Emergo Games

These are six games of a match between:

Ed van Zon (NL) and Christiaan Freeling (NL).

Ed plays white in the odd numbered games.

Final score:

Ed van Zon 4 - 2 Christiaan Freeling

[Game 1:  1-0]
[Game 2:  1-0]
[Game 3:  1-0]
[Game 4:  1-0]
[Game 5:  1-0]
[Game 6:  0-1]


Why is e-mail Emergo usually won by white?

All games know a difference between live play and correspondence play. In the latter you can actually try out combinations and strategies. The combinations that dominate Emergo can, in correspondenc play, be extended to a (ply) depth unattainable in live play. This may hold for other games too, but Emergo's combinatorial powers amplify the difference into a white supremacy plot.
The first instance in which this power can be unleashed completely, is the first move after the shadowpiece has been entered. The shadowpiece is usually black: to make it white, white would have to attack in the entering stage. Black cannot force white into attacking, without attacking first. Even if he does, white is usually more inclined to make exchanges that don't affect the shadowpiece, or to allow one or more black captures that increase the shadowpiece, than to make one capture too many and lose the first move after the entering stage.

With this first move, liberated from any restrictions on 'feeding' and a board full of weak pieces, you can - given an hour or so - figure out unworldly combinations that are beyond any horizon of a player behind the board.

Have a look: in all games except game 6, the first move after the entering stage is the introduction to a straight knock-out. Breaking in e-mail Emergo is far more difficult than in tennis!


A slight change of rules to increase black's options

One of black's three basic strategies in the entering stage is forcing white to attack, as Ed did in the notorious game 6 of the above match. To increase both players' options to employ this strategy, the number of men per player will, in the next match, be

13

The choice of 12 men per player was based on intuition and a triple section of the entering area (36 cells). There was no experience to go on and in 'over the board' play there were no indications that white won significantly more often than black. E-mail Emergo changed that, and with it the need to reconsider the rules. The choice of 13 men per player favours black, because unlike white, he has room for attacking moves in the entering stage. The possibility of being forced to attack is therewith less threatening for him than for white.

In Ron Jacobsen's comments, Ron suggests the following change of rules:

This has the virtue of simplicity, but I believe it would reverse the problem: now it is black  who, with his last man to enter, can start a feeding combination on a board full of weak pieces.
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