After some time, I publish part of the games from the Christmas Renju Tournament. There are some difficulties with the Rybinsk tournaments, which are connected with the fact that the games are often not published and the Christmas tournament will not be an exception, and I forgot to take the forms. In this regard, I will comment only on those games that I remember well (that is, my own); I restored them from memory, so minor inaccuracies are possible (in the order of moves, for example).
Let me remind you that the tournament was held according to the Yamasyrv-7 opening regulations, and the time control was 1 hour 30 minutes for a player per game.
Details on the general course of the tournament can be found on the forum, in the topic about Christmas tournaments
In general, the tournament turned out to be quite interesting. And although only one of the surprise games can be noted, the game Lavrik-Karmazin – Myasoedov, where the young first dan in theory beat the more experienced 4th dan, the outcome of many games was not a foregone conclusion.
Let me move on to the analysis of the parties. In the first round I got a player from the bottom half of the table. Sergey Komarov is an adult rendzist, but he started playing not so long ago. And despite the low level (7kyu), ignorance of theory and some major strategic mistakes, his tactical play and score were at a good level and he fought to the very end, finding the most stubborn defenses. Of all the dans, I finished the game of the first round later than everyone else.

So, I put 7D with 6 fifths. The theory says that the 6th strongest fifth is quite playable for both colors, and I decided to play the entire tournament in such a way that for sure, without “freebies”, although earlier for beginners and ignorant of the theory I set 7D with 5. My opponent chose the 4th move extremely unsuccessfully, here, without much difficulty, there will be 9-10, if not winning, then very strong for the black fifth moves. Where I put all the fifths, I unfortunately do not remember, but it was hard to make a mistake here. This 5th move is common with 6B and the theory speaks of a very strong advantage for Black right up to victory. 6th move – unsuccessful, you should play 6-A, after which you cannot play 7-7, and you have to answer 7-28. In the game, after the 7th move, White had no chances. The 8th move is one of the most stubborn, perhaps not bad either 8-18, although he also loses. Winning back the four with 12 moves does not look very logical and is generally not needed. 16 is also the most stubborn move, after which I had to spend more time to calculate the victory. The game won in the opening was not very easy.

The second game with a young Rybinsk Dan Alexei Glibin. This was our first official game, although we have known him for 2 years, since November 2012.

I practically had no doubt that he would bet exactly 8v, and precisely according to yamaguchi, with three-fifths. Without thinking twice, I took black. He delivered the canonical 4th move. I placed the first two fifths as the strongest – in 8 (main) and A (second in strength, with a big advantage for Black). I didn’t play the third traditional move (5-15), because the night before after the opening of the tournament we played this canonical blitz rally, and I decided not to play the variation refreshed in my memory. Hoping that Alexei didn’t know the theory, I made a weaker fifth move, in which it is customary to consider the advantage for White. Lesha did not know the theory and instead of the correct theoretical 6-B he played 6-6 immediately getting into a very deplorable position. Black simply strangles White with natural moves, after the 11th move White has no defenses. It was easier to win 13-14 and 15-13, but I also counted the win from 13-13. The presence of many winning moves is not very typical for renju and usually indicates an extremely bad position. 16-17, perhaps, was more stubborn, but also did not save. Weakly played opening and as a result the encirclement and a quick defeat for White.

Commented by Anton Golomarev