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Smoke and mirrors vs....
Posted:
Oct 3, 2026, 2:02 AM
Ok so karl, i brought up with owen the concept of p2 being smoke and mirrors. And, he detests that thinking. Prefers another. And I thought it would be a very interesting conversation. Because I feel like you would both agree and disagree on stuff. Like usual lol. Yeah im stirring the pot maybe. Let's see.
Owen, tell Karl what i was saying about smoke and mirrors essentially, and what you said.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Re: Smoke and mirrors vs....
Posted:
Oct 15, 2026, 2:22 PM
Three blocks. 1. My reply in PM was: > Hate this approach in general, why not to play approximately equal positions where you need skill and calculation instead of smoke and mirrors? --- 2. More.
Imagine a chess game with black player being handicapped to a rook. Imagine there is a community around it. These chess players just don't know black can put two rooks on the field so they play with one. Full set of white pieces vs black pieces without a rook. Also they have a rule: bare king loses immediately so draw is impossible. They call it chess-pro. They want to make the game fair so if two players meet, they play 2 games: player1 white and player2 black, without a rook, and then vice versa. And they consider that a strong player can win even without a rook. Well, it is true to a certain extent.
Then a conventional chess player comes. And they say: show us your power, win us without a rook! Learn smoke and mirrors to distract your opponent, yes, you are one rook down, but true master can win it! Go on, kid! How do you think, what a reaction may be? Maybe he will try to tell them that playing without a rook makes the game imbalanced ? Maybe he will try to show them at least a step further to balancing the game? If bare king loses and there is nothing to do with it, well, we can at least give black some more material, a bishop or a knight (if we can't give another rook). Still it is better than chess-pro. Not sufficient but definitely better towards balance. And swap2 analogue may be even better alternative since now player 1 is interested in making the position as balanced as possible when playing the opening.
Hope the idea of this comparison is clear.
--- 3. And finally. The last 10+ real-world tournaments in pente were played using swap2 rule or some variations of Tarannikov rule. When was the last tournament by pente pro rule? How many players were there?
Gomoku encountered the same situation. The last tournament by gomoku pro was played in 90s (WC was in 91 then some minor regional tournaments occured), part of gomoku elite was resistive to any changes but finally swap2 won the race: WCs are resurrected since 2009, people play gomoku swap2 a lot IRL and on numerous resources - playok, vint, gomokuquest, renjucaffe, logicgames, ..., ..., ... And there is one community, namely Gambler (seemingly dead by now but very active in 00s), which still uses gomoku pro rules.
