PC Blues 66
Recently Gerrit Boom has published the third edition of his book Standaardcombinaties, een systematische benadering. It contains thousands of standard combinations, and Gerrit has made an attempt to order them systematically. He has done this by distinguishing 171 different capture routes. For each of them he has collected numerous practical examples. The book contains 917 pages in total, which makes this a truly monumental piece of work. On average the combinations are not too deep. The value of this book is that it contains so many different combination ideas. That makes it a useful book for every draughts player. The book is even recommended by former world-champion Alexei Chizhov, who calls it a grandiose book.
To illustrate how the book is organized, take a look at the following four diagrams. They all belong to category 1030, meaning they share the same capture mechanism. In all cases white wins.
The solutions of the four problems are as follows:
- (a) ≡ 1.34-30 25x32 2.45-40 28x39 3.40-34 39x30 4.35x4
- (b) ≡ 1.32-27 21x34 2.42-37 29x38 3.41-36 22x33 4.37-32 38x27 5.31x4
- (c) ≡ 1.27-22 18x27 2.29x18 13x22 3.33-28 22x31 4.43-39 27x38 5.36x27 21x32 6.39-33 38x29 7.34x1
- (d) ≡ 1.27-22 18x27 2.25-20 14x25 3.33-29 24x31 4.35-30 27x38 5.44-40 23x32 6.39-33 38x29 7.34x3 25x34 8.3x6
Below you can find five more randomly chosen examples of the book.
Black won using 23-28! 32.32x14 9x20 33.30x19 13x24 34.22x2 20-25 35.2x30 25x41 36.36x47 26x48
Black missed the combination 16-21! 23.27x16 7-12 24.16x18 20-24 25.22x11 13x22 26.28x17 26-31 27.37x26 24-29 28.33x24 30x46
Black forced a win using 17-22 30.48-42 22x31 31.36x27 16-21! 32.27x16 26-31! 33.37x26 13-19
White could have speculated on 27.32-27 22-28? 28.37-32! 28x48 29.26-21 48x17 30.27-21 17x26 31.36-31 26x33 32.39x17 11x22 33.34x1
Black missed 18-22! and now either 44.28x17 19-23 45.29x18 8-12 46.17x8 2x42 or ≡ 44.27x18 26-31 45.37x26 16-21 46.26x17 8-12 47.18x7 2x44
© Wieger Wesselink https://10x10.org