Credits
XG skin design by Rain
Analysis
This is a recent blunder of mine. I’m curious if this position trips others up too, or whether it’s as obvious as the XG results seem to suggest. It's for money, but the result holds for most 'normal' match scores.
We’re juggling the power of a 5-prime, the structural strength of a forward anchor, the need to escape our stragglers, and the importance of containing white’s last checker. Which is most important right now? Hitting seems clearly wrong - we want white to keep moving while staying trapped. A broken 6-prime isn’t as strong as a solid 5-prime, which surely rules out making the 2-point. So what are we left with but abandoning the anchor? But giving up that point while we’ve still got two stragglers behind white’s own broken 6-prime? It certainly didn’t feel right to me over the board. And yet 20/14(2) 13/7(2) is the only right move - everything else is a huge blunder.
I still have a lot to learn about trade-offs and urgency/importance. I hope you did better than me!
[since you insist - I made the broken 6-prime…]