Two Brothers

Otake Hideo calls it family feud in his book (Opening Theory Made Easy). My teacher always calls it 'two brothers'. As in 'One brother has a bakery, and his brother opens a bakery just down the street from him. Common sense tells that they will compete with each other for customers and hurt each other's profit.

I know the theory, I know why it is not good to play this way, and somehow I still haven't internalized it enough not to do it in a tourney game.

This was my second game during the MGA tourney. This is the game position. I am white and it is my turn.



As you can see, my LL group is somewhat weak. But I look at the board, and start worrying about white not having enough. Instead of staying calm, and finding move B, I panic and play move A. Bad habit. Such a perfect example of two brothers.

We play for a bit more, I live, but at what a cost.



I was not amused at all. Minue reviewed this game and told me 'It is a very losing position, hopeless for white now.'

allpotti [8d?]: lets make income-expense statemnt of this invasion
allpotti [8d?]: white took 5pts, breaking 10pts
allpotti [8d?]: so, 15pts income
allpotti [8d?]: expense is
allpotti [8d?]: this, and much weaker white dragon
allpotti [8d?]: not easy to make exact numerical evalution of this expense
allpotti [8d?]: but, much bigger than 15pts for sure

Sobering thought. I did realize that in the game, but still decided to play on. I did live with my dragon, and eventually won the game, but this was just such a bad idea from me. I have to be way more careful not to get myself into the two brothers situation. It is not like it is rocket science, I don't know why I even played this way. It feels more like discipline than like knowledge. Looking back at this board, it feels almost resignable. I talked about that with minue too.

allpotti [8d?]: Right attitude about your mistake is,
allpotti [8d?]: "Ok. I made big mistake, and messed up. But if I make a big mistake, it means my opponent also may make it."
allpotti [8d?]: So, be tenacious...and don't give up easily
NannyOgg [-]: yeah, often when I am ahead by a lot, I pay less attention to the game, since I have won already
NannyOgg [-]: So can hope my opponent is like that.
NannyOgg [-]: Winning a won game isn't always easy
allpotti [8d?]: Yes,
NannyOgg [-]: Which means winning a lost game is always possible
allpotti [8d?]: Right.

This time it worked. But I could have saved myself so much trouble by not invading improperly in the first place. Die and learn. Or in this case, I lived. Let's hope I still learned.