How I won the 23rd TwixT championship

Who is this post for? Who is going to read it? Who is going to enjoy it? Anyways…

First, a bit of history…

I learned to play TwixT in 2004. You can have a look at my rating graph. As you can see, after the initial jump, my progress was slow – TwixT never was the main thing in my life.

There are three types of tournaments on littlegolem: rated tournaments, monthly cups, and championship league. The league is by far the most prestigious. You can read more about littlegolem tournaments.

My first championship was third division of the third league – twixt.ch.4.3.3, the games look a little funny now. In the next championship I won 5.2.2 with one loss and proceeded to the first league. I finished fifth in 6.1.1, scoring 4 wins out of 8 games.

I had similar results in 7th and 8th championships, in 9.1.1 I even finished fourth. 10.1.1 was the first appearance of the amazing polish brothers, who finished second and third, but it was a small disaster for me – I only won two games and got demoted to second league. After that I continued jumping up and down between first and second league: 10.1.1 down, 11.2.2 up, 12.1.1 down (though I won against Klaus in a very short game), 13.2.1 up, 14.1.1 down, 15.2.2 up.

I got lucky I didn’t get demoted in 16.1.1 … 17.1.1 and 18.1.1 fifth places again. In 18th I had a very interesting game against Axel. I had a bad start, but managed to exploit his weaknesses to create a draw – but I blundered at 44 and let him connect with 45. In 19.1.1 I had my usual fifth place, but 20.1.1 saw me underperform and fall to 21.2.1. As a warm up, I finished fourth in 22.1.1.

History over, back to the present

The start of 23.1.1 looked like I’d finish in my usual fifth place. I lost against David pretty quickly, and I had a surprisingly easy game against Steven. Meanwhile, I was losing three other games – against spd_iv, Klaus and crclum. Against Klaus, I had a bad game from the start, but Klaus blundered with 39.t19 (s20 or u19 would have done the trick), giving me an undeserved victory.

My game against spd_iv wasn’t that bad in the beginning, but then something went wrong, though I’m not sure what. I think spd_iv could have just played 21.h7 for an easier win. But actually, his variation would have led to a win too, if it wasn’t for his unnecessary 25.d7 which I responded with the best TwixT move I’ve ever played. I think that made me deserve the win.

I have no idea what happened in my game against crclum. I was losing from the very beginning, and it was just getting worse all the time, but I still have no idea why. In the end, he just resigned in a won position (23.q7 24.r5 25.t5 26.v5 27.r4 28.t6 29.n6 leads to a win as does 23.q7 24.r5 25.v5 26.t5 27.t4 as does 23.r6 24.q4 25.p7 (spd_iv pointed out the last variation)). So, I was extremely lucky.

On early resigning

As for crclum’s resignation, I didn’t have the guts to ask him about it or point out that he could’ve won. While I admire early resigning and often myself try to resign lost games as soon as possible (it’s good manners and it shows confidence in one’s judgement), it’s better not to overdo it and resign won games!