bartlomiej (130011) {POL} 5: 5. pts [444] KASHIWABARA Takuji (839) {FRA} 6: 4. pts [402] BUKA Michal (5745) {POL} [343] WALISZEWSKI Przemek (130041) {POL} 8: 2. pts [364] NOWICKI Jaroslaw (130035) {POL} [315] PIKTUS Przemyslaw (130018) {POL} 10: 1. pt [246] MARSZALKOWSKA Joanna (130040) {POL} 11: 0. pt [241] SOBIEN Jaroslaw (130013) {POL} |
Francesco Marconi - Marc Tastet
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MARCONI Francesco 39-25 TASTET Marc EGP Warsaw, round 2 |
SCHOTTE Tom 11-53 TASTET Marc EGP Warsaw, round 6 |
MARCONI Francesco 34-30 KASHIWABARA Takuji
EGP Warsaw, round 7
Marconi-Kashiwabara, EGP Warsaw, round 7
by Takuji Kashiwabara, June 13th 2016
Let's put the game into context first. EGP Warsaw. 5th tournament of the season, out of 7. Tom Schotte leads EGP after his victory at Cambridge and 2nd place at St. Petersbourg. I follow him not too far behind thanks to the second and third places respectively in Cambridge and Copenhagen. Francesco Marconi is third with his victory at Rome, tied with a Japanese and Russian player unlikely to play more EGP tournaments this year (After I have written this, I learned that the winner of St. Petersburg EGP Dmitry Atamanov will attend Stockholm EGP). Whereas Marc Tastet is right behind with two third places at Rome and Cambridge. If Tom wins this tournament, it will be difficult for other players, including myself to catch up with him. For the rest of us, by winning now, depending on what Tom does, one may get ahead of him to lead EGP.
Apart from the four of us, present is Bartek Sury. All other players have WOF rating (if they do) beneath 1700. At the first round, Bartek meets Tom, they draw. In this game, Bartek gets swindled at moves 45-47. Next round, Francesco beats Marc, then Marc beats me. During the rest of the day, Marc more or less massacres Tom and Bartek.
At the 7th round, Francesco and I play together. None of us played Tom and Bartek, but in view of Marc's games against them, it looks likely that both of us will win against both of them. All of this means that if Francesco wins, then he will probably play the final against Marc, whereas if I win, then three of us will end up equal first, and it is the disc counts that decide the two finalist.
3 f4. Francesco has been playing the Rose opening since Athens EGP last year, so this was not a complete surprise. Besides, at Round 2, he played this move against Marc. However, I wasn't really expecting this one for the reason that I will reveal later.
15 g3. The variation Francesco plays since Athens. Black threatens to play a quiet move g4. White has three choices. White can play either g4 himself, h6 to poison g4, of ignore completely g4 and play his own quiet move in f6. I opted for the last one.
After 17g4, White has again three moves to choose from, two moves on the east edge h3, h6 or b5. The move b5 was tempting, because it would leave many options later for two players, thus somehow limiting the effect of preparation. However, earlier this day Marc played b5 and lost against Francesco, and I didn't know where to deviate from the line they played. I somehow excluded h6, the reason being after h6 h5 h3 b4 h4, we would end up with the same postion as after h3 b4 h4 h5 h6, which is the usual continuation after 18 h3. So for White, there is very little merit of playing 18 h6 instead of h3, noting that Black can play other lines after 18 h6.
21 c2. Unexpected. Here Black plays usually h5 to remove this quiet move for White. However, after the exchange h5 h6, if Black plays c2, then Black won't have access to d2. It happens that we already played this variation a month earlier at the ultimate round of Italian Grand Prix and it didn't go quite well for him. At the time, it looked like he
wasn't prepared against 18 h3. So, I had thought he would deviate before this move but he didn't.
Until 25 f1, we followed the line we had played before. Here, at IGP, I had chosen 26 e1; e1 looks clearly better than d1 for a couple of reasons. For one thing, d1 poisons b3, for another, after e1 White will recover acces to d1 (but Black ends up playing there so I am not sure if this is relevant). So why did I deviate here? Let me start by telling you how we continued at IGP game. Black has to survive at any price, so after 26 e1, 27 g2 is almost forced. Then I thought playing somewhat natural 28 f2 would be risky because it would give Black different possibilities to sacrifice the corner h1, and prefered playing b3, forcing Black to play immediately at d1, thus getting rid of an element to worry about. Afterwards, White kept parity, and won without much trouble.
However, after the IGP tournament, I checked the game, and realized several things. First, 28 f2 is a win, whereas b3 is a loss. Second, 26 e1 (as well as 28 f2) was already marked as win in Zebra's book! Last but not least, 26 d1, which was also in the book with evaluation +0.4, is also a win.
Thus I knew both d1 and e1 were win. It also happened that Francesco, unlike last time, played without thinking 21 c2, 23 d2 and 25 f1. This obviously meant that he had also checked the game, and made some preparations. So I chose to deviate, thinking that my opponent must have prepared against the winning line in the book but not necessarily against the other winning line.
From 27 g2 to 40 a5, White tries to kill Black by gaining "the last tempo", and Black tries to survive. Francesco played all moves without thinking, which implies that he also had prepared against 26 d1. What a bad choice did I make. Well, after all, no reason to worry about, this line was winning too, right? Anyhow, after 40 a5, thanks to the diagonals c2-f5 and g1-c5, Black can't play a6 or h6, as all White needs to do is to take back the edge. A7 and h7 are excluded as well because then White will simply play a6 and h6. So is f8 because of d8. All these leave unique move d8. Francesco started thinking here, so probably up until then we played the line he had prepared. Why had I chosen 26 d1? What had I been afraid of after 26 e1?
A line like c4e3f4c5d6f3e6c3d3e2b6f5g5g6g3f6g4h3b4h4c2h5d2c1f1e1g2f2f7b3d1a5b1h1b2f8a2d7d8c7a3e7e8c6b5c8a7b7g7a4? In this line, White has only one winning move at least between 38d7 to 50a4, and this may be the case since the move 32a5, although many of them are rather easy to find, even if, for example, 40 c7 is not very intuitive. In the end, the line played in the game turned out to be less simple for White to play.
Francesco ended up with playing the only reasonable move 41 d8, against which I answered 42 b5. Although White closes the South-West region, it doesn't lose parity because Black's only move in the North-West is b1, and after b1 a1, Black will have no access to the region. Francesco played 43 f8, again almost the only reasonable move. I thought taking back the South edge with 44 g8 removing Black's access to a4, but I refrained from doing it being afraid of T-trick in the South-East region. As a matter of fact, g8 wins for White, basically because White can play g7 at the next move to avoid the T-trick, and Black will have to play in the South-East region by lack of moves elsewhere, thus giving back parity, more or less. So I chose the other natural move a3. While I was wondering how to deal with possible a4 Francesco took the South edge with 45 b8. Now, let's look at this position and analyze its features. There is a hole at a4, but this doesn't really cause a parity problem for White, since it will get back access to this square if, for example, Black plays a6. Any move in the South-East region for Black, if it were his turn, would be catastrophic, which leaves a4 for him. Black won't be able to play a6 without flipping b5 and c6, so this is not a threat. The only thing White has to worry about here is the b-column, if it is entirely white, then Black will be able to play b2. As there is very little hope for Black to get parity, the only way he may win is by simply grabbing discs, around the corner a8 and securing the South edge.
Taking these features into consideration, one could see that here the best move is b3, forcing b2 right away. Then White can play g7. A correct continuation will be then b1a1a6a7a2a4a8b7h7h8g8h6 (or one can finish with h8h7h6g8, but the first line can be compared with the line played in the game more easily). If you compare this line
with the one played in the game, you see that Black gets one less disc in the total of 1 and 2 rows and on the diagonal a6-f1. Furthermore c3 and d4 will remain White. Of course, to be really sure one would need to count, and this line may not be easy to count as both players have lots of other choices. However, in the line of the game,
almost all White's moves were forced, and most of Black's moves were natural, which means one could probably count this line and see that it would lose for White even though there are still many squares. Anyhow, I chose 46 g7, and Francesco had no difficulty to find the correct line to finish up.
After the game, I cursed myself for having chosen 26 d1. Having chosen 46 g7. The three games I lost in Copenhagen by endgame mistakes even more stupid than this 46 g7 (after all, a second place in Copenhagen would have sufficed...). The first game of the final against Tom in Cambridge where I missed a huge win. The second game of the same final where I counted a forced draw and played it. The choice of the color of the third game. The choice of the opening of the third game. Well, at least I have very little regret over the Rome EGP as I had played so poorly. And I said to myself that I should look at the good side of the situation. The most dangerous rival for EGP was Tom, and I would play against him for third/fourth play-off. So I could keep him from getting 90 points myself. I should forget about the past, and concentrate on beating Tom.
Well, those who follow Othellonews know that things didn't go quite the way I had expected on the second day. Francesco lost against both Tom and Bartek. As to myself, in the game against Bartek. Bartek somehow missed an occasion to play the same sort of swindle (44 g2 - 46 h1) as the one Tom had played on him the day before. He told us that he had seen it when playing the move 42, but somehow it had slipped out of his mind while playing the move 44. As to Marc, he lost against Michał Buka in the last round. Thus at the end Francesco, Marc and I end up with first ex-aequo, but with two defeats. Francesco was the unfortunate one with the lesser tie-break. And as to the final, I lost the first game. In the second game, I made a desperate attempt to make Marc lose on time which he avoided cleverly. We shaked hands and I congratulated Marc... then Tom, who was watching, told us that it was a draw. Marc was so upset with my extraordinary luck, and played rather poorly the third game so that I ended up winning with a large enough score to win the tournament.
by Takuji Kashiwabara, June 13th 2016
Let's put the game into context first. EGP Warsaw. 5th tournament of the season, out of 7. Tom Schotte leads EGP after his victory at Cambridge and 2nd place at St. Petersbourg. I follow him not too far behind thanks to the second and third places respectively in Cambridge and Copenhagen. Francesco Marconi is third with his victory at Rome, tied with a Japanese and Russian player unlikely to play more EGP tournaments this year (After I have written this, I learned that the winner of St. Petersburg EGP Dmitry Atamanov will attend Stockholm EGP). Whereas Marc Tastet is right behind with two third places at Rome and Cambridge. If Tom wins this tournament, it will be difficult for other players, including myself to catch up with him. For the rest of us, by winning now, depending on what Tom does, one may get ahead of him to lead EGP.
Apart from the four of us, present is Bartek Sury. All other players have WOF rating (if they do) beneath 1700. At the first round, Bartek meets Tom, they draw. In this game, Bartek gets swindled at moves 45-47. Next round, Francesco beats Marc, then Marc beats me. During the rest of the day, Marc more or less massacres Tom and Bartek.
At the 7th round, Francesco and I play together. None of us played Tom and Bartek, but in view of Marc's games against them, it looks likely that both of us will win against both of them. All of this means that if Francesco wins, then he will probably play the final against Marc, whereas if I win, then three of us will end up equal first, and it is the disc counts that decide the two finalist.
3 f4. Francesco has been playing the Rose opening since Athens EGP last year, so this was not a complete surprise. Besides, at Round 2, he played this move against Marc. However, I wasn't really expecting this one for the reason that I will reveal later.
15 g3. The variation Francesco plays since Athens. Black threatens to play a quiet move g4. White has three choices. White can play either g4 himself, h6 to poison g4, of ignore completely g4 and play his own quiet move in f6. I opted for the last one.
After 17g4, White has again three moves to choose from, two moves on the east edge h3, h6 or b5. The move b5 was tempting, because it would leave many options later for two players, thus somehow limiting the effect of preparation. However, earlier this day Marc played b5 and lost against Francesco, and I didn't know where to deviate from the line they played. I somehow excluded h6, the reason being after h6 h5 h3 b4 h4, we would end up with the same postion as after h3 b4 h4 h5 h6, which is the usual continuation after 18 h3. So for White, there is very little merit of playing 18 h6 instead of h3, noting that Black can play other lines after 18 h6.
21 c2. Unexpected. Here Black plays usually h5 to remove this quiet move for White. However, after the exchange h5 h6, if Black plays c2, then Black won't have access to d2. It happens that we already played this variation a month earlier at the ultimate round of Italian Grand Prix and it didn't go quite well for him. At the time, it looked like he
wasn't prepared against 18 h3. So, I had thought he would deviate before this move but he didn't.
Until 25 f1, we followed the line we had played before. Here, at IGP, I had chosen 26 e1; e1 looks clearly better than d1 for a couple of reasons. For one thing, d1 poisons b3, for another, after e1 White will recover acces to d1 (but Black ends up playing there so I am not sure if this is relevant). So why did I deviate here? Let me start by telling you how we continued at IGP game. Black has to survive at any price, so after 26 e1, 27 g2 is almost forced. Then I thought playing somewhat natural 28 f2 would be risky because it would give Black different possibilities to sacrifice the corner h1, and prefered playing b3, forcing Black to play immediately at d1, thus getting rid of an element to worry about. Afterwards, White kept parity, and won without much trouble.
However, after the IGP tournament, I checked the game, and realized several things. First, 28 f2 is a win, whereas b3 is a loss. Second, 26 e1 (as well as 28 f2) was already marked as win in Zebra's book! Last but not least, 26 d1, which was also in the book with evaluation +0.4, is also a win.
Thus I knew both d1 and e1 were win. It also happened that Francesco, unlike last time, played without thinking 21 c2, 23 d2 and 25 f1. This obviously meant that he had also checked the game, and made some preparations. So I chose to deviate, thinking that my opponent must have prepared against the winning line in the book but not necessarily against the other winning line.
From 27 g2 to 40 a5, White tries to kill Black by gaining "the last tempo", and Black tries to survive. Francesco played all moves without thinking, which implies that he also had prepared against 26 d1. What a bad choice did I make. Well, after all, no reason to worry about, this line was winning too, right? Anyhow, after 40 a5, thanks to the diagonals c2-f5 and g1-c5, Black can't play a6 or h6, as all White needs to do is to take back the edge. A7 and h7 are excluded as well because then White will simply play a6 and h6. So is f8 because of d8. All these leave unique move d8. Francesco started thinking here, so probably up until then we played the line he had prepared. Why had I chosen 26 d1? What had I been afraid of after 26 e1?
A line like c4e3f4c5d6f3e6c3d3e2b6f5g5g6g3f6g4h3b4h4c2h5d2c1f1e1g2f2f7b3d1a5b1h1b2f8a2d7d8c7a3e7e8c6b5c8a7b7g7a4? In this line, White has only one winning move at least between 38d7 to 50a4, and this may be the case since the move 32a5, although many of them are rather easy to find, even if, for example, 40 c7 is not very intuitive. In the end, the line played in the game turned out to be less simple for White to play.
Francesco ended up with playing the only reasonable move 41 d8, against which I answered 42 b5. Although White closes the South-West region, it doesn't lose parity because Black's only move in the North-West is b1, and after b1 a1, Black will have no access to the region. Francesco played 43 f8, again almost the only reasonable move. I thought taking back the South edge with 44 g8 removing Black's access to a4, but I refrained from doing it being afraid of T-trick in the South-East region. As a matter of fact, g8 wins for White, basically because White can play g7 at the next move to avoid the T-trick, and Black will have to play in the South-East region by lack of moves elsewhere, thus giving back parity, more or less. So I chose the other natural move a3. While I was wondering how to deal with possible a4 Francesco took the South edge with 45 b8. Now, let's look at this position and analyze its features. There is a hole at a4, but this doesn't really cause a parity problem for White, since it will get back access to this square if, for example, Black plays a6. Any move in the South-East region for Black, if it were his turn, would be catastrophic, which leaves a4 for him. Black won't be able to play a6 without flipping b5 and c6, so this is not a threat. The only thing White has to worry about here is the b-column, if it is entirely white, then Black will be able to play b2. As there is very little hope for Black to get parity, the only way he may win is by simply grabbing discs, around the corner a8 and securing the South edge.
Taking these features into consideration, one could see that here the best move is b3, forcing b2 right away. Then White can play g7. A correct continuation will be then b1a1a6a7a2a4a8b7h7h8g8h6 (or one can finish with h8h7h6g8, but the first line can be compared with the line played in the game more easily). If you compare this line
with the one played in the game, you see that Black gets one less disc in the total of 1 and 2 rows and on the diagonal a6-f1. Furthermore c3 and d4 will remain White. Of course, to be really sure one would need to count, and this line may not be easy to count as both players have lots of other choices. However, in the line of the game,
almost all White's moves were forced, and most of Black's moves were natural, which means one could probably count this line and see that it would lose for White even though there are still many squares. Anyhow, I chose 46 g7, and Francesco had no difficulty to find the correct line to finish up.
After the game, I cursed myself for having chosen 26 d1. Having chosen 46 g7. The three games I lost in Copenhagen by endgame mistakes even more stupid than this 46 g7 (after all, a second place in Copenhagen would have sufficed...). The first game of the final against Tom in Cambridge where I missed a huge win. The second game of the same final where I counted a forced draw and played it. The choice of the color of the third game. The choice of the opening of the third game. Well, at least I have very little regret over the Rome EGP as I had played so poorly. And I said to myself that I should look at the good side of the situation. The most dangerous rival for EGP was Tom, and I would play against him for third/fourth play-off. So I could keep him from getting 90 points myself. I should forget about the past, and concentrate on beating Tom.
Well, those who follow Othellonews know that things didn't go quite the way I had expected on the second day. Francesco lost against both Tom and Bartek. As to myself, in the game against Bartek. Bartek somehow missed an occasion to play the same sort of swindle (44 g2 - 46 h1) as the one Tom had played on him the day before. He told us that he had seen it when playing the move 42, but somehow it had slipped out of his mind while playing the move 44. As to Marc, he lost against Michał Buka in the last round. Thus at the end Francesco, Marc and I end up with first ex-aequo, but with two defeats. Francesco was the unfortunate one with the lesser tie-break. And as to the final, I lost the first game. In the second game, I made a desperate attempt to make Marc lose on time which he avoided cleverly. We shaked hands and I congratulated Marc... then Tom, who was watching, told us that it was a draw. Marc was so upset with my extraordinary luck, and played rather poorly the third game so that I ended up winning with a large enough score to win the tournament.
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Results after 11 rounds:
1: 9. pts [922] TASTET Marc (2) {FRA} [897] KASHIWABARA Takuji (839) {FRA} [881] MARCONI Francesco (36) {ITA} 4: 8.5 pts [899] SCHOTTE Tom (2795) {BEL} [873] SURY Bartlomiej (130011) {POL} 6: 7. pts [804] BUKA Michal (5745) {POL} 7: 5. pts [769] NOWICKI Jaroslaw (130035) {POL} 8: 4. pts [644] WALISZEWSKI Przemek (130041) {POL} 9: 3. pts [590] PIKTUS Przemyslaw (130018) {POL} 10: 2. pts [531] MARSZALKOWSKA Joanna (130040) {POL} 11: 0. pt [465] -SOBIEN Jaroslaw (130013) {POL} Top 4 EGP Warsaw:
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Up until the last round there was a fight for a place in the final. In round 11 Marc Tastet lost against Michal Buka. Tom Schotte lost against Takuji Kashiwabara and lost his place in the final.
Tom Schotte won the playoff for 3/4 place against Francesco Marconi. Tom was pressed for time and finished with 12 seconds left on the clock. Francesco had managed his time much better but move 53 was a losing move for him. Maybe he played the endgame too fast. Marc Tastet won the first game of the final against Takuji Kashiwabara 39 - 25. The second game was a draw, Marc failed to play the winning line with only 6 seconds left on the clock. But maybe he thought he could not play the best line within the time left. Takuji Kashiwabara won the third game 44-20. First EGP tournament win for Takuji in 2016. Two more tournaments to go: Stockholm and Amsterdam. I was winning at move 58 in the second game, but I had very little time. I deliberately played a different line 58H2 with less discs to flip. I thought it would be enough and I wanted to avoid losing on time. |
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SURY Bartlomiej 43-21 MARCONI Francesco EGP Warsaw, round 8 |
SCHOTTE Tom 43-21 MARCONI Francesco EGP Warsaw, round 10 |
KASHIWABARA Takuji 39-25 SCHOTTE Tom EGP Warsaw, round 11 |
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MARCONI Francesco 28-36 SCHOTTE Tom EGP Warsaw, 3/4 playoff |
TASTET Marc 39-25 KASHIWABARA Takuji EGP Warsaw, final game 1 |
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KASHIWABARA Takuji 32-32 TASTET Marc EGP Warsaw, final game 2 |
KASHIWABARA Takuji 44-20 TASTET Marc EGP Warsaw, final game 3 |
