"Charles DeVet & Katherine MacLean - Cosmic Checkmate" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeVet Charles)

I did realize from the first that he was a shrewd man, probably with a
system. He lost the first game—without struggle. That, of course, was to
keep me from learning anything about what he could do. I heeded the
warning only enough to keep my attention more closely to the board as the
second game began.

Vlosmin kept his pukts well back and closely grouped, making only a
perfunctory display of aggressiveness. After a few minutes of innocuous
interplay I tried him out by exposing a pukt at the edge of the board to my
right. When he ignored it my estimation of his ability took one step
upward. He had easily recognized that a pukt, protected on one side by the
playing edge, was not as vulnerable as it might seem to be.

I made several other feints—which he ignored. He would not come out
to meet a pass, yet he tried no offensive forays of his own.

I presented three more tentative exposures, all ignored, before I
deliberately sent a pukt a bit too deep. I had made a pretense of setting up
a defense for it in advance, but had left a small avenue of vulnerability. A
man with an exceptionally good grasp of the positions of the board would
have spotted it. Vlosmin studied the pieces for a long time, glancing twice
at the value board, before he passed the pukt by.

I had found his weaknesses—both of them.

The man played a game intended to be impregnably defensive, to
remain untouchable until an opponent made a misplay or an over-zealous
drive, of which he would then take advantage. But his mental prowess was
not quite great enough to be certain of a sufficiently concealed or complex
weakness in the approach of an adversary, and he would not hazard an
attack on an uncertainty. Excess caution was his first weakness.

His second was exposed by his glances at the value board. They were
not long enough for actual study. I'm certain that he did not even see what
he glanced at: He had all the values well in mind. But they were the
expression of a small lack of confidence.

I would be able to exploit both.

Play by careful play I moved the entire body of my pukts forward,
presenting him with the necessity of planning a completely new defense.
The potency of the pukts being determined, not by an intrinsic value of
their own, but by the position of the squares on which they rested, made
the forward shift of the mass of my pukts a vast problem of
realignment—for him. Each new pukt now had a new value,, and Vlosmin
had to adjust to that complete new set of factors.
 During the play I sensed that the crowd about us was very intent and
still. On the outskirts, newcomers inquiring cheerfully were silenced by
whispered exclamations.