Gomokuworld’s Online World Blitz Cup (WBC) is a championship in one-minute gomoku open for all players played by the classical tournament swap 2 rules. While in Classical World Championships the time control per one player is 2 hours 15 minutes with added extra time every move then in this tournament it is a bare 1 minute. One match consists of series of games.
It is one of the most intuitive, exciting five sports (all five in a row competitive games) tournaments to play and maybe most fun for fans to follow. It is played in playok.com game environment.
WBC webpage describes the essence of the game:
“To excel in it, one has to posses a whole bunch of various skills and abilities – the ability to think very fast and accurately, intuition, time management, emotion control, a lot of learned gomoku shapes, and fine motor skills. It is a highly intellectually demanding activity that causes strong adrenaline rushes.”
You can read more about the tournament, upcoming matches and last years results from Gomokuworld’s Online World Blitz Cup 2019 official website.
Sandra Jones brings comments of the match:
Usiek (Majksner) fought like a lion and was one step short of a victory in his WBC match against Dupsky, leading 16-15, but it is Dupsky who won in the end. The final score is 18-16. It was an epic match.
Usiek did not aim to win games on time, although he won a number of games in a mutual time trouble. He played thoughtfully, and often it was him who had less time left. He seemed to feel that if he tried to win on time by quickly playing positional blocks, he would be quickly outplayed by thoughtful moves by Rudolf. Perhaps Usiek’s play was considerably impacted by the very first game, in which Usiek got outplayed.
Usiek led 6-2 and 8-4, but Rudolf proved to be an excellent fighter and was able to make the score 11-9 in his favour by the second break. This means that Rudolf had a continuous series in which he won seven games and lost only one.
The course of the match seemed to have been decisively changed, but Usiek, being behind 12-14 and 14-15, managed to level the score, 15-15, thereby reaching the third break and showing that he is a fighter, too.
The match went to an overtime, where, as mentioned above, Dupsky eventually won. Usiek seemed to be tired and to lose focus in the last two games of the match, but this does not change the fact that his overall performance was great. My impression was that he played considerably better than his normal level and really did his best and utmost, but sometimes was unable to keep up with the best quality he showed in this match.
Of the possible scenarios mentioned by me in my previous post, Scenario 2 proved to be the most relevant to the actual course of the battle, but Usiek turned out to be better in the thoughtful kind of game than I had thought.
The match was especially demanding as its pure playing time amounted to almost exactly one hour. It was a true marathon with a dramatic ending.
Congratulations to Dupsky, and good luck to both in their further WBC matches!