sandra113 - 2016-08-10, 22:30 Temat postu: Online matches between top players Ladies and gentlemen, This Thursday (tomorrow) Zoltán László and Denis Osipov will play a match at 21:00 Budapest/Warsaw time. Zoltán László, Hungary, is one of the best blitz players in the world. He won the title “Player of the month” in the series of online tournaments “Monday Blitz Evenings” many times and achieved one of the best results in the Euroleague this season, 49.5 points in 60 games. He is also the current leader of the White Meijin tournament series. In real life, he started playing in tournaments 8 years ago and so far has participated in 9 competitions shown on gomokuworld.com. His last rated game dates back to 2011, after which his rating became 1609. Denis Osipov is one of the best Russian players. His real-life rating is 1745, which is the 15th line in the world ranking list. In 2015, he qualified to play in the final of the Russian gomoku championship (together with 9 other players) and took the 6th place. Concerning online tournaments, he played in the IRP championship the last year and won 75% of his matches, which turned out to be one of the best efficiencies across all participants that season. His well-known nicknames on playok.com include c0sm0s and nirrvana, both being 2000+. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), 4 games, 10 min per player in each game, swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on “GUEST” 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#100... bieniasze" if you find yourself being in another playing room (which is unlikely). 4. Click at the table at which russroulette (Denis' nickname) and soldier1 (Zoltán's nickname) are playing. Come watch and have fun 
amber_gold - 2016-08-14, 11:30 ten jak go nazywasz najlepszy minutowiec na kurniku przegral 2:6 z jakims plackiem po czym się obrazil i poszedl
bbj - 2016-08-14, 12:30 Gdzie s± gry? Bo na podanych przez Sandrę nickach nic nie ma. Usiek - 2016-08-14, 16:27 Mecz się nie odbył z uwagi na nieobecno¶ć Denisa. Z tego co wiem, ma się on odbyć w innym, bliżej nie sprecyzowanym terminie. sandra113 - 2016-08-22, 01:25 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s Hi everyone, The match between Denis and Zoli was eventually played a week after the date initially agreed. On the day initially agreed, Denis showed up only an hour after the time agreed. He said his car had broken down, making it impossible for him to arrive home in time. He was eager to play the match immediately after he showed up, but Zoli had already left. The match was rescheduled to be played on Thursday, 18 August, at 21:00 Budapest/Warsaw time, and re-advertised on the Russian gomoku discussion board, both in English and Russian. Here is the English text of the re-advertisement: https://vk.com/topic-19499145_34028033?post=11871 This time both players showed up in time, and the match proved to be thrilling, incredibly intense, and even dramatic. In the first game, Denis had almost outplayed Zoli, being in a winning position and having a huge time advantage - more than 1 min vs. 13 seconds - but made a blunder, allowing Zoli to win the game. The second game was very hard for both players, too, and lasted 18 minutes. Denis was in a losing position for a moment, but was able to take the initiative and outplay Zoli, equalising the score. The third game was, in my opinion, the best game of the match. Zoli defended very well, then took the initiative from Denis, forced him to spend time to carefully choose defending moves, and finally played a very nice VCF, playing six fours in a row in order to create a 4x3 fork. The game lasted 17 minutes, and none of the players had a win (at least one that could be found in a 10 min game) until the very end phase of the game. In the fourth game, Zoli put one of his favourite corner openings, and soon Denis made a too optimistic move, allowing Zoli to quickly win near the corner. As a result, Zoli won the match 3-1, but the match demonstrated that Denis and Zoli are very good opponents for each other, and could end with any score. After the match, Zoli told me that he enjoyed the games and that he would be happy to play a rematch if Denis wanted it. As the match had been advertised, there were many spectators - their number varied between about 17 and 25 during the match. First game: http://www.playok.com/en/game.phtml/120302858?gm Second game: http://www.playok.com/en/game.phtml/120303140?gm Third game: http://www.playok.com/en/game.phtml/120303399?gm Fourth game: http://www.playok.com/en/game.phtml/120303487?gm sandra113 - 2016-08-22, 01:28 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s I find such matches very interesting and contributing to making gomoku more popular. A couple of weeks before the match between Zoli and Denis, Usiek played a similar gomoku match on playok.com against Roman Berezin, who has the 5th dan in renju and qualified more than once to play in the Russian Renju Premier League. The match consisted of 6 games, 10 min per player in each of them, as had been agreed. Similar to the match between Denis and Zoli, it had been advertised in the Russian gomoku community, both in English and Russian. Here is the English version of the advertisement: https://vk.com/topic-19499145_34028033?post=11825 There were many spectators watching this match - 22 at some moment - including Ilya Muratov (furla), Denis Kachaev (capellmaster), Mikhail Kozhin (loiso), Andrey Litvinenko (andreyli), and Ilya Katsev (bromozel). The match was thrilling and intense, and Usiek won 4-2. One of the games won by Usiek ended in the fast-clicking stage, when each of the players had no more than a few seconds left. Undoubtedly, both players proved to be very good opponents for each other. Here are the games of the match: http://www.playok.com/en/...=2&oid=romochka sandra113 - 2016-08-22, 01:35 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s I have got a hope that there are some other brave Polish players who would be happy to contribute to making gomoku more popular by participating in similar international matches - widely advertised and attended by many spectators. If so, I would be happy if such players could reply in this thread or send me a private message on playok.com. My nickname there is sandra113. Having experience of successfully organising two matches (described above) and attracting public attention to them, I am quite sure I could help organise more of them, especially as I perfectly speak both English and Russian and am a true gomoku fan
If any of you decide to try your luck in such a match, just let me know, and you may get experience and emotions that you will never forget, and also contribute to popularisation of this wonderful game
angst - 2016-08-22, 11:07 I just wanted to mention that during IRP season, in current formula, there are plenty of similar matches, at least one or two per each round, including participation of many live tournaments winners like Polish Championship or Team World Championship
I haven't decided yet, but new season shall start in the end of September, maybe a little bit later. Nevertheless, I think this is not problem of courage, but rather of free time available and appropriate playing level that would make such a match equal and entertaining. Best regards Angst sandra113 - 2016-08-22, 21:47 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s Thanks for a reply in English, Angst
Of course, I am well aware of the IRP championship. It is an excellent tournament, and I have watched many IRP matches I think you are doing a great job as the organiser
What I am trying to do is something that is complementary to the IRP and beyond its limitations: 1. In the IRP championship, only those who have committed to play the entire season can play. Many top players do not want to play the entire season and, as a result, do not sign up for the IRP championship, but they may be happy to play one-off matches, and I am happy to help organise them You see, Zoli did not participate in the IRP championship the last season, but he is perhaps the best blitz player in the world, and he does not mind occasionally playing one-off matches
2. In the IRP championship, matches always consist of 4 games, 10 min per player in each of them, while I offer the freedom to choose the match parameters. Some players prefer longer games (e.g., 20+ min), while others enjoy the adrenaline rush of 1 min duels I am sure that a match of 1 min games between Zoli and Adif would attract a great deal of attention, and maybe I will succeed in organising it
Obviously, playing a one-off match does not take much time. If a player has spent years to reach a high level, he is likely to be able to find a couple of more hours to play a match, isn't he?
Also, both matches organised by me were very entertaining They were not one-sided at all
Undoubtedly, playing in such a match is a question of courage But after all, what do we all play gomoku for if not facing challenges? I highly respect Zoli, Denis, Usiek, and Roman for their courage to face a challenge by playing in a widely advertised match.
Cheers, Sandra bbj - 2016-08-23, 12:16 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s
What means blitz in your definition? Maybe on 1 min he is one of the best (but hard to check it when more of top players take part only several tournaments (in MBE) in a year), but at longer times (2-10) I am sure that not.
Personally for me it is motivation problem to play friendly match, not time problem. I prefer tournaments for some rate, ranking or points. Of course Sandra, every gomoku initiative is great for this game. Good luck. sandra113 - 2016-08-23, 21:30 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s Bogdan, thanks for an interesting reply
1-10 min
Do you mean to say that Zoli is not one of the best players when it comes to 2-10 min games? If so, who is definitely stronger than him at this time control?
Just to clarify - I said that Zoli is "perhaps the best blitz player". I used the word "perhaps," and I think that if we organised a blitz league and somehow lured all top players into playing in it, Zoli might win it by a statistically significant margin (regardless of whether the time control was 1 min or 10 min). I don't know whether he would. He might. I have no evidence or statistics showing that he definitely wouldn't. My opinion is partially based on the results of the last EL season. As you know, EL matches consist of 10 min games, and Zoli earned 49.5 points in 60 games, which means 82.5%. Only Gergo Toth achieved a higher efficiency - 83.33% - but he played only half as many games as Zoli did. I do not count the other players who achieved a higher efficiency, Edward Rizvanov and Alex Bear, as they played only 16 and 2 games, respectively.
I can't resist saying that these guys did not fight for rating points - they fought for glory So should you, with black and white stones instead of swords
I widely advertise the matches I help organise, and also write detailed post-match reports and post them on gomoku discussion boards. So, by playing in such a match, you can make a permanent footprint in the gomoku history And of course, such matches are attended by many spectators
If it goes well, I will definitely create a special website dedicated to such matches. They do not need to be organised very often - one match between top players per month would be a good frequency, I think
So, is there any strong player here who wants to try his luck? 
bbj - 2016-08-24, 00:04 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s
I didn't write nowhere that someone is definitely stronger than he, but a lot of players aren't at least worse than zoli at blitz, for example: gergo, peking, bano, adifek, zukole, gregi etc.
Just one season. Each player has "his 5 minutes, check statistics of EL.
Are you not able to promote tournaments which already exist for example "white meijin"? Maybe some "footprints" for winners from every week or month could attract more players?
I played with him special match after MBE 1 year ago (we both were winners of 2 months). Score: 10-11.
I think the same. sandra113 - 2016-09-07, 13:19 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s Ladies and gentlemen, Today, 7 Sep, Ilya Muratov (also known as furla) and Łukasz Majksner (also known as Usiek and undothefuture) will play a match at 20:00 Warsaw time. Ilya Muratov, Russia, is a two times champion of Russia and took the 3rd place in the Russian championship this year. He plays fast games extremely well and, in particular, this year defeated everyone in the Laryx tournament, where the time control was 20 min + 10 sec, including the current Russian champion Yury Tarannikov as well as Mikhail Lomakin and Alexandr Bogatirev. Łukasz Majksner, Poland, is a team world champion (and best on the 3rd board) and also won the 3rd place in Czech Open 2015. He is the winner of the Black Meijin series of online tournaments and a very well trained online blitz player - he almost never misses "Monday Blitz Evenings," a series of tournaments on 1 min games, and regularly qualifies to play in its monthly Grand Final, where only a few best players advance to, and once won it, earning the title "Player of the Month." The match will be played on playok.com Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), 8 games, 7 min per player in each game, swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Statistics of online tournaments suggest that both players are very good opponents for each other. The last Euroleague season they achieved comparable efficiencies: Łukasz earned 70% of points in 42 games, and Ilya earned 65% of points in 72 games. The same applies to the Black Meijin series of tournaments, where Ilya and Łukasz took, respectively, 10.8 and 9.4 points per tournament on average, but Łukasz won the series as he played in more tournaments, 20 vs 9. Undoubtedly, the match is going to be truly intense and exciting, especially given that it consists of a considerable number of games. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#100... bieniasze" and "#300... dobrocin" to see in which of these two rooms the match is being played, and click on the table at which it is being played. Łukasz will be on the nickname plgomoku, and Ilya's nickname will be durlo. Come watch and support your brave compatriot in his battle against such a strong opponent. zukole - 2016-09-07, 21:56 Przejrzałem kilka gier i 7 minut to jednak za mało na sensowne granie. sandra113 - 2016-09-08, 00:56 Temat postu: Re: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0s Hi Michał, Thanks a lot for your reply and opinion
Sure, in contrast to 7 min games, a long time control allows making well-thought moves and competing on the ability to perform a deep analysis. No wonder many players prefer a long time control, and one of them is Denis Osipov aka c0sm0s, who would be happy to play a widely advertised match of long time control games against a strong opponent. Would you play such a match with him? After I informed Denis about your comment above, with which he fully agrees, he was happy to confirm me he would love to play a match of long time control games with you. What he proposes is 4 games, 30 min per player in each of them. Two games on one day and the other two on another day. He would prefer playing on business days starting at 21:00 Warsaw time. Undoubtedly, after I advertise it, such a match would attract a great deal of attention, especially in the Russian gomoku community, and thereby help popularise gomoku. I would like to show you this picture to give you an idea what attendance you can expect. Also, you see, people got used to blitz games on playok.com, and the match we propose to you would help them appreciate the beauty of long time control games. We are looking forward to your reply
Cheers, Sandra Okcthunder - 2016-09-08, 21:17 My¶lę, że byłoby to ciekawe wydarzenie, które chętnie zobaczyłoby wielu entuzjastów gomoku. zukole - 2016-09-12, 20:26
Tymczasem:
sandra113 - 2016-09-20, 02:35 Temat postu: Match between Zoltán Lászlo and Denis Osipov (aka c0sm0 Ladies and gentlemen, Today, 20 Sep, Łukasz Majksner (also known as Usiek and undothefuture) and Denis Osipov (also known as c0sm0s) will start playing their match of four 30 min games at 21:00 Warsaw time. Two games will be played today, and the remaining two tomorrow at the same time. Łukasz Majksner, Poland, is a team world champion (and best on the 3rd board) and also won the 3rd place in Czech Open 2015. He is the winner of the Black Meijin series of online tournaments and a very well trained online blitz player - he almost never misses "Monday Blitz Evenings," a series of tournaments on 1 min games, and regularly qualifies to play in its monthly Grand Final, where only a few best players advance to, and once won it, earning the title "Player of the Month." Denis Osipov is one of the best Russian players. His real-life rating is 1745, which is the 15th line in the world ranking list. In 2015, he qualified to play in the final of the Russian gomoku championship (together with 9 other players) and took the 6th place. Concerning online tournaments, he played in the IRP championship the last year and won 75% of his matches, which turned out to be one of the best efficiencies across all participants that season. His well-known nicknames on playok.com include c0sm0s and nirrvana, both being 2000+. His another nickname, russroulette, is 2433. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Undoubtedly, 30 min are an excellent time control. It allows making well-thought moves and competing on the ability to perform a deep analysis, and, at the same time, it is not too long
Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#100... bieniasze" and "#300... dobrocin" to see in which of these two rooms the match is being played, and click on the table at which it is being played. Łukasz will be on the nickname plgomoku, and Denis' nickname will be c0ms0mol. Come watch
sandra113 - 2016-09-22, 14:52 Both matches advertised above - Furla vs Usiek and Denis vs Usiek - proved to be very interesting and entertaining. I will now share my impressions from them below
sandra113 - 2016-09-22, 15:18 I would like to first share my impressions from the match between Furla and Usiek, aka Ilya Muratov and Łukasz Majksner, respectively. I believe the match is definitely worth describing in detail for gomoku fans
As I wrote in the announcement, the match consisted of eight games, 7 min per player in each of them, and was played on September 7. When I helped organise the match, Usiek told me a draw was the best he could hope for, but agreed to play. It was a great pleasure to see that the apparent fear of being beaten hard in full view of many players was outweighed by the desire to enjoy the game and help promote gomoku. However, I did not fully share Usiek's pessimistic view on possible outcomes. Statistics of tournaments with the same time control - Black Meijin and White Meijin - indicated that none of the two opponents was considerably superior at this time control, although Furla had won all three of their games against each other in these tournaments. As they seemed more or less equally good at this time control, I thought that the outcome of the match was going to highly depend on psychological factors. Psychologically, seven minutes are a very challenging time control. It requires players to really think, as opposed to 1 min games, but is not long enough to avoid silly, highly regrettable mistakes that make it difficult to focus in subsequent games. It is definitely not easy to accept a mistake that renders all previous efforts to make well-thought moves and follow a strategy in a game totally wasted. It is especially not pleasant when such a mistake results in a loss that undermines the chances to take a high place in a tournament or win a match. It is no wonder that each week quite a few players quit the White Meijin tournament before it ends, supposedly mainly out of anger due to mistakes made - at least one of my friends, who is quite good at gomoku, once confessed that this was the reason of his quitting one of the tournaments. I advertised the match on the Polish and Russian gomoku discussion boards (this site and vk.com/gomoku, respectively) and also sent many private messages on playok.com. Shortly before the match, I reminded about it on the Russian gomoku discussion board and encouraged people there to predict the outcome of the match. Four players said that Furla would win, with predictions being 5-3, 7-1, 6-2, and again 6-2, one prediction being accompanied by the patriotic motto "Vpered Rossia" ("Advance Russia"), while only one guy said the match would end in Usiek's favour, 5-3. Both players appeared on playok.com on time and started playing the match on the time agreed. The audience gathered quickly. The number of spectators varied during the match, reaching a value of 30 about 40 minutes after the match started. I made a screenshot at that moment and have attached it to this review. In this screenshot, you can see some well-known players, including Mikhail Kozhin, Denis Kachaev, Zoltán Lászlo, Andrey Litvinenko, Alexei Lebedev, and Wei-Yuan Lu, who decided to watch the match despite that it started at 2am Taiwan time. I guess that the presence of such a great audience was a factor motivating both players to do their best and utmost to win the match. Russian supporters outnumbered Polish ones, with the proportion being roughly four to one, despite that I had appealed to Polish gomoku players by posting an announcement on this discussion board, saying, "Come watch and support your brave compatriot in his battle against such a strong opponent." To better understand what was happening in the games, I ran Yixin and used it to evaluate positions during the match. In the first game, Furla put an opening close to a corner. Despite that the opening was somewhat wide and thus not absolutely peaceful, Usiek chose a color instead of adding two stones. What followed can be well characterised by the term "trench warfare," as both players played safely and accurately. At some point, Usiek played too safely, and Furla took the initiative. Usiek, however, defended quite accurately, so Yixin did not even show any advantage of Furla over Usiek. Soon both players had less than one minute left, and it is only then when Usiek finally yielded to the pressure. He first gave Furla an opportunity to play a win that starts with a yobi and is a few moves long, which Furla missed as it was not obvious given the time left. Then Usiek gave him a second opportunity to play a short win starting with a yobi, and Furla played it. 1-0. Right after the game, Usiek said that one of his moves was a misclick. Obviously, losing such a tough game in the last minute was not pleasant at all, and I became a bit afraid that Usiek might have got slightly off balance psychologically. In the second game, Usiek put a central opening, to which Furla added two stones. Usiek attempted to surround Furla's stones and had to play very accurately to prevent Furla from playing a tight win. Yixin did not find any tight win in real time. However, Furla broke through to the upper part of the board. There, Usiek defended in a sharp way, trying to accumulate his stones on the right side. Having not so much time left, both players missed Furla's VCT, which required five stones of his colour to create a 4x4 fork. The game went to the fast-clicking stage. Usiek won on time, having a simple VCF and 6 seconds left when Furla's time expired. 1-1. Usiek did not seem psychologically affected by his defeat in the first game. In the third game, Furla again put a wide corner opening, and this time Usiek added two stones, obviously not considering the opening familiar or peaceful enough. Thinking carefully on each move, Usiek was able to take the initiative and achieve a huge advantage. After one of Furla's defensive moves (i6, to be exact), Usiek spent a huge amount of time trying to find a win. There was actually one, but it was very long, 10+ stones of Usiek's color to a winning fork. Usiek finally played a three in the wrong direction, either missing his win or making it considerably longer. However, later in the game (after f4), he had a VCT, but, again, it was quite long, 10+ stones of Usiek's color. Usiek missed it. Having very little time left, he created a VCF threat, missing Furla's VCF. Furla played it and again took the lead in the match. 2-1. In the fourth game, Usiek put a sharp opening, which he prepared for the last Team Gomoku World Championship and used in it against Stepan Tesark. Stepan did not add two stones, and the game proved to be very sharp and ended in Usiek's favor when there were 35 stones put on the board. Furla, however, did not risk playing the opening, but his two stones created a substantially unbalanced position. Usiek chose the right colour and soon built a huge advantage. Furla spent almost all of his time choosing defensive moves. Having a huge advantage both in time and on the board, Usiek eventually converted it into a victory by a five, equalising the score. 2-2. Furla responded by putting a sharp opening in the next game. The opening was not very wide, but it was near the centre. The two stones added by Usiek did not make the position look considerably softer, but excluded playing from memory. He was obviously up for a sharp game. He got it. Both players had to spent a lot of time on each of their moves. At some moment, Furla had a huge advantage on the board, but only one minute was left of his time, while Usiek's clock showed approximately one minute and forty seconds. Usiek probably could achieve a time win by choosing good defensive moves, but it was difficult in such a sharp position and mutual time trouble. Furla won by a five and took the lead again. 3-2. In the sixth game, Usiek put a central opening. Furla added two stones and was able to build an advantage. Usiek defended accurately, but had to spend a lot of time choosing defensive moves. It is only after the 45th stone was put on the board that Usiek made a mistake due to a time trouble, letting Furla play a simple VCF. Usiek's clock showed 0:15 when the game ended. 4-2. In order to achieve a draw, Usiek had to win the remaining two games, In the seventh game, Furla put a corner opening. Usiek did not add two stones and carefully chose his moves, achieved an advantage, but found himself considerably behind in time. Nevertheless, he was able to play a nice win (starting with f7) by connecting the upper and lower "front lines." 4-3. Right after the game, Furla said he regretted one of his moves. In Furla's opinion, it attracted Usiek's attention to a particular place of the board and thereby helped him find his win. With the score being 4-3 and one game remaining, this moment was the climax of the match. "You must do it," typed one of Furla's supporters in Russian in the table chat. In the last game of the match, Usiek again put the sharp opening he used against Stepan, but this time Furla added two stones in a balanced way, and the game looked more or less balanced for a while. "Damn," typed Furla in Russian in the table chat. He realised he had just missed an opportunity to win the game by a playing a simple VCT. At that moment, Usiek had a considerable time advantage and seemed to be in a good position to play for a time win. When Furla had less than a minute left - but definitely not just a few seconds left - he did not block Usiek's three. Usiek did not respond at the drop of a hat. Apparently, he carefully checked, in disbelief, whether he was not missing something. He was not. 4-4. "Well, I missed it," typed Furla in Russian in the table chat, in response to the question sign typed by Polina, a Russian player. The match ended as a draw. Both opponents thanked each other for such a good match. They made mistakes, but mistakes are unavoidable in 7 min games. For this time control, they played really great. Obviously, their psychological readiness played a role. I am sure both players experienced the full spectrum of emotions during the match. Being down 0-1, 1-2, and 2-4, Usiek was able to come back in the score, revealing his fighting spirit. I really enjoyed watching the match and guess I am not the only one who feels grateful to both players for the wonderful entertainment they provided. I also guess I am not the only one who has been inspired by this match to better understand the game and become a better player
sandra113 - 2016-09-23, 13:47 Here are the links to the games of the match between Usiek and Furla, but I have also attached a PDF file with the games as the links will expire in about 6 months: 1st game 2nd game 3rd game 4th game 5th game 6th game 7th game 8th game sandra113 - 2016-09-23, 14:37 I am now sharing my impressions from the match between Denis Osipov and Łukasz Majksner (aka c0sm0s and undothefuture, respectively). As I wrote in the announcement, the match consisted of four games, 30 min per player in each of them, and was played on September 20-21. There were many spectators, and their peak number was 30, as in the match between Furla and Usiek. I saw, in particular, Zoli, Gergo Toth, Pavel Laube, Attila Hegedus, Ilya Muratov, Mikhail Kozhin, and Denis Kachaev watching the match. The match ended 4-0 in Denis' favour, but was not really one-sided, in contrast to what its final score suggests. Denis managed to win all four games, but they were pretty intense. You can have a look at the games by following these links: 1st game 2nd game 3rd game 4th game As the links will expire in about 6 months, I have attached a PDF file with the games. In the first game, a critical moment came after Denis played h8. Here is the position after this move (also shown below in the image entitled "A critical moment in the 1st game"; click on the image to better see it). Usiek, who was black in this game, had to choose how to block Denis' three, from above or below. Later, I performed a deep computer analysis and found that the block from below leads to a huge advantage for black, while the block from above gives a huge advantage to white. However, finding this requires a really deep calculation. Usiek overlooked one thing when he analysed the lower block during the game, as he said later. As a result, he concluded that the lower block would result in a huge disadvantage, and chose the upper one, which did not look good either, but at least gave a hope. After Usiek chose the upper block, Denis played accurately and did not give Usiek a chance to equalise the game. In the second game, Denis built a huge advantage, both in time and on the board. I would like to show you the win he played, which I find quite interesting: here (also shown below in the image entitled "Denis' win in the 2nd game"). (Denis was white in this game.) In this position, there was only one move leading to a win findable in a 30 min game, h13. This move was not obvious, and Denis played it. As had been agreed, the first two games were followed by a 24 hours pause. Zoli said that Denis played amazing. Usiek emphasized that Denis was especially good in choosing strategically good moves. I also talked a bit to Denis, and he said, "This is exactly my main principle, which is to think about the game as a whole, not focusing on local tactics. However, sometimes such an approach results in a quick loss." In the 3rd game, there was a thing related to sportsmanship. Usiek put a very sharp opening near the centre, and Denis thought six minutes and then suddenly disappeared without saying a word. In a minute, the game automatically ended. Denis came back in 15 minutes or so, telling he had a problem with his router. The players put the same position on the board and started playing, each having 30 minutes. I suggested Denis have only 24 minutes (not 30), as he had already spent 6 minutes before he disappeared, but Usiek refused. Well, it was his own choice
Soon, Denis misclicked, not blocking Usiek's three. It was an obvious misclick. Unfortunately, there was no way to undo the move as the "no undo" option had been chosen. The players again put the position on the board and started playing, each having 30 minutes. The game was incredibly intense. Denis won by a five when he had only four seconds left. Usiek had two seconds left at that moment. In that game, Usiek was pretty much close to a victory as he missed two wins. The wins were not very long, but they were somewhat "narrow," not straightforward at all, and thus not very easy to find. Here are the positions in which Usiek had a win: here and here (also shown below in the images entitled "First missed win in the 3rd game" and "Second missed win in the 3rd game"). (Usiek was white in this game.) The fourth game developed from a corner and looked more or less equal for quite a while. Again, Denis achieved an advantage both on the board and in time (7 min vs 3 min after L7) and won by a five. Anyway, the match proved to be very interesting, in contrast to what the final score suggests. 30 minutes proved to be an excellent time control for online matches. I am thankful to both players for focusing and playing very well. sandra113 - 2016-09-23, 14:44 I am looking forward to the match of 30 min games between Denis Osipov and Rudolf Dupszki, the current world champion. Both players have agreed to play it, but the dates are yet to be fixed. As soon as they are fixed, I will post an announcement in this thread, so stay tuned to it
sandra113 - 2016-09-24, 03:51 Ladies and gentlemen, This Sunday, 25 Sep, Gergo Toth (also known as Vessago) and Oleg Bulatovsky (also known as Gelo) will start playing an online match of four games in the morning at 10:30am Budapest time. The time control is 30+5, i.e., in each game each player initially has 30 minutes and gets 5 additional seconds for each move made by him. The first two games will be played starting at the time specified above, and the remaining two either immediately after the first two or on another day. The match will be played on https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en (Don't worry, this site has an English version and does not require registering or installing a client program.) Gergo Toth, Hungary, is currently the sixth in the world ranking list, with a rating of 1892, and the current vice-champion of the world. He won the Team European Championship in 2014 as a member of the Hungarian team, playing at the fist table, and took the 1st place in his last tournament this year, the 13th Fishparty, finishing above the current world champion. He is also exceptionally strong online: Last season, he was the runner-up in the IRP championship and earned 25 points in his 30 Euroleague games, achieving the highest efficiency in the Euroleague last season among those who played 20+ games. Oleg Bulatovsky, Ukraine, has a rating of 1683, which is the 30th line in the world ranking list. In 2014, he won the Polish Open and also the Team European Championship as a member of the Hungarian team (which he joined for exceptional reasons). He is also quite strong online, as last season he took the 4th place in the IRP championship and earned 43.5 points in his 70 Euroleague games. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. As we have recently found, thirty minutes are an excellent time control for online matches. It allows making well-thought moves and competing on the ability to perform a deep analysis, and, at the same time, it is not too long. The Fischer time control excludes winning by outclicking in a mutual time trouble. Thus, this match is a perfect opportunity for both players to demonstrate, in full view of many spectators, who is the true lord of this game
Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. After you click on that button, a short Russian text will appear below it, and you must click on the button just below this text. (This button just means that you understand the limitations of using a guest account and agree to proceed.) 3. To make the board look like on playok.com, you must click on "Options" below the board. Then, under "Marks," you must select "Stones" and then click on "OK" below. 4. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game." Below, find the game being played by Gergo and Oleg. Gergo will be on the nickname vessago, and Oleg's nickname will be DizzyBlack. Click on the game and enjoy
Come watch, and do not forget to go get your popcorn
sandra113 - 2016-09-25, 19:02 The match between Gergo and Oleg is proving to be very interesting. The current score is 1-1. The two remaining games will be played on another day yet to be determined. As soon as it is, I will make an announcement. The peak number of spectators was 17-18 or so. That is quite a considerable figure, but it is only a half of the peak number of viewers for the past match between c0sm0s and Usiek. Apparently, the time of the kick-off, 10:30am, was not perfect in terms of attracting spectators, but it was really nice to see a considerable number of them at such an early hour. Interestingly, almost all of them were Russian-speaking. At least, they watched the match on the Russian version of the site. Here is how you can have a look at the two games played today: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en 2. Choose "Play as a guest" and click on the button a bit below. 3. Under the board, click on "Rating." 4. Somewhat below, choose "Swap2." 5. In the search field, type "vessago". It is Gergo's nickname. 6. Click on the result of the search and choose "Show profile," then choose "Swap2." 7. Here you will see the games. Just click on them to see them on the board. (I have also attached the games to this post as diagrams. You must click on the diagrams in order to properly see them. Gergo added two stones in the first game and ended up being black, while in the second game, Oleg did not add two stones and again chose white.) In the first game, Gergo was able to took the initiative and achieve an advantage, but it came at a price - the vice-champion of the world spent considerably more time choosing his moves than Oleg did. Step by step, Gergo was building a winning position, but finally lacked just a small amount of time to win the game and found himself balancing at the brink of a time loss. Exploiting the time advantage, Oleg took the initiative and won the game. Formally, his victory was a time win as Gergo's time expired, but there was already a simple win for Oleg on the board. Later, my computer analysis revealed that Gergo had missed at least four wins before Oleg took the initiative, but none of those wins is easy. Early in the game - after k5, to be exact - there was a very long win, which Yixin finds at depth 17 and in more than an hour. Although the other three wins (after i10, i12, and j9) are considerably shorter (depth 9, 9, and 8, respectively), they are not straightforward at all and thus were not easy to find during the game, especially given the time left. The second game developed similarly to the first one, but this time Gergo managed to find a win just in time, by the skin of his teeth. He had just a minute left when the game ended. It is worth emphasising exceptionally powerful playing by Gergo, which resulted in him strongly dominating in both games, as well as fast and accurate defending by Oleg, which eventually led to his victory in the first game and might result in a similar victory in the second one if Gergo did not find his win in time. I am curious whether any of the players is going to modify his tactics in order to succeed in the match. Oleg may want to try playing a bit differently as Gergo strongly dominated in both games. However, even if Oleg plays as today, he may win if Gergo does not change anything in his approach to time management in this match. Anyway, the match is very interesting, so I am looking forward to the remaining two games
zukole - 2016-09-25, 21:03 Games in renlib are much better than screenshots. sandra113 - 2016-09-27, 16:02 Thanks, good idea, Michał
By the way, Usiek is going to post material about each online match on gomokuworld.com, including the games themselves and a review. The past matches will also be posted
sandra113 - 2016-09-27, 16:22 
Ladies and gentlemen, Today at 20:00 Warsaw time there will be an online blitz match between Patron and Usiek, whose real names are Stepan Peskov and Łukasz Majksner, respectively. Stepan Peskov, Russia, achieved the 8th dan in renju and played in the A tournament of the Renju World Championship in 1995, finishing fifth out of twelve participants. He won the Team Renju World Championship in 1996 and seems in good shape now - this summer he won 2-0 against Furla and 2-0 against Paaja in a friendly online match between the teams "Last Frontier" and "Humans-2015." Łukasz Majksner, Poland, is a team world champion (and best on the 3rd board) and won the 3rd place in the Czech Open 2015. He is the winner of the Black Meijin series of online tournaments and a very well trained online blitz player. The match will be played on playok.com and consist of 8 games, 7 min per player in each of them. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#100... bieniasze" and "#300... dobrocin" to see in which of these two rooms the match is being played, and click on the table at which it is being played. Łukasz will be on the nickname plgomoku, and Stepan's nickname will be patron (which is "gun cartridge" in Russian). Come watch
sandra113 - 2016-10-01, 13:32 
Ladies and gentlemen, Today, 1 Oct, Mikhail Kozhin and Łukasz Majksner (also known as Usiek) will start playing an online match at 21:00 Warsaw time. The match consists of four games, thirty minutes per player in each of them. The first two games will be played today, and the remaining two tomorrow at the same time. Mikhail Kozhin, Russia, was the renju champion of the USSR in 1990 and 1991 and the renju champion Russia in 1993, 1998, and 1999. He won two team world renju championships, in 1996 and 2000. In the last two gomoku world championships he finished third, above all other Russians. He is the author of the classic book on renju theory entitled "Click of stones." Łukasz Majksner, Poland, is a team world champion (and best on the 3rd board) and won the 3rd place in the Czech Open 2015. He is the winner of the Black Meijin series of online tournaments and a very well trained online blitz player. In his previous match, Usiek beat Stepan Peskov, who won the team world renju championship in 1996 playing in the same team with Mikhail, and it is now time for Usiek to face Mikhail himself
Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#100... bieniasze" and "#300... dobrocin" to see in which of these two rooms the match is being played, and click on the table at which it is being played. Mikhail will be on the nickname loiso, and Łukasz' nickname will be plgomoku. Come watch
sandra113 - 2016-10-02, 14:14 The two remaining games of the match between Usiek and Mikhail Kozhin have been postponed to Tuesday, 21:00 Warsaw time, as Mikhail cannot play today. The current score is 2-0 is Mikhail's favour. Fudjin - 2016-10-07, 19:06 Hello! 10-th of October I will play with Mikle Lomakin on playok. 19-00 moscow time and 4 games with 30 min per player. Will play 2 days. Welcome if you are interested. sandra113 - 2016-10-08, 04:48 Fudjin, your message is off-topic as the thread is entitled "Online matches between top players." You are a top cheater, not a top player Here are the details.
sandra113 - 2016-10-08, 04:55 
Ladies and gentlemen, This Sunday, 9 Oct, Gergo Toth (also known as Vessago) and Oleg Bulatovsky (also known as Gelo) will play the remaining two games of their online match at 20:00 Budapest time. To remind, the current score is 1-1. The time control is 30+5, i.e., in each game each player initially has 30 minutes and gets 5 additional seconds for each move made by him. Here is how you can watch the games on Sunday: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. After you click on that button, a short Russian text will appear below it, and you must click on the button just below this text. (This button just means that you understand the limitations of using a guest account and agree to proceed.) 3. To make the board look like on playok.com, you must click on "Options" below the board. Then, under "Marks," you must select "Stones" and then click on "OK" below. 4. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game." Below, find the game being played by Gergo and Oleg. Gergo will be on the nickname vessago, and Oleg's nickname will be DizzyBlack. Click on the game and enjoy
Come watch
sandra113 - 2016-10-08, 04:57 
Ladies and gentlemen, On Tuesday, 11 Oct, Rudolf Dupszki and Denis Osipov, who is also known as Nirvana and c0sm0s, will start playing an online match of four games, 30 min per player in each of them, at 21:00 Budapest time. The first two games will be played on that day, and the remaining two on Thursday, 13 Oct, at the same time. The match will be played on playok.com. Rudolf Dupszki, Hungary, is the current world champion and presently 3rd in the world ranking list, with a rating of 1940. He also won the European Team Championship in 2014 as a member of the Hungarian team. Rudolf is also very good online, even at 1 min games - for example, last Monday he played in all three Monday Blitz Evening tournaments and achieved an efficiency of about 70%, taking the 2nd place in the last of them. Denis Osipov, Russia, is one of the best Russian players. His real-life rating is 1745, which is the 15th line in the world ranking list. In 2015, he qualified to play in the final of the Russian gomoku championship (together with 9 other players) and took the 6th place. Denis often plays on playok.com, and his well-known nicknames on that site include c0sm0s and nirrvana, both being 2000+, while his another nickname, russroulette, is 2433. Denis played exceptionally strong in his previous online match of 30 min games, and it is now time for him to face the world champion
Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which the match is played. Rudolf will be on the nickname dupsky, and Denis' nickname will be c0ms0mol. Come watch
sandra113 - 2016-10-09, 10:56 Advice to those who will watch the match between Vessago and Gelo today: To avoid highly distracting invitations to play, click on "Options" (under the board), select "Do not invite me to the game," and click on "OK"
sandra113 - 2016-10-11, 19:16 I am sharing my impressions from the last two games of the match between Gergo and Oleg
I have attached these games to this post as renlib files and also as screenshots of the final positions with stones numbered. This time Gergo managed his time very well and won both games, so the final score of the match is 3-1 in Gergo's favour. In the first of these two games, i.e., in the third game of the match, Oleg put a sharp opening, 1I5 2K6 3K10, which the same opening as the one he put in the first game of the match. This time Gergo chose the black colour instead adding two stones, and then both players obviously played from memory for a while. Yixin showed a considerable advantage for white (about +180), but visually it looked like black was accurately surrounding white, not giving white an opportunity to play a tight win. In the position shown in the third screenshot below (the one with a green board, click on it to properly see it), Gergo played H6, after which it became more or less clear to me that white was strategically doomed. Funny enough, even this position, shown in the third screenshot below, is evaluated by Yixin as white's advantage up to depth 13, and it is only at depth 14 that Yixin starts slightly favouring black. It takes about half an hour to calculate to depth 15, and Yixin still only slightly favours black at this depth. I cannot totally exclude that there was an exceptionally smart way for white to break through and avoid a loss, as the evaluation of the position by Yixin is practically neutral at such a considerable depth. Anyway, Gergo was able to confidently win the game by using his resources accumulated on the left. Each of the players had about three minutes left when the game ended. In the last game of the match, Gergo put a corner opening. Oleg chose the black colour, and soon the game started resembling the previous one - Gergo was accurately building a positional, strategical advantage, but this time he also had a considerable time advantage - 18 min vs 10 min after Oleg's move K8. Again, Gergo confidently won the game - at some point Oleg yielded to the pressure, missing Gergo's VCT, which was five white stones long to a 4x4 fork, but anyway the position looked hopelessly from the strategic standpoint. Overall, I would characterise this game as highly pragmatic and confident playing by Gergo, from the very beginning to the very end, aimed at achieving a victory in the least risky way possible. Even the very fact of putting a corner opening indicates Gergo's intention to positionally outplay his opponent, not passing through sharp or too complicated positions. My impression was that Oleg played quite accurately from the tactical standpoint, but Gergo's skills proved to be too great, in addition to that he obviously modified his approach to time management, drawing some conclusions from the first two games of the match. The peak number of spectators that I saw with my eyes was 28, which is quite close to the current record, 33. However, one Russian-speaking guy, Vasily Khrustalev, saw 34 spectators at some point, but did not take a screenshot, as he said later. Anyway, it was really very interesting and a great pleasure to watch this match and enjoy such skilful playing
sandra113 - 2016-10-11, 19:23 I have attached an excellent and very detailed review of the match written by Gergo Toth himself, and I strongly recommend reading it It reads very well, and it is so rare that such highly skilful players write such nice and detailed articles about their games. This review may well help many of you better understand gomoku, and, also, for me it was very interesting to get to know Gergo's way of thinking as it proved to be very successful
I also recommend using a real or virtual board to visualise positions when reading this review. Renlib files of the games are available: I have attached the last two games of the match to the previous post, and the first two games to this post
Make your gomoku board ready (or open Renlib), get a cup of tea, and enjoy reading
sandra113 - 2016-10-11, 19:33 Do not forget about the match between Dupsky and Nirvana, which starts tonight at 21:00 Warsaw/Budapest time
Here is the list of predictions: Dupsky - Nirvana: 4-0: Igor Yakovlev, Zoltan Laszlo (zoli) 3.5-0.5: Oleg Bulatovsky (gelo) 3-1: Alexander Miroshnichenko (fudjin), Ilona Kachaeva, Igor Eged (iec), Lukas Soucek (boneslash), Okcthunder 2.5-1.5: Łukasz Majksner (Usiek), Gergo Toth (vessago) 2-2: Me (sandra113), Andrey Litvinenko (popovich, xomaster) 1.5-2.5: Mikhail Lomakin (Mikle) 1-3: Valery Kondratiev (valkon), Dmitry Gorbachev (pamp164) 0.5-3.5: Ilya Muratov (furla) 0-4: Sergey Andronov (malbilli, ansergei) All five players who predicted Denis' victory are Russians, while there is only one Russian out of 10 players who said that Rudolf would win
Come watch such an unpredictable match between extremely skilful top players
zukole - 2016-10-16, 21:45 Mecz dupskiego z nirvan± zakończył się remisem (2:2). Gry s± dostępne tutaj. angst - 2016-10-16, 23:06 Nie ogl±dałem na żywo, ale naprawdę fajny vcf w przedostatniej partii, prawdopodobnie dodatkowo w niedoczasie. Pozdrawiam Angst zukole - 2016-10-17, 17:35 Kilka minut to sprawdzał (wcze¶niej mógł 8-j5), ale faktycznie wyszło bardzo fajnie
sandra113 - 2016-10-19, 18:00 
Ladies and gentlemen, This Thursday, 20 Oct, Oleg Bulatovsky (also known as Gelo) and Łukasz Majksner (also known as Usiek) will play the first two games of their online match of four 30 min games, starting at 20:00 Warsaw time. The remaining two games will be played on a date to be decided upon later. Oleg Bulatovsky, Ukraine, won the Polish Open 2014 and also the Team European Championship 2014 as a member of the Hungarian team (which he joined for exceptional reasons). He is also quite strong online, as last season he took the 4th place in the IRP championship and earned 43.5 points in his 70 Euroleague games. Łukasz Majksner, Poland, is a team world champion (and best on the 3rd board) and also won the 3rd place in the Czech Open 2015. He is the winner of the Black Meijin series of online tournaments and is a very well trained online blitz player - he almost never misses "Monday Blitz Evenings," a series of tournaments in 1 min games, and regularly qualifies to play in its monthly Grand Final. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Each of the two players was a bit unfortunate in his previous match and will definitely do his best and utmost to win this time. A fierce battle is coming. Will Usiek be able to beat one of "The Lords of XO" in it? Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which plgomoku, which is Łukasz' nickname, is playing. Come warch
sandra113 - 2016-10-20, 19:54 The match between Usiek and Gelo starts in about 5 min
Here is the list of predictions: Gelo - Usiek: 4-0: Denis Osipov (nirvana), Aleksander Bogatirev (bayc), Dmitry Gorbachev (pamp164) 3.5-0.5: Ilya Katsev (bromozel) 3-1: Lukas Soucek (boneslash), Alexander Miroshnichenko (fudjin), Igor Eged (iec), Dmitry Epifanov (owen) 2.5-1.5: Gergo Toth (vessago) 2-2: Me (sandra113), Sergey Andronov (ansergei), Adam (okcthunder), Zoltan Laszlo (zoli), Andrey Litvinineko (popovich) 1.5-2.5: Ilya Muratov (furla) 1-3: Igor Yakovlev 0.5-3.5: none 0-4: none sandra113 - 2016-10-21, 20:26 
Ladies and gentlemen, This Saturday, 22 Oct, Pavel Laube (also known as Kedlub) and Ilya Muratov (also known as Furla) will play the first two games of their online match of four 30+5 games, starting at 20:00 Prague time. The time control 30+5 means that in each game each player has initially thirty minutes and gets five additional seconds for each move made by him. The match will be played on a convenient Czech server, piskvorky.net. An instruction how you can watch the games is provided below. The remaining two games will be played on a date to be decided upon later. Pavel Laube, Czech Republic, has a rating of 1801 and occupies the 12th line of the world ranking list. He is the current champion of Czech Republic and won the 2nd place in the World Championship in 2013 as well as the 3rd place n 2009. Pavel is also good at online games with a short time control - for example, in season 2014/2015 he achieved an efficiency of 71% in the Euroleague, where the time control is 10 min. Ilya Muratov, Russia, has a rating of 1819, which is the 11th line of the world ranking list. He won the Russian championship in 2014 and 2015 and took the 3rd place in it this year. Ilya plays fast games extremely well and, in particular, this year defeated everyone in the Laryx tournament, where the time control was 20+10, including the current Russian champion Yury Tarannikov as well as Mikhail Lomakin and Alexander Bogatirev. Ilya also cuts the mustard in online games - in the Euroleague, his efficiency was 65% last season, and he also quite well plays in the "Monday Blitz Evenings," where the time control is 1 min. Russia and Czech Republic are two of the major gomoku powers, so it will be really interesting to watch this match between the current Czech champion and the guy who won the Russian championship more times than anyone else Best Czech vs best Russian - obviously, this is how many people will see this match
Here is how you can watch the games: 1. Go to piskvorky.net/en 2. In the upper part of the screen, type any guest name under "Play as a guest" and click on the button "Enter" located nearby (unless you want to log in as a previously registered user, not as a guest). You will immediately find yourself in the playing hall. 3. Find the game being played by Pavel and Ilya and click on the button "Sit down" near it. Pavel will be on the nickname Kedlub, and Ilya will be on the nickname Furla. 4. If the board looks like a notebook page with crosses and zeros, choose "Design board" in the upper right corner to make the board look like on playok.com
Come watch and, if you are Czech or Russian, support your compatriot by your presence Do not forget to go get your popcorn
sandra113 - 2016-10-25, 18:43 Tonight at 20:00 Warsaw time Usiek and Gelo will play the remainingt two games of their match. The current score is 1.5-0.5 in Gelo's favour. Come watch
Here is how you can watch the games: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which plgomoku, which is Łukasz' nickname, is playing. sandra113 - 2016-10-26, 16:32 
Ladies and gentlemen, Tonight at 21:00 Warsaw time Sawyer (aka Mateusz Rędzioch) and Usiek (aka Łukasz Majksner) will play a match of four 15 min games on playok. Sawyer took the 6th place in the open Polish championship in 2014. He is a very handsome and brave Polish guy - he was brave enough to register the nickname zolilama to play a series of 1 min games against Zoli and now has challenged Usiek to a match. Usiek is a team world champion (and best on the 3rd board) and also won the 3rd place in the Czech Open 2015. He is the winner of the Black Meijin series of online tournaments and is a very well trained online blitz player - he almost never misses "Monday Blitz Evenings," a series of tournaments in 1 min games, and regularly qualifies to play in its monthly Grand Final. Usiek accepted Sawyer's challenge and said that the latter needed a lesson
Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which Usiek and Sawyer are playing. Usiek will be on the nickname plgomoku, and Sawyer's nickname will be sawyersan. We welcome such a new player as Sawyer to our gomoku fight club Come watch his performance tonight
sawyer199 - 2016-10-26, 22:20 Przepraszam za moj± nieobecno¶ć, ale nie spodziewałem się, że tak póĽno wrócę z roboty. Mecz zostanie rozegrany jutro o godzinie 21. Pozdro 
sandra113 - 2016-10-27, 18:36 To non-Polish speakers who cannot read the previous post by Sawyer: Sawyer did not show up yesterday, apologised, and said he had not expected to arrive from work so late. The match has been rescheduled to today, Thu 27 Oct, and will be played at the same time, 21:00 Warsaw time. Come watch
Fudjin - 2016-10-31, 23:26 Hello. On Tuesday will be match between me(fudjin) and puholek! At 21-00 Moscow time on playok. 4 games by 30 min per player. Come watch zukole - 2016-11-01, 14:42 Trochę więcej jest na vk:
Fudjin - 2016-11-01, 21:30 Fudjin 2-0 Puholek! http://www.playok.com/ru/...k=2&oid=puholek Last 2 games will be on Thursday at 22-00 Moscow time or 20-00 Polish. Usiek - 2016-11-01, 21:52 Let me just use one word - pathetic. edzi0 - 2016-11-01, 22:18 brawo Fudjin! bbj - 2016-11-01, 23:40 
sandra113 - 2016-11-02, 19:44 
Fudjin - 2016-11-03, 21:49 3-1. thanks, Puholek, for nice games and sorry for lama style
sandra113 - 2016-11-11, 23:17 
Ladies and gentlemen, This Saturday, 12 Nov, two interesting online gomoku matches will be played. First, Oleg Bulatovsky (also known as Gelo) and Denis Osipov (also known as Nirvana and c0sm0s) will play the first two games of their match of four 30 min games, starting at 16:00 Warsaw time. The match will be played on playok.com. Oleg Bulatovsky, Ukraine, won the Polish Open 2014 and also the Team European Championship 2014 as a member of the Hungarian team (which he joined for exceptional reasons). He is also quite strong online, as last season he took the 4th place in the IRP championship and earned 43.5 points in his 70 Euroleague games. Denis Osipov, Russia, is one of the best Russian players. His real-life rating is 1745, which is the 15th line of the world ranking list. In 2015, he qualified to play in the final of the Russian gomoku championship (together with 9 other players) and took the 6th place. Last month Denis won a tournament in St. Petersburg, finishing above, in particular, Denis Kachaev, Edward Rizvanov, Alexander Ezupov and Ilya Katsev. Denis often plays on playok.com, and his well-known nicknames on that site include c0sm0s and nirrvana, while his another nickname, russroulette, is 2433. In his recent online match, he played four 30 min games against Rudolf Dupszki, the current world champion, and achieved a draw, 2-2. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Click on "GUEST" (unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours). 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which the match is played. Oleg will be on the nickname gelo0one, and Denis' nickname will be c0ms0mol. Later the same evening, Pavel Laube (also known as Kedlub) and Ilya Muratov (also known as Furla) will play the two remaining games of their match of four 30+5 games, starting at 20:00 Warsaw time. The current score is 2-0 in Pavel's favour. To remind, the time control 30+5 means that in each game each player has initially thirty minutes and gets five additional seconds for each move made by him. The match will be played on a convenient Czech server, piskvorky.net. An instruction how you can watch the games is provided below. Pavel Laube, Czech Republic, has a rating of 1801 and occupies the 12th line of the world ranking list. He is the current champion of Czech Republic and won the 2nd place in the World Championship in 2013 as well as the 3rd place in 2009. Pavel is also good at online games with a short time control - for example, in season 2014/2015 he achieved an efficiency of 71% in the Euroleague, where the time control is 10 min. Ilya Muratov, Russia, has a rating of 1819, which is the 11th line of the world ranking list. He won the Russian championship in 2014 and 2015 and took the 3rd place in it this year. Ilya plays fast games extremely well and, in particular, this year defeated everyone in the Laryx tournament, where the time control was 20+10, including the current Russian champion Yury Tarannikov as well as Mikhail Lomakin and Alexander Bogatirev. Ilya also cuts the mustard in online games - in the Euroleague, his efficiency was 65% last season, and he also quite well plays in the "Monday Blitz Evenings," where the time control is 1 min. Russia and Czech Republic are two of the major gomoku powers, so this match between the current Czech champion and the guy who won the Russian championship more times than anyone else is very interesting Best Czech vs best Russian - obviously, this is how many people see this match
After the first two games, Ilya wrote on vk.com, "I enjoyed the games. It is a pleasure for me when someone plays so strong against me. I even cannot say that I did something wrong. My opponent was simply better at both tactics and calculation, and I did not expect that. Now that I know how well my opponent plays, I will try to rehabilitate my reputation in the remaining two games." Will Ilya level the score? Or will Pavel be able to keep a clean sheet against Ilya? Here is how you can watch the games: 1. Go to piskvorky.net/en 2. In the upper part of the screen, type any guest name under "Play as a guest" and click on the button "Enter" (unless you want to log in as a previously registered user, not as a guest). You will immediately find yourself in the playing hall. 3. Find the game being played by Pavel and Ilya and click on the button "Sit down" near it. Pavel will be on the nickname Kedlub, and Ilya will be on the nickname Furla. 4. If the board looks like a notebook page with crosses and zeros, choose "Design board" in the upper right corner to make the board look like on playok.com. 5. In the upper right corner of the window with the board, click on the sign between "–" and "X" to maximise the window. Come watch and, if you are Czech or Russian, support your compatriot by your presence Do not forget to go get your popcorn
sandra113 - 2016-11-12, 14:24 P.S. The rules of the two matches announced in the post above are as usual: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse positions, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse positions on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Come watch the matches
sandra113 - 2016-11-23, 03:37 
Ladies and gentlemen, An epic online gomoku match of two games with the time control 120+30 and the rule "everything is allowed, including programs and hints from friends" has been arranged to be played between Alex Popiel (also known as Lamaza) and Dmitry Epifanov (also known as Owen) - the first game will be played already this Friday, 25 Nov, at 17:00 Central European Time (Warsaw, Prague, Budapest) on logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en, and the playing nicknames used in this match will be Owen and Alex Popiel. Both participants are exceptionally strong personalities and real demons on the playing board. No wonder they are very famous in the Russian gomoku community and beyond it. Alex Popiel, Germany, captains the team "The Lords of XO" in the Euroleague, a large online team gomoku tournament involving many top players, and has successfully led his team to winning last season's title. Alex is very famous for his analysing skills and has provided a major contribution to his team's analysis databases. He also won the Euroleague in 2011 and 2012 as well as the Rustournament, a now-extinct large-scale online gomoku competition for Russian-speaking players, in 2011. Dmitry Epifanov, Russia, is a two-times renju champion of Russia (2013, 2014). He won the World Correspondence Renju Championship in 2007 and authored the book "The Caged Tiger - Renju opening book for Yamaguchi rule" containing 1400+ diagrams. His most recent achievement is the first place in the Renju European Championship and Asian Cup held in Tashkent about a month ago, where he finished above, in particular, the ex-champion of the world Tunnet Taimla. Dmitry is also a very successful renju trainer, with three of his current young students having qualified to play next year in the Russian Premier League, the major annual Russian renju tournament for 16 best players. One of Dmitry's students won a silver medal of the Youth Gomoku World Championship. Undoubtedly, Alex and Dmitry are great masters of deep computer analysis. The use of programs will help the participants of the match avoid calculation errors, which spoil so many normal online gomoku games, and thereby will make the match a great competition in strategy. Also, the rule "everything is allowed" absolutely guarantees the absence of cheating, as there are simply no rules to break. The match will obviously not be reduced to a "pure prog vs pure prog" competition - clearly, any current program will soundly lose at this time control to a strong player equipped by a reasonably good program, as no current program can think strategically. This year Dmitry beat the famous program Yixin in an official renju match of eight 120+30 games, only looking at the board and not using any program at all. The exact computer model will not play a crucial role - a computer that is two times faster usually allows a program to see only one stone deeper, for a fixed calculation time. Having better strategic skills is far more important. Each of the participants is encouraged to build a team of his friends and enjoy their help during the games, thereby making the match a team competition. Each side has the right to officially nominate all or some of its team members, in which case they will be announced shortly before each game and thus will share the glory in case of a victory. Anyway, each of the two games of the match is going to be a high-quality epic strategic battle that will be very interesting to watch in real time. Exact rules: Gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2, everything is allowed, e.g., the players may use programs to analyse positions, libraries, written notes, literature, analyse positions on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, and even let anyone actually operate at the playing site, but it is Alex and Dmitry who will be considered ultimately responsible for the moves made and the result achieved. A disclaimer: While Dmitry has already demonstrated excellent gomoku skills, he is almost exclusively a renju player, so his performance in this match may be below what he would show in a similar match with the renju rules. No serious conclusions about the quality of his play in renju should be made from this gomoku match. As noted above, the first game will be played this Friday, 25 Nov, at 17:00 Central European Time (Warsaw, Prague, Budapest), while the date and time of the remaining game will be decided upon later. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. After you click on that button, a short non-translated Russian text will appear below it. Click on the button just below that text. (This button just means that you understand the limitations of using a guest account and agree to proceed.) 3. To make the board look like on playok.com, click on "Options" below the board. Then, under "Marks," select "Stones" and then click on "OK" below. 4. To avoid highly distracting invitations to play, click on "Options" (under the board), select "Do not invite me to the game," and click on "OK." 5. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game" and find the game being played by Alex and Dmitry. As noted above, Dmitry will be on the nickname Owen, while Alex will use his real name, Alex Popiel, as his playing nickname. Click on the game and enjoy
bbj - 2016-11-23, 07:11 A może by tak zorganizować mecz luckybot vs gomokubot na tydzień ze wszystkimi najlepszymi parametrami?
sandra113 - 2016-11-23, 21:15
Hi Bogdan, it seems that you did not read the following part of the announcement:
I also point out that at the moment, 18 people have added their likes to the announcent of the upcoming match on Facebook.com/gomokuworld sandra113 - 2016-11-23, 22:34 A correction to the announcement: Lamaza won the Euroleague in season 2011-2012, season 2012-2013, and season 2015-2016, and he won the Rustournament twice, in season 2010 and season 2011. I also would like to add that it has been decided by a random draw that it is Dmitry who puts an opening in the first game of the match. zukole - 2016-11-26, 16:13 Pierwsza partia w zał±czniku. sandra113 - 2016-12-10, 15:07 
Ladies and gentlemen, Today, on Sat 10 Dec, there will be an online match between Martin Muzika, also known as Martez, and Mikhail Lomakin, also known as Mikle. The match will be played on piskvorky.net and starts at 17:00 Warsaw time. It consists of four games with the time control 20+3; all four games will be played today. Martin Muzika, Czech Republic, occupies the 12th line on the world ranking list, with his rating being 1798. He has extensive experience of live games as he has been playing since 2010 and has participated in 12 tournaments. He is also quite strong online - in particular, he showed an efficiency of 78.75% in the Euroleague 2011-2012 on the nickname czpaymarzar. Mikhail Lomakin, Russia, is the gomoku leader of Tyumen, one of the three gomoku centres in Russia. He organised numerous gomoku tournaments and is the Tyumen Meijin - in 2015, he defeated Andrey Litvinenko in a match for the title of Tyumen Meijin. Mikhail also showed an excellent result in the European Team Gomoku Championship 2014, earning 11.5 points in 14 games. He also won the Euroleague as a member of the teams "Polar Bears" and "North Pole." Both players are definitely very good opponents for each other. Who will win - a young, but very talented and strong Czech player or a very experienced Siberian player of an older generation, a polar bear?
Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse positions, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse positions on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the games: 1. Go to piskvorky.net/en 2. In the upper part of the screen, type any guest name under "Play as a guest" and click on the button "Enter" (unless you want to log in as a previously registered user, not as a guest). You will immediately find yourself in the playing hall. 3. Find the game being played by Martin and Mikhail and click on the button "Sit down" near it. Martin will be on the nickname Maarty, and Mikhail will be on the nickname Lomakin. 4. If the board looks like a notebook page with crosses and zeros, choose "Design board" in the upper right corner to make the board look like on playok.com. 5. In the upper right corner of the window with the board, click on the sign between "–" and "X" to maximise the window. Come watch
sandra113 - 2017-01-10, 01:31 
Ladies and gentlemen, Today, on Tue 10 Jan, there will be an online match between Łukasz Majksner, also known as Usiek, and Zoltán László, also known as Zoli, for the title of Gomokuworld's Meijin 2016. The match starts at 20:00 Warsaw time and will be played on playok.com. Łukasz Majksner, Poland, is the current champion of Poland as well as a current team world champion. He started playing in tournaments about 5 years ago, but many people are especially impressed by the tremendous progress he made in the last couple of years. He qualified to play in this match as the winner of Gomokuworld's Black Meijin series of online tournaments. Zoltán László, Hungary, qualified to play in this match as the winner of Gomokuworld's White Meijin series of online tournaments. He is an exceptionally skilful one-minute player and undoubtedly the most successful player of the Monday Blitz Evenings, a popular series of online tournaments in one-minute games. He achieved one of the best efficiencies in the Euroleague last season, 49.5 points in 60 games. In real life, he started playing in tournaments 8 years ago and so far has participated in 9 competitions shown on gomokuworld.com. His last rated game dates back to 2011, after which his rating became 1609, but obviously Zoltán has improved a lot since then. The match will consist of six games, with the time control being 15 minutes per game and player. If the score is equal, two additional ten-minute games will be played. If the score is still equal, then the participants of the match will play pairs of five-minute games until one of them gains an advantage. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse positions, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse positions on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours, click on "GUEST." 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which Usiek and Zoli are playing. Usiek will be on the nickname ursamaior, and Zoli's nickname will be wmzoli. Come watch
sandra113 - 2017-01-15, 02:13 Zoli won the match and became Gomokuworld's Meijin 2016. Congratulations
I would like to share my impressions from this match. First of all, both players were obviously highly motivated. It was the final match of the year, a clash between the winners of the tournament series "Black Meijin" and "White Meijin" for the title of Gomokuworld's Meijin 2016. An additional motivating factor was that the match was widely announced - on forum.gomoku.pl, vk.com/gomoku, facebook.com/gomokuworld, and, additionally, Zoli reposted the announcement on his Facebook page, resulting in quite a few real-life friends unrelated to gomoku coming watch the games. The match was attended by many spectators, with their number reaching 38 at some point. In the first game, none of the players had an upper hand, and it is only when each of the opponents had less than a minute left that Usiek made a mistake, which was exploited by Zoli. Immediately after the game, Zoli wrote in the table chat that Usiek played very well and that a draw would be a fair result. In the second game, Usiek had a huge advantage, estimated 200 or so by Yixin at some points of the game, but Zoli wonderfully defended and successfully withstood Usiek's hard pressure, achieving a draw in this seemingly hopeless game. In the board-filling stage, when there were more than a hundred stones on the board, Zoli made a draw offer, which was accepted by Usiek. Interestingly, I was unable to find a win in Yixin during the game, but I cannot exclude that a deeper analysis would reveal a pretty long win. After the game, Usiek told me that he found Zoli to be "a wall", and added that Zoli's blocks were very good. Note that each of the players had less than a minute left when the game ended, and I am very unsure whether each of them would be able to put all his stones on board in time. I asked Zoli after the match why he offered a draw, and he said something like, "If I did not offer a draw, I might outclick Usiek, but I might get outclicked, too." I missed the third game, and when I was back online, Zoli told me, "You missed my great win." The score became 2.5-0.5, so one more Zoli's win would mean his victory in the entire match. The fourth game developed like the first one - without a clear advantage of any of the players - and was decided by a double blunder: Both Usiek and Zoli missed Zoli's elementary win, but then Zoli noticed it and played it, writing "blindness" in the table chat. The remaining two games are not worth describing in detail, as the winner of the match had already been determined after the first four games. Usiek did not fight as hard as in the first four games and allowed Zoli to make the score 5.5-0.5. Usiek's play in the first two games was very good. He gave no advantage to Zoli in the first game and pressured him very hard in the second one, but Zoli proved to be a too tough nut to crack. It is very difficult not to get frustrated in such a situation. I hope that Usiek will hold his head high and continue to rapidly progress. The match clearly illustrates Zoli's special style. My impression is that instead of putting emphasis on gaining a positional advantage, Zoli focuses on the following: - Security. In the whole match, Usiek did not have a win - at least, I was unable to find one in Yixin in real time. It is noteworthy that Zoli seems to achieve such a level of security not by a too cautious tactics, but rather by deep and accurate calculations. - Speed. As a very experienced one-minute player, Zoli is used to value his time. He won many games by being faster than his opponents and exploiting their time troubles. - Creating non-obvious threats and traps. - Exploiting weak moves made by his opponents. Launching a quick deadly attack as soon as an opportunity arises. In a post-match comment on vk.com/gomoku, Usiek characterized Zoli's style as "a wall full of deadly traps." It will be very interesting to watch Zoli's online match today (on Sunday) against Mikhail Kozhin
sandra113 - 2017-01-15, 02:20 
Ladies and gentlemen, Today, on Sun 15 Jan, there will be an online match between Zoltán László, also known as Zoli, and Mihail Kozhin. The match will start at 19:00 Warsaw time, consist of four games with the time control 20+5, and be played on logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en Zoltán László, Hungary, is an exceptionally skilful one-minute player and undoubtedly the most successful player of the Monday Blitz Evenings, a popular series of online tournaments in one-minute games. He achieved one of the best efficiencies in the Euroleague last season, 49.5 points in 60 games, won the White Meijin series of online tournaments, and became Gomokuworld's Meijin 2016. In real life, he started playing in tournaments 8 years ago and so far has participated in 9 competitions shown on gomokuworld.com. His last rated game dates back to 2011, after which his rating became 1609, but obviously Zoltán has improved a lot since then. Mikhail Kozhin, Russia, was the renju champion of the USSR in 1990 and 1991 and the renju champion Russia in 1993, 1998, and 1999. He won two team world renju championships, in 1996 and 2000. In the last two gomoku world championships he finished third, above all other Russians. He is the author of the classic book on renju theory entitled "Click of stones." Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse positions, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse positions on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. After you click on that button, a short non-translated Russian text will appear below it. Click on the button just below that text. (This button just means that you understand the limitations of using a guest account and agree to proceed.) 3. To make the board look like on playok.com, click on "Options" below the board. Then, under "Marks," select "Stones" and then click on "OK" below. 4. To avoid highly distracting invitations to play, click on "Options" (under the board), select "Do not invite me to the game," and click on "OK." 5. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game" and find the game being played by Zoli and Mikhail. Zoli will be on the nickname lzoli, while Mikhail will use his real name, Mikhail Kozhin, as his playing nickname. Click on the game and enjoy
Come watch
zukole - 2017-01-16, 22:57
Mam nadzieję, że kr±g wyznawców Zoltána nie urósł od Ultimate Meijin. Wczoraj padł remis 2-2. sandra113 - 2017-01-17, 11:52 
Our young rising gomoku star Zoli proved to be a too tough nut to crack by Usiek's enthusiasm and Kozhin's experience, but now Denis Osipov (aka Nirvana), one of the very best Russian players, has challenged Zoli to a long match of eight 20 min games to better expose what Zoli's skills are worth, and Zoli has accepted the challenge. They will fight this battle using their highly rated nicknames on playok.com, soldier1 (Zoli's nickname) and russroulette (Denis' nickname), both being 2400+. The first four games will be played today, on Tue 17 Jan, at 19:00 Warsaw time, and the remaining four on the next day at the same time. Denis is highly sceptical about Usiek's metaphor "Zoli is a wall" and explained on the Russian gomoku discussion board how Kozhin could beat Zoli in Sunday's match by making positionally strong moves to convert highly advantageous positions actually reached by Kozhin to really winning ones. Now Denis has a perfect opportunity to convey his message in the most convincing language - gomoku games themselves
Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to http://www.playok.com/en/gomoku 2. Unless you want to register an account or use an already registered nickname of yours, click on "GUEST." 3. In the upper part of the screen, change the playing room to "#300... dobrocin" and click on the table at which Denis (russroulette) and Zoli (soldier1) are playing. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse positions, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse positions on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. The players will have a 20 min break after the first two games on each of the two days. sandra113 - 2017-01-20, 15:27 The match between Zoli and Mikhail Kozhin ended 2-2, while Denis Osipov won his match against Zoli 5-3. Short reviews of these matches will follow. Here is what Denis said after his match against Zoli (as translated from Russian): "I definitely enjoyed the match and liked my opponent. I do not think that he played weaker than me. On the contrary, in all games but two (3rd and 4th) I was unable to build a decisive positional advantage, so all my wins except those two were rather luck. Zoli played somewhat not in his style, making unreasonably risky moves, and this let him down. If he played in a bit more reserved style, he could successfully accomplish pressuring me (7th and 8th games). The level of Zoli's play is high, but he apparently lacks experience of long games. I think his potential is high, because he changes his style from time to time, modifies his repertoire of openings, and certainly analyses things. All of these are main ingredients of progress. Zoli's talent and efforts will definitely bring fruits
There were many noteworthy moments in our match. I think I liked the most how I outplayed Zoli in the 3rd game. I found it psychologically difficult to play such a sharp position, especially after two losses to him. To be more precise, after getting wrecked twice. And nevertheless, in this sharp and very unclear position, I was able to intuitively find the only moves to keep the position from falling apart. Then I was able to create some advantage and convert it to a win while my time was expiring. That was really awesome
However, I am not really satisfied with my play. Overall, I think I played rather not brilliantly. As I said, I was unable to outplay Zoli in most games (for example, like he outplayed me in the 2nd game). It is the positions, not the final score, that how I determine whether my opponent played better than me or not. Sometimes I am sure that I played better even despite the score being not in my favour. The final score of our match is a consequence of me being more focused and attentive, nothing else. I do not think that it shows any difference in our playing levels. Overall, the match has shown that there are players who use my gomoku methods as good as I do, if not even better at some moments. And, of course, my main conclusion from these games is that I need to continue progressing. Such matches are an excellent way to do it, so I highly recommend anyone to play them
By the way, I would recommend Ilya Muratov to play a match against Zoli, whom Ilya, in my opinion, "a bit" underestimates "
sandra113 - 2017-01-20, 19:27 After a five-year break, our young rising gomoku star Zoli will participate in a live tournament this weekend - Hungarian Gomoku Meijin Open Championship - to face top players, including the current world champion Rudolf Dupszki, Gergo Toth and Pavel Laube. Here is the interview I took from Zoli about a week ago, after he won the title of Gomokuword's Meijin: S (Sandra): Zoli, what principles do you follow when choosing your moves? In other words, what is your gomoku philosophy? Z (Zoli): First of all, sometimes my games are strongly influenced by my mood. Sometimes I just throw stones on the board without thinking much. And when I am in the mood to really think, I consider not only the current position, but also who my opponent is and how he plays. I like attacking, but my attacking skills are not as developed as I want them to be, so I usually make safe positional moves and wait for my opponent to make a blunder or a positional mistake giving me space to attack. But I can play in various styles. To sum up, I am a versatile player who tends to play safe and tries to make the opponent make a mistake. Here are a few examples to illustrate how versatile I am: http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/122546353?gm In this game, I was unable to find a good swap2, so my strategy was to defend in order to achieve a draw, and I achieved it. http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/122545790?gm Here I did what I like the most - playing in a safe manner and waiting for a mistake by my opponent. http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/122546701?gm In this game, my strategy was to play offensively and force my opponent to think long how to defend. http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/121096092?gm I am not good at playing central openings, but in this game against Ilya Muratov I surprised him by choosing a colour in his central opening and won the game. http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/121200203?gm Here I surprised Mikhail Kozhin by attacking in a position in which I was expected to defend. I find the swap2 rule very useful. I like to add two stones to create an entirely new position and thus strip my opponent of his advantage of knowing how to play the opening. S: Could you please give me more details about the fact that your mood affects your play? Z: What happens in real life affects my mood, and I do not want to go into details. I can say that I played terribly in the Masquerade tournament, just throwing stones on the board, like in a one-minute game. However, even when my mood is bad, I can beat many just by following my gomoku instincts. S: Could you please show me some games you are particularly proud of? Z: Well, the above games against Muratov and Kozhin. I do not want to really stress my last game against Alexander Miroshnichenko aka Fudjin in the tournament series "White Meijin," because he almost certainly cheated in that game. I beat him despite that. (Here is a link: http://www.playok.com/en/game.phtml/120795901?gm) Also, two games against Oleg Bulatovsky: http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/121656665?gm http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/121657134?gm And this game against Dupsky: http://www.playok.com/hu/game.phtml/120936357?gm S: Did someone teach you to play gomoku, or are you an autodidact? Z: Autodidact. S: Do you like to create traps or non-obvious threats in your games? Z: Of course. S: Could you show me some traps in your games? Z: Sure, here is an example of a move creating a trap: http://www.playok.com/hu/...122545790?gm#56 My move G5 was the trap. Well, it is not a real trap, but my opponent had less than a minute left, and it worked. And here is an example of a real trap, in my game against Rudolf Dupsky: https://s30.postimg.org/dz45acam9/zoli_trap.jpg S: Exactly which moves created the trap in this game? Z: 13 and 19. Move 19 was a continuation of my plan to create a trap. S: How can one become a great gomoku player? Which qualities does one need to develop? Z: Play a lot. Concerning qualities, I would stress logical skills, speed, and creativity. S: How far can you calculate when considering VCTs? Z: Hard to say. I instantly see a lot, although not always very clearly. S: Do you use any tricks to control your emotions during a game? Z: So far I have never played a gomoku game that I considered so important that I needed to control my emotions, but I may need to control them in the upcoming championship of Hungary. S: What can make you angry during or after a game? Z: Losing to a weaker opponent or making stupid mistakes. Sometimes, but very rarely, I get a bit angry when someone makes silly comments about me. S: What makes you love playing gomoku? I guess that in general, for any player, there are two very different possible explanations: (1) the joy of winning and feeling superior to the opponent, (2) the joy of thinking and analysing. Which of them is dominant in your case? Z: Interesting question. I enjoy thinking and find gomoku a beautiful game. I prefer opponents who are not weaker than me, because I find it boring to always win. On the other hand, I cannot stand losing, no matter who my opponent is. I also get excited by making good statistics, and this is the reason why I created so many nicknames on playok.com. In addition, I have always liked being in the centre of attention. S: Who do you consider the most inconvenient opponent for you in one-minute games? Z: Adrian Fitzermann aka Adifek. S: Who did you find the toughest opponent in the White Meijin series? Z: Ilya Muratov aka Furla. S: How did your real-life friends unrelated to gomoku react to your title of Gomokuworld's Meijin? Z: Those who watched the match - seven or so - were amazed how I play a logical game so well. After the match, two of them told me they really liked gomoku and wanted to try it. S: What are your expectations about your performance in the upcoming championship of Hungary? 🙂 Z: My last live rated game dates back to 2011, but I have improved a lot since then. I made a huge progress within the last six months because of my knee injury, as I was unable to play football and even walk. I expect a lot from myself and really want to become the Hungarian Meijin. But I will have very tough opponents. Never in my life was I able to beat Rudolf Dupsky or at least achieve a draw against him. Anyway, I will do my best and utmost to win the title. I always set the highest goal, regardless of whether it is gomoku or anything else. zukole - 2017-01-21, 15:13
sandra113 - 2017-04-28, 15:33 In about half an hour, at 16:00 Warsaw time, there will be a match in one-minute gomoku between Alexander Miroshnichenko, also known as Fudjin, and Gasan Babaev, known on playok.com as ggasan. Alexander Miroshnichenko, Ukraine, is very well-known in the gomoku community. He was the winner of the Rustournament, a now-extinct year-long main tournament for Russian-speaking players, at least twice, beating Furla and Nikonov in the final match. Last two seasons, Alexander's efficiency in the Euroleague was one of the best, and also last season he was the best in terms of the total number of points earned. Many suspect him of cheating, but cheating will be impossible in this match as the time control is 1 min. Gasan Babaev, Russia, challenged Alexander to this match. Although Gasan has not yet excelled in tournaments, he is not new to gomoku and plays one-minute games at a level of 1650 at least - and, as he says, he plays much better than that when he focuses. The match will be played on playok.com. Gasan's nickname will be 435. It is interesting how one of the best Euroleague players, who is considered a cheater by many, will perform in this match in one-minute gomoku. The rules are usual: The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse positions, use libraries, written notes, or literature. But it is practically impossible to do that in one-minute games anyway. The match will be played until someone has 16 wins, but if the score is 15-15, then the match will be continued until someone has two wins more than the opponent. After each 10 non-drawn games, each of the players can request a 5 min pause. sandra113 - 2017-04-28, 17:13 Fudjin won 16-7. Here are the games of the match: https://www.playok.com/en...in&sk=2&oid=435 I would expect much more from Fudjin, who performed so well in the Euroleague, if I did not know why his efficiency in the Euroleague is so good
sandra113 - 2017-06-02, 19:35 Tomorrow, on Sat 03 June 2017, at 13:00 Warsaw time a very interesting gomoku experiment will be performed: Denis Osipov will play a game with the time control 120+30 on logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku against one of the best programs - Yixin! The motivation for this experiment is to put the concept of positional, strategic play to a real test. This concept is believed in by a considerable number of players. They emphasise the importance of making good strategic decisions and fighting for space. They stress the necessity to think about the game as a whole instead of focusing on local tactics. They use such strategic terms as "surrounding the opponent" and "accumulating resources." Some people even say that there is no need to calculate very far and that it is much more important to be better at strategy than the opponent is. However, there is some evidence casting doubts, including: (1) Very often a position found by a respectable player highly advantageous to one of the sides from the strategic standpoint turns out to be considered balanced by a program at a very high depth (e.g., at depth 19 or 20). (2) Asked about their gomoku philosophy, some strong players say nothing or very little about strategy and emphasise that the most critical factor is simply who can calculate better. Is positional play a real thing? Or is it a chimera like communism or homoeopathy? The scheduled experiment will shed some light on this - a program, which knows nothing about strategy but is very good at calculation, against one of the best players whose philosophy focuses on positional play! And Denis is a perfect player for such an experiment. He is very strong, occupying the 11th line of the world ranking list, and has been one of the most active proponents of positional play, writing a very interesting and detailed article about it. Importantly, Denis has agreed to write a review of the game after its completion. Yixin is perhaps the best gomoku program in terms of play and has been consistently winning Gomocup, the annual gomoku tournament for programs, for a few years. Rules: swap2 gomoku, overlines not counting as wins. The operator (who will be me) will put a corner opening on behalf of Yixin, and Denis will not know in advance exactly which corner opening will be put. All subsequent moves against Denis will be made by Yixin, and the operator will not interfere with its work in any way. In Yixin's options, the operator will set the restriction of 120 minutes per game, so Yixin itself will manage its time. The laptop on which Yixin will be run is quite standard (Lenovo Thinkpad T510). Denis is allowed to use only his brain, i.e., he is allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. He is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the game: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. After you click on that button, a short non-translated Russian text will appear below it. Click on the button just below that text. (This button just means that you understand the limitations of using a guest account and agree to proceed.) 3. To make the board look like on playok.com, click on "Options" below the board. Then, under "Marks," select "Stones" and then click on "OK" below. 4. To avoid highly distracting invitations to play, click on "Options" (under the board), select "Do not invite me to the game," and click on "OK." 5. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game" and find the game being played by Denis. He will be on the nickname coinciding with his real name, Denis Osipov, and the nickname he will play against is Yix. Who will win - a creative, artistic strategic human approach or cold-hearted calculation? Come watch
zukole - 2017-06-03, 14:38 Denis poddał partię po 20. ruchach. Zagrał słabo i nie wyci±gałbym z tego daleko id±cych wniosków. Trwa druga partia - https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en sandra113 - 2017-06-05, 00:37 Here is the outcome of the experiment: Denis quickly lost his game because of a calculation mistake, resigning when 19 stones were on the board, and agreed to play a second game under the same conditions as the first one. He lost his second game, too. In the latter game, however, he achieved a highly advantageous position, which Yixin evaluates as about 200 in Denis' favour, which means a very high probability of Denis having a sure win, but such a high score is achieved only starting at depth 16, so the position is not easy to convert to a victory, especially against a program. Being on his way to a victory but having less than half an hour left and still a huge amount of calculation work ahead, Denis again made a calculation mistake, giving Yixin a few-moves-long win, and resigned after Yixin's response. The games have been copied to playok.com so that everyone can conveniently have a look at them. The links are below. First game: https://www.playok.com/en...m&pid=124991056 Second game: https://www.playok.com/en...m&pid=124991104 A couple of conclusions from this experiment: 1. Strategic, positional play is a real thing. Denis calculated considerably less deeply than the program, but built a huge advantage admitted by Yixin. 2. Such positional play requires reliable calculation because the player often has to choose moves that almost give a win to the opponent. It is like walking at the edge of an abyss. And it is not easy to play that flawlessly - Denis, who occupies the 11th line on the world ranking list, made a calculation mistake in both games. Without reliable calculation at each step, an attempt to positionally outplay the opponent will likely result in giving him a local, tactical win. The opponent will just have to pick the fruit. Any opinions about the games and conclusions? P.S. As the games will disappear from playok.com in 6 months, here is the record: First game: Yixin - Osipov 1. b14 c13 2. c11 white 3. - e9 4. d11 f11 5. e12 d12 6. e11 b11 7. f13 g14 8. e10 c10 9. h10 d9 10. e8 f9 11. g9 1-0 Second game: Yixin - Osipov 1. c14 b13 2. d14 white 3. - e12 4. e10 g11 5. f10 d10 6. e11 f9 7. c11 c13 8. d9 e8 9. h11 i10 10. d12 f14 11. c8 b7 12. d7 i9 13. c9 c7 14. e6 f5 15. h10 h8 16. f6 d8 17. h9 i7 18. i8 j7 19. f13 e13 20. d13 1-0 sandra113 - 2017-06-06, 13:49 Today the experiment "human vs program" will be continued - Gergő will play against Yixin at 21:00 Warsaw time on https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en The time control will be 60+30.
Gergő is the current champion of Hungary and won the silver medal of the last World Championship. He is second on the world ranking list, having 1912 points. Last season he showed the highest efficiency in the Euroleague (counting only those who played more than 20 games) - 83.3%. He is also the current leader of the IRP championship. Will one of the very best players in the world beat the program? How will Gergő's approach differ from Nirvana's? Come watch
Everyone is also invited to join the chat at https://vk.com/app5747634_-19499145 to discuss the game in real time with experts. Last time this chat was joined by many strong players such as Dmitry Epifanov and Ilya Muratov. To join the chat, registration on vk.com or membership of vk.com/gomoku may be technically required. Rules: swap2 gomoku, overlines not counting as wins. The operator (who will be me) will put a corner opening on behalf of Yixin, and Gergő will not know in advance exactly which corner opening will be put. All subsequent moves against Gergő will be made by Yixin, and the operator will not interfere with its work in any way. In Yixin's options, the operator will set the restriction of 60 minutes per game, so Yixin itself will manage its time. The laptop on which Yixin will be run is quite standard (Lenovo Thinkpad T510). Gergő is allowed to use only his brain, i.e., he is allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. He is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the game: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. After you click on that button, a short non-translated Russian text will appear below it. Click on the button just below that text. (This button just means that you understand the limitations of using a guest account and agree to proceed.) 3. To make the board look like on playok.com, click on "Options" below the board. Then, under "Marks," select "Stones" and then click on "OK" below. 4. To avoid highly distracting invitations to play, click on "Options" (under the board), select "Do not invite me to the game," and click on "OK." 5. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game" and find the game being played by Gergő. He will be on the nickname vessago, and the nickname he will play against is Yix. Come watch
sandra113 - 2017-06-09, 01:42 He did it! Gergő beat Yixin! Gergő played safely and accurately, not sharpening the position and not giving the program any chance, and positionally outplayed Yixin, accumulating resources on the right flank and letting the program dig its own grave on the left one. And Gergő was able to convert his huge positional advantage to a win - in the end, he played a nice VCT consisting of 10 stones of his colour to the winning fork! This inspiring victory is a perfect demonstration of the existence of strategic, positional play. The program calculated deeper in terms of local tactics, but was soundly outplayed strategically. The game has been copied to playok.com, and here is the link, enjoy: https://www.playok.com/en...m&pid=125040722 And this perfectly demonstrates why "ultimate gomoku," i.e., games with a long time control in which both players are allowed to use everything, including programs, makes sense - a pure program, not supported by a human player's strategic thinking, will always lose, as Gergő demonstrated that a pure program can be beaten even with bare hands! So ultimate gomoku may become one of important genres of online gomoku in the future. Half a year ago, Dmitry Epifanov and Alex Popiel played such a game with the time control 120+30, attracting about five dozens of spectators and showing exceptionally high quality of play. The game eventually ended in Alex Popiel's favour. Strategic, positional play is an Achilles heel of gomoku programs! P.S. As the playok copy of the game between Gergő and Yixin will disappear in 6 months, here is the record: Yixin - Gergő 1. c12 d13 2. e13 black 3. e10 f10 4. g11 f11 5. f9 g8 6. e8 d7 7. g9 h9 8. f7 e7 9. g5 h5 10. g10 i12 11. h6 i7 12. f6 f5 13. g6 i6 14. g4 g3 15. i5 g12 16. j4 k3 17. f4 d4 18. d6 e6 19. c8 c10 20. f12 f8 21. k5 i3 22. j5 j3 23. h3 k6 24. j7 j8 25. c9 e9 26. i10 k10 27. d10 e11 28. e3 d2 29. l6 j11 30. l9 j9 31. l11 j12 32. j10 k12 33. h12 k9 34. i4 h4 35. k11 l12 36. m12 h13 37. g14 j15 38. i14 j14 39. j13 m11 40. l10 k13 41. n10 i15 0-1 zukole - 2017-07-31, 22:24 W trakcie mistrzostw ¶wiata, ówczesny obrońca tytułu Rudolf Dupszki (dupsky) rozegrał dwie partie z programem Yixin. Czas na grę wynosił 120 minut + 30 sekund za ruch. Zapis wygranego przez Yixin meczu (2-0) możecie obejrzeć tutaj. Na gomokuworld z kolei znajdziecie artykuł Bano o tym pojedynku
sandra113 - 2018-03-01, 12:12 
Today at 20:00 Warsaw time Roman Berezin and Márk Horváth will play a gomoku match of two games with the time control 60+30 on https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en. Roman Berezin is a strong Russian renju player with a renju rating of 2104 and is particularly known for his bright personality, fighting spirit, and being an excellent team captain. He captained Russia 2 in the last world team renju championship, leading the team to a quite successful result – a draw 2-2 against Russia 1 in the direct encounter and the total fourth place, below only China, Estonia 1, and Russia 1. Roman plays renju since his teens and has a very strong passion for the game. Márk Horváth is a Hungarian gomoku player who is best known for his one-minute gomoku skills. In the WBC, he was placed by the experts to Pot 1 (top 16) and has already won his group. So far, Márk has played only in one live gomoku tournament, the Hungarian Autumn Tournament held last year, and did not allow anyone except Zoli, Dupsky, and Gergő to earn more points than him in that tournament. Márk possesses a strong fighting spirit and does not hesitate to let others know about it - have a look at his T-shirt in the match poster above. Rules of the match: gomoku, exactly five-in-a-row (overlines do not count as wins), swap2. The players are allowed to use only their brains, i.e., they are allowed only to look at the board shown on the screen and click. It is not allowed to use programs to analyse a position, use libraries, written notes, literature, analyse a position on a real or virtual board by placing stones, get hints from other people, etc. Here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, under "Welcome," click on the right button ("Play as a guest"), unless you want to register or use an existing account. Then click on "Continue." 3. Click on "Options" below the board and choose the following options: - Under "Marks," select "Stones" to make the board look like on playok.com. - Under "Disable invites," select "Do not invite me to the game" to avoid highly distracting invitations to play. Then click on "OK" below. 4. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game" and find the game being played by Roman and Márk. Click on the game and enjoy
sandra113 - 2018-03-02, 11:58 They played 1-1 and, following Márk's suggestion, decided to play a decisive game with the same time control, which was eventually won by Roman. Game 1. Márk put an opening, and Roman chose white. 
Game 2. Roman put an opening, and Márk chose white. 
Game 3. Márk put an opening, Roman added two stones, and Márk chose black. 
My detailed comments on the games (in Russian) are here: https://vk.com/topic-19499145_35656613?post=41194 Short version: In Game 1, Roman played very solid and outplayed his opponent. Especially worth mentioning is Roman's aggressive move 8-h9, which was obviously well-calculated and created a strategically favourable position. Márk's combination 9, 11, 13, 15, played pretty quickly, only further improved Roman's position from the strategic standpoint. Game 2 was decided by Roman's blunder - he missed Márk's VCT. In Game 3, Márk got an advantageous position by choosing the right colour after Roman added two stones, and pressured Roman for quite long, but Roman was able to survive and, when the game was developing towards an inevitable draw, exploited a sudden mistake by Márk. Ilya Katsev, who is likely to face Márk in the upcoming Hungarian Meijin tournament, commented that as a result of the match, he would consider Márk a more serious opponent than before . Here is what Roman Berezin said about the match:
My translation: - begin of the translation - I think there are some game aspects that Márk has to work on in order to achieve serious results. Furthermore, I think I would be unlikely to win even a game if the time control was less than 20 min, but if the time control was 2 hours, I would not blunder in the second game, and, overall, there are many ways to strengthen black's play there. I would characterise Márk as a player by one word - competent. Overall I like Sandra's analysis, it is quite good. And, well, this combo 9-15 in the first game... This should not happen at a serious time control in principle. This does not bring any fruits. Everyone knows that in a serious live tournament, each game is like a small life, and almost no one makes a misstep out of the blue, for free. One should try to play at serious time controls, or at least to mix them with short ones, and to develop self-consistent game plans of better quality. That's all I want to say
- end of the translation - I congratulate Roman with the victory and wish Márk good luck in the upcoming Hungarian Meijin tournament to be played this weekend
sandra113 - 2018-09-23, 15:53 
Today at 17:00 Warsaw time Łukasz Majksner (also known as Usiek) and Anatoly Smirnov (also known as Barbos) will play the first game of their online match in advanced gomoku with the time control 120+30! Advanced gomoku is a term analogous to advanced chess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess) and means that the players are allowed to use programs to analyse positions. A similar match was played about two years ago between Dmitry Epifanov (also known as Owen) and Alex Popiel (also known as Lamaza) and was a total success as more than 50 spectators came to watch. Łukasz and Anatoly are very decent players both in live and correspondence gomoku and have a vast experience of playing on Playok and in online tournaments such as the Euroleague, WBC, and IRP. Both of them played in the International Correspondence Gomoku Tournament 2018 (ICGT 2018) and qualified to the High League to be played next season. In the ICGT 2018, they were in the same group and played two games against each other, which ended as draws. Anatoly is from Pervouralsk, a small city in the Ural mountains. He started participating in live tournaments when the USSR was still alive, and became the gomoku champion of Russia in 2008 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/78). Anatoly began playing correspondence games in the era when moves were mailed in envelopes, and later played correspondence gomoku on littlegolem.net, where he was one of the very best players. Anatoly is well known for his passion for schemes, traps, and home analysis, and by means of a scheme he was able to beat Rudolf Dupszki in the A-tournament of the world gomoku championship 2018 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/160/10510), where the latter player became the world champion. Łukasz became the gomoku champion of Poland in 2016 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/178), and he also won the world team championship title as a member of the Polish national team in 2016 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/197) as well as the silver medal of the Fishparty in Hradec Kralove in 2018 (http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/216). Like Anatoly, Łukasz is known for his passion for home analysis, and it is Łukasz who is the only player not from a former Soviet Union country who qualified to the High League of the ICGT. It is going to be a really interesting match as both players were the champions of their respective countries, understand the game very deeply, have a great experience and skills of playing correspondence games, and have a passion for home analysis of gomoku positions. The match is a continuation of series of matches in advanced gomoku organised in the Russian gomoku community. Fourteen matches were played so far and involved, in particular, Denis Osipov, Dmitry Epifanov, Alex Popiel, Alexander Miroshnichenko (also known as Fudjin), Gasan Babaev, and Łukasz Majksner. More information about these matches as well as the game records are provided in the special thread of the Russian gomoku discussion forum: https://vk.com/topic-19499145_39125646 The rules of the match allow everything - any programs, move databases, help by any people, etc. The match will be played on Logic, a Russian website, and here is how you can watch the match: 1. Go to https://logic-games.spb.ru/gomoku/?lang=en A menu with four options will pop up. 2. In the menu, choose "Play as a guest", unless you want to register or use an existing account on Logic or VK, and then click on "Continue." 3. Click on "Options" below the board. Select "Stones" under "Marks" to make the board look like on playok.com, and select "Do not invite me to the game" under "Disable invites" to avoid highly distracting invitations to play. Then click on "OK" below. 4. In the upper left corner, click on "In Game" and find the game being played by Łukasz and Anatoly. Łukasz will be under the nickname coinciding with his full name, Łukasz Majksner. Please note that on Logic, the players' clocks show only minutes and seconds, but not hours, i.e., 28:54 means that the player has either 28 minutes and 54 seconds or 1 hour, 28 minutes, and 54 seconds. Come to watch the battle! sandra113 - 2018-09-23, 23:41 Usiek won the game against Barbos by showing excellent positional play! Congratulations to Usiek and all his fans and friends
Here is the game record: k8j11l12j10l9j9j12k12j7m10l11l10i10i6h6k7g9i11k9j6g7g11h11i5h4j8l6g8f9h5i8i4i3j3k2g5f5m7m8k4j5l5m6n8m9n9n10f7g6g10e4h7e9h9d6d10d3c2d4d5e6f6g4f4h3h2d7 The line above is the sequence of the moves. To see the game in Yixin, all you need is to copy the above line to Yixin's command line after the command putpos followed by a space and then to press Enter. The opening was put by Łukasz, and Barbos chose white, not adding two stones. You can read a brief review of the game in Russian here: https://vk.com/topic-19499145_39125646?post=53905 Have a look at this high-quality game
sandra113 - 2018-09-28, 17:48 
Today at 18:00 Warsaw time Łukasz Majksner (also known as Usiek) and Štěpán Tesařík (also known as Peroxid) will play the first game of their online match in advanced gomoku with the time control 120+30! The match is a continuation of the series of matches in advanced gomoku organised in the Russian gomoku community. In this series, there is a title - "king of the hill," and the current king of the hill is Łukasz. If he wins the match against Štěpán, or if the match ends 1-1, then Łukasz retains the title, otherwise the new king of the hill will be Štěpán. The rules of the match allow everything - any programs, move databases, help by any people, etc. The match will be played on the excellent Czech playing server piskvorky.net. Come watch this high-quality game
sandra113 - 2018-10-23, 04:53 About three weeks ago, on Fri 28 Sep, a historic gomoku battle took place - the current Czech champion Štěpán Tesařík, also known as Peroxid, faced the Polish champion of 2016 Łukasz Majksner, also known as Usiek, in the first game of their match in advanced gomoku. Advanced gomoku is a term analogous to advanced chess and means that the players can use any programs to analyse positions. This results in games of exceptional quality, which are devoid both of tactical blunders common to games in live tournaments and of obvious strategic mistakes characteristic of program competitions. What decides in advanced gomoku is strategic planning, the ability to focus on important branches, systematic thinking, skills of computer analysis, and deep understanding of gomoku. The time control was 120+30, meaning that each of the contenders had a plenty of time for analysis. The players were also allowed to use any other kind of help, such as move databases and hints by other people. The game was played on the Czech server piskvorky.net and attracted a dozen of spectators including, e.g., Pavel Laube, Anatoly Smirnov, Valery Kondratyev, and Miroslav Fontán, who is the developer of Embryo, the gomoku engine that beat Yixin in one of the nominations of the last Gomocup. Peroxid emerged victorious, building a five on move 123, and now Usiek must win the remaining game of the match in order to keep his title in advanced gomoku, otherwise the new title holder will be Peroxid. Usiek characterised the first game of the match as the best advanced gomoku game that had ever been played with such a time control. So what happened in the first game of the match? The game record is attached to this post as a PDF file. Inside is simply the move sequence, which you can use to conveniently load the game in Yixin as follows: In Yixin's command line, type the command putpos, add a space, insert the move sequence from the file, and press Enter. You can also have a look at the game here: http://www.piskvorky.net/...xid&value=20341 The players had agreed that it was Peroxid who was to put an opening in the first game, and he put a very interesting opening: The first two stones were near a corner, and the third stone was in the opposite quarter of the board. The opening looked entirely new and very non-obvious. According to Usiek, he deemed the opening requiring at least two days of analysis as there were "two many branches to check." Considering how to add two stones, he eventually decided to use an elegant trick analogous to the one he had used against Monika Kolouchová at the Fish Party 2018. Here is that game: http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/216/13730 . In that game, Usiek added two stones so as to basically convert Monika's opening to a scheme known to him, and achieved a nice victory. The third stone of Peroxid's opening looked so lonely and asking for a nice company that Usiek could not withstand the temptation to build on it a scheme known to him. The "opening" added by Usiek does not seem very sharp at the first glance, but, according to him, actually is "a way sharper than many obviously sharp positions." Thus Usiek turned the tables: Peroxid, who had put a tricky opening, found himself facing an unknown scheme! While Peroxid was thinking what to do, Usiek realised that he had overlooked 6-e9, a move potentially connecting the position with stone 2. The move immediately seemed to Usiek to be very strong and even to give a win to white, but then he proved that 6-e9 is actually a "crazy" black win. Peroxid chose black, and then the contenders played a very sharp branch and reached the middlegame with an apparent considerable advantage of Peroxid. Usiek says Peroxid could have chosen a different seventh move, which would have brought more troubles to Usiek in the middlegame, but adds that Peroxid was probably afraid of possible "hardcore wins" and for this reason opted for a more secure variant. The ensuing course of the game was very eventful and rich of nuances, and in the end Usiek overlooked a thing and lost. The erroneous move by Usiek, 108-c10, loses in a tricky way. By playing this move, white creates a VCF threat, but black can block that threat by playing a combo of four fours near the lower edge of the board and then can win by a VCT near the upper edge. And this is exactly what Peroxid did. Usiek had enough time, about 8 min, and simply made a too hasty decision. If he had played a proper 108th move, he would have been able to achieve a draw. He says that his first instinct was to play 108-g14 and that he instead blindly followed Renju Solver's suggestion made after a short calculation. A quick VCT test in Yixin would have sufficed to avoid the error, as Yixin in the VCT search regime on my pretty average laptop finds the black win after 108-c10 in just about 3 seconds. But interestingly, if I use Yixin in the normal regime, "Play," to analyse the position before move 108, I see that Yixin chooses the same losing move, 108-c10, at depths 7, 8, and 9. At depth 10, Yixin chooses a different move, 108-e6, but it takes about one minute on my laptop to reach that depth in that position. So positions even with more than 100 stones can have nasty pitfalls. Did any of the players have a win before move 108? Peroxid says that his post-game analysis revealed his win in the position after move 54, but adds that his program needed as much as 6 hours to prove the win. He showed me one of its branches - interestingly, black starts there with blocking the white pair 34-44, located in the lower half of the board, by playing the combo 55-d4 56-d6 57-c5, and later wins near the upper edge by creating a 4x3 on move 83. Thus it is wrong to say that the game was always rolling on a draw road before move 108. A win was there well before that move, but, like a pearl, not easy to find. Anyway, congratulations to Peroxid. He proved to be an excellent analyst as he was able to come up with a new excellent opening, choose the better colour in Usiek's addition of two stones, dominate the game, and win it. The Czech champion showed his power. But the second game is coming. Usiek is eager to do his best and utmost to level the score and retain the title. Will he succeed? Stay tuned
sandra113 - 2018-10-28, 08:54 Tonight at 19:00 Warsaw time Usiek and Peroxid will play the final game of their match in advanced gomoku on piskvorky.net. As Peroxid won the first game, Usiek must win tonight's game to defend his title. If he fails to win tonight's game, the new holder of the title in advanced gomoku will be Peroxid. Before this match, Usiek won the title by winning 2-0 against Sery Cardinal, a Russian player whose computer analysis skills and powerful hardware had allowed to achieve a draw against Denis Osipov, and defended the title by winning 1.5-0.5 against Barbos, a well-known Russian player who played in many live, online, and correspondence tournaments. Will Usiek succeed in defending his title for a second time in a row? Do not miss the climax of this epic match! You will see a great strategic battle whose quality far exceeds that of the games of the A-tournament of the world championship. And note that last night the clocks in Poland were turned back by an hour
zukole - 2018-10-31, 14:24 Usiek wygrał drug± grę. sandra113 - 2018-11-03, 05:11 
On Sun 28 Oct the second, final game of the historic gomoku battle took place - the Polish champion of 2016 Łukasz Majksner, also known as Usiek, played against the current Czech champion Štěpán Tesařík, also known as Peroxid, in advanced gomoku with the time control 120+30. Advanced gomoku is a term analogous to advanced chess and means that the players can use any programs to analyse positions. As Usiek had lost the first game of the match, he had to win the remaining game in order to retain his title of the king of the hill in advanced gomoku, and he did it. It was an incredibly fierce fight on the board, with the contenders exhausting almost all time they had, and Usiek went across almost the entire board from the corner where he had put his opening, to win the game near an opposite edge. The king defended his throne. Congratulations to Usiek! The match was a continuation of a series of advanced gomoku matches originally organised in the Russian gomoku community (see the thread https://vk.com/topic-19499145_39125646 for the history). Usiek had won the title by confidently beating 2-0 Sery Cardinal, the very powerful Russian advanced gomoku player who had proved his strength in previous advanced gomoku matches including his 0.5-0.5 draw in a 120+30 advanced gomoku game against Denis Osipov, whose program and gomoku skills had been enough only to barely escape a defeat in that game. After winning the title, Usiek defended it against Anatoly Smirnov, the extremely experienced Russian player who is known as Barbos and started playing gomoku in the Soviet era. The match between Usiek and Barbos consisted of two games with the time control 120+30 and ended 1.5-0.5 in Usiek's favour. And now Usiek has defended his title against Peroxid, the current Czech champion. Such a great performance by Usiek is absolutely no surprise to me. He has a great passion for analysis and, in particular, is the only non-Russian speaking player who was able to qualify to the High League of the ICGT, the International Correspondence Gomoku Tournament. His deep understanding of positional play, incredible computer analysis skills, devotion to gomoku, and serious professional approach are what makes him so great in advanced gomoku. The record of the final game between Usiek and Peroxid is attached to this post as a PDF file. Inside is simply the move sequence, which you can use to conveniently load the game in Yixin as follows: In Yixin's command line, type the command putpos, add a space, insert the move sequence from the file, and press Enter. Usiek put an interesting corner opening that did not look very peaceful at all. The opening had been first put in a live tournament by the current world champion Zoltán László from Hungary in the recent Polish championship against his compatriot Gábor Gyenes. Here is the link to the game: http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/217/14426 . It was nice to see Usiek putting an opening of his good friend. After about 10 min of thinking, Peroxid came up with an addition of two stones. Usiek then spent about half an hour thinking what to do. He says he was unable to find any considerable advantage of any of the colours but slightly favoured black, which he finally chose. The perception of the players of what happened next is different: Usiek says they fought for the initiative pretty long, many moves, while Peroxid says that he was defending during the whole game. Both players also differently evaluate the addition of two stones put by Peroxid. Usiek finds it nice, while Peroxid thinks that the addition is better for black and that the addition predetermined the course and outcome of the game. According to Usiek, the key moment of the game was move 16-d13 by Peroxid, at least this is how it seemed to Usiek during the game. The move instantly creates an impression of a positional death of white. However, Peroxid says that he was simply unable to find a better move. According to him, all other options were worse. After that move, Usiek's initiative and advantage became visible by the naked eye, and he started to press his opponent. Yet, according to Usiek, Peroxid fought like a lion, so it took 28 more black stones to win the game. The game ended when there were 71 stones on the board. Technically, Peroxid lost on time as his time expired, but at that moment Usiek had his win already proven in his program and 10 minutes 16 seconds left. In the final position, Yixin gives up at depth 10, showing -10000. The game illustrates the cruelty of advanced gomoku. Apparently even a slight imbalance or a slight mistake visible only in a very deep analysis can result in a long-lasting positional torture and inevitable loss. Advanced gomoku games are often basically decided in the very beginning, and then it takes many moves to face the inevitable. Spending only 10 minutes to find an addition of two stones may have been a too hasty decision that costed Peroxid the game and the title. I recall that once the world champion of 2015 Rudolf Dupszki told me something like, "The earlier in the game you make a mistake, the larger impact on the game it has." He is known for spending a lot of time thinking on the very first moves. Advanced gomoku games, where the quality of play is a way higher than in live tournaments, seem to confirm his philosophy. Usiek owes thanks to his friend Zoltán László, who had invented and studied the opening that prompted Peroxid to add two stones. But at the same time, converting an imbalance to a win requires skills. Simply following a program's suggestion is not enough, as evidenced by some past advanced gomoku matches. Human strategy and understanding of positional play are needed. Who is the next challenger? Hungary, the homeland of three different world gomoku champions, comes into play - Márk Horváth, a close friend of the current world champion, will try to overthrow the current king of the hill in advanced gomoku! As the rules of advanced gomoku matches allow using any help including hints by other people, the contenders well may be already forming their support teams. In gomoku, the Hungarians are known to be highly result-oriented and motivated to be the very best, so I already cannot wait for the upcoming epic battle between Márk and Usiek. Stay tuned
sandra113 - 2018-11-18, 17:55 
Today is a historic day for advanced gomoku: Hungary, the homeland of three world gomoku champions, comes into play as Márk Horváth steps in to challenge the current title holder Łukasz Majksner from Poland, also known as Usiek! They will play the first game of their title match tonight at 22:00 Warsaw time on the Czech server piskvorky.net. The match consists of two games with the time control 120+30. Advanced gomoku is a term analogous to advanced chess and means that the players can use any programs to analyse positions. The players are also allowed to use any other kind of help, such as move databases and hints by other people. The challenger, Márk, is a player well-known for his fighting spirit, aggressive play, and attacking skills. He shared places 9-12 in the WBC 2018, took the 3rd place in the Hungarian Spring Tournament 2018, and earned a silver medal of the last world team championship as a member of the Hungarian national team. Márk has been extensively trained and mentored by his good friend Zoli, the current world champion and WBC holder, and has the honour to be a member of Inner Strength, Zoli's team in the Euroleague. The title holder, Usiek, became the gomoku champion of Poland in 2016 and also won the world team championship title as a member of the Polish national team in 2016 as well as the silver medal of the Fishparty in Hradec Kralove in 2018. Usiek is known for his passion for home analysis and is the only player not from a former Soviet Union country who qualified to the High League of the International Correspondence Gomoku Tournament. His deep understanding of positional play, incredible computer analysis skills, devotion to gomoku, and serious professional approach are what makes him incredibly strong in advanced gomoku. After Usiek won the title of the king of the hill in advanced gomoku, he defended his title against Anatoly Smirnov and Štěpán Tesařík, and now Márk comes as the third challenger. If the match ends 1-1 or in Usiek's favour, Usiek retains his title, otherwise Márk will be the new title holder. Come watch tonight's game, which surely will be of exceptional quality far exceeding the quality of live games. zukole - 2018-11-22, 11:15 Usiek wygrał. sandra113 - 2018-11-22, 16:34 Last Sunday the current king of the hill in advanced gomoku, Łukasz Majksner, also known as Usiek, spectacularly won the first game of his match in advanced gomoku against the challenger, Márk Horváth from Hungary, and thereby secured that the title remains Usiek's. The match was announced in my previous post. To remind, advanced gomoku is a term analogous to advanced chess and means that the players can use any programs to analyse positions. The contenders were also allowed to use any other kind of help, such as move databases and hints by other people. The time control was 120+30. Márk fought like a lion, but Usiek once again proved to be a real virtuoso and created yet another masterpiece of positional play. Here is the link to the game: http://www.piskvorky.net/...iek&value=24230 I highly recommend looking at the game and learning from it. If you want to analyse the game in Yixin, here is the game record: b4c4e3f5g4g6e4e5d5f3f4h4d6d4f6f8c6b6e8d9e9e10c8c9f11g10f10g11f12f13g9i7 The above code is simply the move sequence, which you can use to conveniently load the game in Yixin as follows: In Yixin's command line, type the command putpos, add a space, insert the above code, and press Enter. The opening was put by Usiek, and Márk chose black, not adding two stones. The game can serve as a textbook of positional play. Just like a giant python, Usiek slowly but consistently choked his opponent, building a position that is so clearly winning that his opponent surrendered despite that it was still a long way to a winning fork. Look at the game to see how masterfully Usiek secured a vast piece of land to launch a decisive attack. He completely blocked black on the left half of the board, occupying key points in such a smart way that the opponent was unable to do anything, and got the entire right half of the board as a result. And when Usiek put there his first stone, Márk surrendered out of complete hopelessness. This is an ideal illustration of gomoku strategy, and strategy is exactly what programs cannot do. Programs choose moves so as to maximise the evaluation function, which, at least in this stage of evolution of computer gomoku, takes into account only local resources such as free space around stones and some specific stone composition shapes. Usiek, in contrast, chose moves that were the best to fit the strategy he had chosen. To rephrase a well-known quote of Bismarck, gomoku is the art of the possible, and, following this principle, Usiek considered the possible moves, i.e, the moves that were not leading to a quick, tactical loss, and chose those moves that were the best in terms of the chosen strategy. And by consistently making choices in this way, Usiek created a real piece of art. Just look how beautiful the final position is - the position in which Márk put his stone in a corner as his surrender (see the diagram below). Black is packed, pinned, and firmly tied, and its resources are cut, dissected, and lying like a dead mass, waste matter, and useless slag. 
Usiek says that Márk can be honoured for the resistance he showed. According to Usiek, somewhere in the beginning of the game Márk was able to choose the only continuation that was not giving a more or less direct win to Usiek. Any player less skilful than Márk well might lose much faster than Márk did. Márk had to extremely carefully choose his moves in order not to lose quickly and at the same to fight positionally. Usiek says that the positional fight was extremely fierce. And, just like people win in arm-wrestling, Usiek simply overpowered and pinned his opponent in this positional fight. Usiek simply proved to be stronger and more powerful. And this is what professional play is - not to set a trap such as a scheme that has an unexpected continuation, but to simply put a corner opening and to positionally choke the opponent as a giant python does. Usiek was like a gigantic powerful snake that frightens any human being to an extent similar to the one that makes a gomoku player capitulate long before a wining fork - just as Márk capitulated. Usiek did not have to play even a single three, four, or fukumi during the entire game. Being known for aggressive play and attacking skills, Márk got overpowered and pinned by Usiek just as a fighter who relies on kicks and punches gets overpowered by a mighty jiu-jutsu master when it comes to ground fighting. Márk is a decent player and an excellent blitz fighter who finished in the top 12 in the WBC 2018, and now he has learned what it is to play advanced gomoku against a real professional. It is a strategic fight of an extremely high quality. In terms of quality, comparing live games with advanced gomoku is like comparing drawings by kindergarten children with paintings by Rembrandt and da Vinci. The player uses his computer just as a painter uses his brush. Advanced gomoku is a real art. The game developed in full view of Márk's good friend Zoli, who watched how his friend, compatriot, and Euroleague teammate got hopelessly overpowered and pinned by the mighty Pole. Zoli is the current king of one-minute gomoku and live gomoku, but the hill of advanced gomoku is outside the territory conquered by Zoli. And the king of that hill is Usiek, who taught a great master class in positional play last Sunday. sandra113 - 2018-11-24, 16:54 Today at 20:00 Warsaw time Łukasz Majksner, also known as Usiek, and Márk Horváth will play the second, final game of their match in advanced gomoku on piskvorky.net. After the first game, the score is 1-0 in Usiek's favour, so he has already secured that the title remains his, but I am sure that Márk will do his best and utmost to win tonight's game, out of his sense of honour towards himself and his country. That's the Hungarian spirit. And I am sure that Usiek will again show his serious professional approach, so a great battle is coming. Come watch tonight's game - it will be of great quality, bring emotions, and make interesting material that may give an insight into deep mysteries of our beautiful game
sandra113 - 2018-11-26, 10:09 Last Saturday Usiek won the second game against Márk, thereby winning the match 2-0 and once again proving to be extremely powerful in advanced gomoku! Here is the game record: l3n6n4k5j4j6i7k8i5h6i6i4k6h7l5m4k3l4j3m3n2m6l2m1j5m7m5j2k4m2f5g4 The above code is simply the move sequence, which you can use to conveniently load the game in Yixin as follows: In Yixin's command line, type the command putpos, add a space, insert the above code, and press Enter. The opening was put by Márk, and Usiek chose white, not adding two stones. You can also have a look at the game at: http://www.piskvorky.net/...iek&value=24626 The game looked similar to the first game of the match. The game again developed from a corner opening, and Márk again played black. Again positional fighting ensued, and Márk again resigned after move 32 - exactly after the same number of moves as in the first game of the match. And, like in the first game of the match, it was still a long way to a five, but it was obvious that white had a decisive advantage. Anyway, Márk deserves a lot of respect for having a courage to play against such a strong player as Usiek. Márk showed very decent play, but Usiek proved to be simply too powerful - so powerful that beating him in a match seems to be a mission impossible. Congratulations to Usiek! The ruling king has defended his throne already from three challengers - Barbos, Peroxid, and Márk! sandra113 - 2018-12-01, 18:13 
Tonight at 20:00 Warsaw time a new title match in advanced gomoku starts - the current king of the hill, Łukasz Majksner aka Usiek, faces a new challenger, legendary Piotr Małowiejski aka Angst! The match will be played on the Czech server piskvorky.net and, as usual, consist of two games with the time control 120+30. Angst is an extremely experienced veteran of Polish gomoku who also earned great respect by his social and leadership skills. He played in 47 live tournaments shown on Gomokuworld, starting more than a decade ago, and successfully led the Polish national team to the first world championship title in 2016. He captains Dark Team, one of the strongest Euroleague teams, and is the Polish representative in the Euroleague committee. He also was one of the main organisers of the last world team championship. As a player, Angst is particularly known for his special opening, in which two black stones are placed adjacent to each other at the middle of an edge, and the white stone is placed at the opposite edge. The opening is now generally referred to as Angst's opening and often makes people confused by tricky threats. In live games, Angst took scalps from a number of very strong players including Puholek and Gacul. Usiek, the current king of the hill, proved to be a real virtuoso of advanced gomoku and does not need to be introduced in this announcement in detail. In live gomoku, he became the gomoku champion of Poland in 2016 and also won the world team championship title as a member of the Polish national team in 2016 as well as the silver medal of the Fishparty in Hradec Kralove in 2018. His deep understanding of positional play, incredible computer analysis skills, devotion to gomoku, passion for home analysis, and serious professional approach are what makes him incredibly strong in advanced gomoku. If the match ends 1-1 or in Usiek's favour, Usiek retains his title, otherwise Angst will be the new title holder. As usual, the contenders can use whatever they want, including any programs, databases, hints by other people, and computational servers. What counts is only the moves the contenders make on the board. This is similar to the so-called online freestyle chess tournaments, which attract both amateurs and grandmasters (Link) and feature prize funds exceeding $10000 (Link) as well as prompt analyses by investment bank analysts who want to learn lessons from such battles (Link). Come watch this epic Polish derby
sandra113 - 2018-12-08, 14:56 The second, final game of the match between Usiek and Angst will be played tonight at 21:00 Warsaw time on piskvorky.net! Usiek won the first game and thus has already defended his title. Here is the game record: a8o8a9e8e9d7d9f8c9b9a10a7f9g9e7d8g8h7e11e10f12d10h10i8c8j9k10i9c11c10f10h9k9f11j7i6i7g6f5h6f6h5h8i4f7k6j6h3h4j5l7g2 The above code is simply the move sequence, which you can use to conveniently load the game in Yixin as follows: In Yixin's command line, type the command putpos, add a space, insert the above code, and press Enter. The opening was put by Angst, and Usiek chose white. After the game, Angst admitted to not using any program during the game, and it makes my wonder why he had decided not to use any program and exactly what he had wanted to show, prove, or test with that. In live gomoku, Usiek is 143 rating points above Angst and earned 3.5 points in 4 last live encounters between them, so even if Usiek had played without any program, he would most likely still have won. Supported by his programs and computer analysis skills, Usiek becomes many hundreds of rating points above his live level. He is the king of the hill in advanced gomoku for a reason. But it was Angst's own choice how to play the game, and Usiek professionally and mercilessly outplayed him, demonstrating how weak and hopeless a human player without programs is. When it comes to counting, the human mind is simply weak. Come watch tonight's master class by Usiek, the current king of advanced gomoku
angst - 2018-12-09, 10:08
You can always ask
Btw. your game description in my opinion suits more to the second game, as the first one was quite long and interesting, taking into consideration the difference in potential, as you mentioned yourself. I cannot wait to see your comments after the first match lost by Usiek, which is going to happen sooner or later, as only someone with better hard/soft-ware will decide to join this competition. I can bet that "lucky" word will appear then
Best regards, Angst sandra113 - 2018-12-10, 11:37
Consider the question asked
By the standards of advanced gomoku, the quality of play by anyone who uses only his own mind is extremely low, even if he is such an experienced, decent, skilful, wise, and psychologically strong player as you are. Let us objectively look at the first game of the match. The position after 23-h10 is already a provable white win, which Usiek perfectly played. That is, you were in a lost position already after just ten moves of yours. And this was your favourite opening, to which Usiek did not add two stones, and you even knew the variant you played: Up to move 18, the moves were exactly the same as in your recent live game: http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/230/14695 If we do not count the moves you had already played in that live game, we can say that you put yourself to a lost position in just 3 moves of yours. In the second game of the match, the two stones added by you to Usiek's opening were already a provable black win. At the end of the game, Usiek had about 120 min left, almost exactly as in the beginning of the game. The Fischer increment was enough to fully or almost fully compensate him the time spent. Figuratively speaking, you participated in a knight duel not using any body armour, sword, and shield, simply relying on your bare fists. There is a famous legend that in the beginning of the Second World War, the Polish cavalry used to attack German tank divisions. Your match against Usiek made me think the legend well may be true
There have already been many matches in advanced gomoku (see the thread https://vk.com/topic-19499145_39125646), and, based on them, I can very confidently say that while software and hardware are factors, the skill also matters a lot. In particular, there have been a number of games in which one of the players was substantially worse equipped and nevertheless won. Unfortunately I cannot tell the specifics, as my statement is based on confidential information about equipment, but I assure you I am very confident in what I am saying. A pure program, not supported by a human, is actually a pretty weak player. Some time ago I organised and promoted a game between Gergo Toth and Yixin: http://forum.gomoku.pl/viewtopic.php?p=58461#58461 Yixin was run on a standard laptop, and the time control was 60+30. Being not supported by any program, Gergo spectacularly won against the program not supported by any human. Since a program by itself is such a weak player that it loses even to a human not equipped by any program at all, an advanced gomoku player has to sometimes make important decisions to overrule the program's suggestions. And the quality of those decisions is a very important factor. The program is just an instrument that has to be used properly and with a skill. It is like in knight duels: The quality of the armour, shield, and sword matters, but you also have to masterfully use them. Advanced gomoku is also similar to Formula One: A superior car gives an advantage, but the driving skill matters a lot, too. Consider the following interesting fact: Vladimir Sushkov is twice the word renju champion (2009 and 2017) and also twice the world correspondence renju champion (2013 and 2014), and you know that in correspondence games it is allowed to use programs. If all what mattered in correspondence games were just the hardware and software, and if, consequently, the live championship and correspondence championship required very different qualities, wouldn't it be too much of a coincidence if these championships were won by one and the same person, twice each? I talked with Usiek a lot about how he plays his advanced gomoku matches, and I assure you that there is really a lot of skill involved. He is a real virtuoso of advanced gomoku and hence a great expert in analysis - perhaps the best in the world. zukole - 2018-12-10, 18:29 ¦miechłem czytaj±c ostatni akapit. AdiF - 2018-12-10, 21:27 ¦miech to zdrowie
sandra113 - 2019-02-26, 16:37 
Tonight at 19:00 Warsaw time a great title match in advanced gomoku will start: The current king of the hill Łukasz Majksner, also known as Usiek, will face the challenger Nikolay Verevkin, also known as Cardinal, who deserved the right to challenge the king by convincingly demolishing Anatoly Smirnov 2-0 and doing the same again in a rematch with him! The match will be played on the excellent Czech server piskvorky.net. Usiek and Cardinal will be under the nicknames usiek and melstagen, respectively. As usual, the match consists of two games, the time control is 120+30, and the opponents can use whatever they wish, including programs, move databases, and help by other people. This is what the name ''advanced gomoku'' stands for - everything is allowed. In case of a draw 1-1, Usiek retains the title. The match is especially interesting because the opponents have very different backgrounds and very different approaches to the game. Usiek evolved as a player who often plays on playok.com and live tournaments. In advanced gomoku, he is a real artist who uses a program merely as a tool for determining which moves are not instantly losing, and creates a real masterpiece by making strategic choices between these moves. Cardinal, in contrast, evolved as an advanced-gomoku player, fighting by means of programs against other proggers on various Russian playing servers, and has never played in live tournaments. He focused on learning to play advanced gomoku, i.e., to play by using programs, created a huge move database, possesses very powerful hardware, and acquired, by trial and error, heaps of observations and skills that help make judgement with the help of programs. This is a cardinally different approach to the game, and this approach is successful, too: In particular, even the Russian gomoku champion, Denis Osipov, was unable to beat Cardinal in an advanced gomoku game with the time control 120+30, where both players used programs, and actually avoided a defeat by the skin of his teeth, being happy to achieve a draw against Cardinal in the end. In the current world correspondence gomoku championship, Cardinal is successfully fighting to advance from his qualification group, outpowering the Chinese player known as Heihei, who won the first qualification group of the world correspondence renju championship last year, and having already pushed him to the brink of a defeat: http://renju.in/en/igrat/game/?id=30402 . Interestingly, Cardinal is from a small city in the Russian outback, namely the city of Balakovo of Saratov oblast, and it is great that such a unique and strong player joined advanced and correspondence gomoku. Usiek and Cardinal already played an advanced gomoku match with the time control 120+30 against each other a few months ago, and that match was won 2-0 by Usiek, who positionally outplayed his opponent in a solid and beautiful manner, but since then Cardinal has got considerably stronger and has been eagerly waiting for an opportunity to play a rematch, and he has now deserved the right to challenge the king for a title match by convincingly defeating such an experienced veteran or live, online, and correspondence gomoku as Anatoly Smirnov, also known as Barbos. Interestingly, Barbos played a title match against Usiek and lost 0.5-1.5, achieving a draw in one of the two games, whereas, as stated above, Cardinal recently beat Barbos 2-0 twice, i.e. 4-0 in total, not letting Barbos earn even a half-point. The power shown by Cardinal against Barbos was impressive. The match will decide who of the contenders deserves to bear the title of king of the hill. Come watch this great battle between two great masters who have so different backgrounds and philosophies! zukole - 2019-03-04, 18:10 Usiek wygrał obie gry. Pierwsza - http://www.piskvorky.net/...iek&value=31609 Druga - http://www.piskvorky.net/...iek&value=31762 zukole - 2022-11-14, 18:00 W ci±gu miesi±ca odbyły się cztery spotkania promuj±ce now± stronę o Gomoku - Gomoku.com. 19 paĽdziernika Gergő Tóth zremisował z Zoltánem László 3-3 (czas na grę 5 minut + 2 sekundy za ruch). 5 listopada Zoltán wygrał ze mn± 19-10 (zasady WBC przy parametrach minuta + sekunda za ruch). Mecz jest dostępny na YouTube. 12 listopada zostały rozegrane dwa spotkania: Igor Eged wygrał z Nguyễn Công Minh 19-9 (zasady WBC przy parametrach minuta + sekunda za ruch), a Petr ®iľka pokonał Kacpra Wojtyrę 19-8 (zasady WBC przy parametrach minuta + sekunda za ruch). zukole - 2022-12-03, 09:50 Spotkania rozegrane od listopada s± dostępne tutaj. Uzupełniaj±c informacje z wcze¶niejszego wpisu Łukasz Majksner 19,5 - 5,5 Lukáą Souček. Dzi¶ o 18:30 na gomoku.com Bogdan Brachaczek zmierzy się z Matīssem Rihertsem. |
