[Daniel Espinosa]

Sure, I wouldnt mind if you take a look at any of my losses. Nitpick as much as you like!

[blankoblanco]

Thanks for those notes John! I 100% agree with everything you suggested. Not to say I won't make the same mistakes again sometimes, but hopefully this will help me recognize and avoid some of them. The one that sticks out the most to me is #17. I definitely should have realized that I opened myself up to the unbalanced edge with that move

I recently finished an interesting game vs Scott Sitar where I won with only 1 corner for the first time ever. Technically I could've gotten 2 at the end, but it would've scored fewer points. I gave up the first corner without even an exchange, so it's hard to understand how I won. I obviously played pretty sloppy early on for that to happen. Thought you might find it interesting to look at, and maybe you could tell me if you see any noteworthy moves on either side. In any event, it was a fun game and strange how it went down

[JohnGalt2341]

Sure, I wouldnt mind if you take a look at any of my losses. Nitpick as much as you like!

Let's take a look at Daniels last Ladder loss vs BodaciousButterBean. First I want to mention that BBB plays an aggressive style much better than most. She often turns on the aggression at just the right time. She's really good at blocking moves and even very good at blocking off an entire part of the board. She's beat me twice and she also pulled a win vs FGYTPeti in the last tourney. Let's see what I find in Daniels game vs BBB. Daniel is Green.

Move #9
I would have definitely taken that lone Purple piece straight above the Center Piece. This would have given you an extra move before you moved on that upper wall and did the sequence. That was a good move but, I would have waited 1 more move before I did it. You might be afraid that if you didn't take it right away that Purple would take that move away from you on their next turn. That's okay if Purple does that. In this situation, I think it would have been very difficult for Purple to prevent you from moving where you did on #9 for very long.

#15
I would have taken the 3 Purples pointing in the direction of that upper right wall right next to your lone Green piece. Now that Purple has an Unbalanced Edge on the top wall, it's usually a good idea to try to fill up the other section from where that UE can be exploited. For instance, if Purple's UE was on the same wall but facing the other direction, then I would likely try to make my moves on the upper left part of the board instead of the upper right part of the board. Once the board filled in a bit more it should give you some opportunities to exploit Purples UE.

#25 and #26
This one is pretty huge. If you start from the Center Piece and you draw a line to that upper right corner, stop on the piece right before the corner. That's where I would have moved, taking 2 Purples. This is a really good move because both moves you would have created for Purple would have been terrible. The reason why is because if Purple would have taken the one new move you created for them, then they would have had back to back exploitable UE's. Then you could have basically decided which corner(s) you want and I think it would have been very difficult for Purple to recover from that. Purple's other move you would have created for them would have been even worse.

After that it was pretty hard for you to recover because Purple did such a great job blocking off any and all good moves for Green on the upper part of the board.

Other than that, I thought you played well. Let me know if you have any questions.

[JohnGalt2341]

If you guys are interested I've got a really interesting Ladder game going vs Chair Man. I've got complete control of the game, he tapped out at move #25. But now just a couple of moves later I realize how difficult this is going to be because of how he's got everything blocked off so cleanly. I don't know if I can figure out a way to get enough points here. I'm hoping I will figure something out within the next few moves but right now I think my Ladder winning streak might be coming to an end.

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&s=...068682620&m=53

[Daniel Espinosa]

​Yep I just noticed I could have won easily on move 25 . Probably lack of experience.

[JohnGalt2341]

​Yep I just noticed I could have won easily on move 25 . Probably lack of experience.

On an unrelated note, I just noticed who's in first place in the SBR pick 6 contest.

1	Daniel Espinosa	24-6-0	80.00 %	W 2	331.5	+20.35	-
2	elway	23-6-0	79.31 %	W 1	102.0	+21.59	-
3	mush	21-8-0	72.41 %	W 2	251.0	+10.89	-

[Daniel Espinosa]

Yes!!! Let's see how long my good run lasts

[JohnGalt2341]

Thanks for those notes John! I 100% agree with everything you suggested. Not to say I won't make the same mistakes again sometimes, but hopefully this will help me recognize and avoid some of them. The one that sticks out the most to me is #17. I definitely should have realized that I opened myself up to the unbalanced edge with that move

I recently finished an interesting game vs Scott Sitar where I won with only 1 corner for the first time ever. Technically I could've gotten 2 at the end, but it would've scored fewer points. I gave up the first corner without even an exchange, so it's hard to understand how I won. I obviously played pretty sloppy early on for that to happen. Thought you might find it interesting to look at, and maybe you could tell me if you see any noteworthy moves on either side. In any event, it was a fun game and strange how it went down

Nice job!! I haven't looked at this game yet but since you won the game with only one corner I'm nearly certain I will find this game really interesting. Let's take a look:

Blanko vs Scott Sitar. Blanko is Purple

I just went through the game and I didn't notice any really bad plays for Purple but just several moves where I would have played it differently but I'm not certain that my play was any better.

#4
This is really nitpicking here but I would have taken the 1 Green piece that Green just flipped on move #4.

#5
Same as #4

#13
I would have moved to the left of that first Green piece you took, taking that piece only.

#16
Your move wasn't bad but you had a couple of better options IMO. Had you moved where Green moved on their next move(2 spots down from the far left corner) you could have easily gotten a very nice Closed 2 on that wall.

The other move I liked for #16 was the spot directly left of that lone green piece in that upper left part of the board.

#18
With this one... I'm not sure that my choice was necessarily better than your move but I would have moved just left of where Green moved on their previous move.

#23 for Green. Nice move.

#26
When I first looked at this move I thought it was terrible but then when I realized how beautifully it set you up on that left side of the board... I'm not even sure that it wasn't your best move. I don't really have any criticism of this move because of all the great follow up moves you had, but I figured I would acknowledge it at least.

That's about all I could find. Scott played well but you smoked him after you made that lower right corner sacrifice. I think it's possible that that move might have won you the game because it set you up so nicely on that left side.

Really interesting game for sure. I've won with only one corner only once. This is only the 2nd time I've ever seen it. Well done!

If you guys have any other specific games you would like me to review, feel free to let me know.

[JohnGalt2341]

If you guys are interested I've got a really interesting Ladder game going vs Chair Man. I've got complete control of the game, he tapped out at move #25. But now just a couple of moves later I realize how difficult this is going to be because of how he's got everything blocked off so cleanly. I don't know if I can figure out a way to get enough points here. I'm hoping I will figure something out within the next few moves but right now I think my Ladder winning streak might be coming to an end.

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&s=...068682620&m=53

I managed to pull off the win here. It was really tricky though because I had to figure out a way to get to the spot I moved on #39 without him taking away that move on his next turn. I had to work along that right wall and come at it from that angle. Had I made one wrong move, I'm not sure that I would have won.

When you run a player down to Zero available options there is almost always a way to win, but sometimes it's a lot more difficult than others.

[JohnGalt2341]

I was going through one of my old games from 2013 and I knew it was a game that I lost. I went through the game really quickly and in most of the positions I thought I played well. No big mistakes really that I could see. And I kept on wondering... "Did I really lose this game?? How in the hell did I lose this game?"

There was one spectacular combo Green made that was really good but I still thought I should be able to win fairly easy and I was surprised that I had lost the game. And then I came across this move:

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&g=...1447&t=1&gn=97

Green just used up his last move. Purple gets the Tap Out at move #35 and Purple should win easily. There's just one problem, all 6 of Purples choices are shitty.

This is one of the rare instances where you run your opponent down to zero options and you still lose the game. I was trying to figure out where I made the mistake... it seemed so far back that it's kind of hard to tell. All I know for sure is... I definitely didn't see the position in the link coming, at least not soon enough.

[JohnGalt2341]

I think this is my new fastest Tap Out. 10 moves.

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&g=...&u=0&t=0&gn=97

[JohnGalt2341]

I found this app where you can play Hexversi vs a CPU but its hard to see on your phone so my nephew who is more tech savvy than me sent me a message explaining how to put it on my laptop.

Anyway, there are 3 board sizes with Hexversi being the largest. The medium and large boards are fairly weak but the small board is strong! The small board is a blast! It's 12 moves each. You can play a full game in a couple of minutes.

This is the app

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...xagonalreversi

And here's how to put it on your laptop.

"You should be able to play it on your laptop through an Android emulator. I tried looking one up quick, and I got this one to work https://www.bignox.com/ Once you install it, open the Google Play Store or just search for something. Searching for that app didn't actually make that version show up for me (the one by Doug Lee). It looks like there's a couple other Hexversi-looking apps, but I didn't try those out. I clicked on an app, and it prompted me and asked if I'd like to open with the Play Store or Browser, so I clicked "Browser" then I just copy-pasted the URL you sent in your last email and I downloaded it from there. You have to login with a gmail account to download stuff by the way"

This is what the small board looks like



Let me know if you try it. The small board is fun!

[Daniel Espinosa]

I thought Hexversi was exclusive from iyt? Looks nice. How good is the CPU?

[JohnGalt2341]

I thought Hexversi was exclusive from iyt? Looks nice. How good is the CPU?

I thought it was until I found this app. The CPU reminds me of Butterbeans style. It's very aggressive but it plays it well and you have to be really careful to not let entire sections of the board get blocked off.

Now that I've played each board size and every level I would say the large board(Hexversi) is the easiest. The medium and small boards are actually fairly strong on the hardest level. The medium size board is much stronger than I initially thought it was. I played several games on hard on the medium size board and I've won about half of them.

I managed to pull a 90 on the large board.

[JohnGalt2341]

I've been playing the medium size board on hard, and either I'm not very good or the CPU is very good. I'm winning about 50% of my games. I'm really curious to see how you guys would do.

I can tell that many of my Hexversi tricks don't work on these smaller boards. I'm having to learn new ones.

[Daniel Espinosa]

You are too good in the large one, and maybe not that good in the other ones. I wonder who made that app

[JohnGalt2341]

I got this one on the app. No corner win.

[Daniel Espinosa]

Lol weird game!

[JohnGalt2341]

Lol weird game!

I forgot to mention that I gave up all 6 corners intentionally to see if I could still win that way. It was on the Easy level btw. My best on IYT was with only one corner(not intentional) and I barely won 46-44. And I've had a few wins with 2 corners including one of our games. It's pretty rare though.

On my first try going for a zero corner win on that app I got a lot of lucky breaks and I managed to pull a 50-40 win. I've tried a couple times since then and I wasn't even close.

[thechaoz]

Sure, I wouldnt mind if you take a look at any of my losses. Nitpick as much as you like!

Tell us your secret? It's the hair isn't it?

It's totally the hair.

[Daniel Espinosa]

Yep, you got me

Tell us your secret? It's the hair isn't it?

It's totally the hair.

[JohnGalt2341]

I just finished a very close Hexversi Ladder game vs the 19-41-1 Hugolin. I thought he had me beat for sure.

Things started to get really interesting around move #30:

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&g=...&u=0&t=0&gn=97

I'm not sure how many paths to victory I had starting at move #30 but it didn't feel like very many.

Just goes to show... BIG upsets are possible in virtually every game.

[JohnGalt2341]

blanko's got a great Ladder game going vs Toptal

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&s=...0003418716&t=3

[JohnGalt2341]

blanko's got a great Ladder game going vs Toptal

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&s=...0003418716&t=3

And this one vs Ryan

https://www.itsyourturn.com/pp?gm&s=...0002870678&t=3