Most amazing hex game?

Hi, I posted this question in the Hex discord, just also curious what folks here might respond as well.

What is the most famous, infamous, interesting, spectacular, or otherwise highest level game of Hex ever played (by humans)?

Was there written commentary on this game?

thanks

If you choose any of the top players and look at their list of games, find any game with a strong opponent and a large move count. For example here is Arek vs lazy, 134 moves, 19x19. Of course, the participants might have a better idea as to whether it was a good game or not.

If you go back in the forum, Bill LeBoeuf had a habit of posting interesting games. Here's some I find interesting:

2170941: I enjoy the sequence in the middle of this game (around moves 15-20) as the play moves all over the board.

1032098: This game is significant to me, because it was the first example I saw of the very unintuitive concept of "undermining." However this certainly wasn't the first time it was deployed. A particularly interesting example is this game, where White undermines Black on both edges: 1056933

1980477, 1983335: Earliest examples I can find of bots winning against a top human player (by "top player" I mean one of Arek/shalev/Daniel/lazy. Maciej was no longer active at this time). Leela/gzero are the first neural network bots I'm aware of. First battle of these bots here: 1952395.

1568858: This seems to be where this new joseki (move 7, c3) was introduced at LG (the stone on h1 complicates it a bit, 1571785 is a cleaner example). I don't know if Arek developed this move himself, but he seemed to apply it consistently from this point on (for example 1571785, 1576138, 1578467, 1582015, 1583838). This sequence (j9 j11 k11) would go on to dominate the older standard sequence (j9 j11 l11). Eventually most top players stopped playing j11 altogether. I did find one earlier example: 1422800, by Jos Dekker, but I don't know how much the local situation affected the choice to play here; Jos doesn't appear to play this move consistently around this time (1422556, 1423829, 1424133, 1425101)

I don't know if Arek developed this move himself, but he seemed to apply it consistently from this point on (for example 1571785, 1576138, 1578467, 1582015, 1583838)

I want to take credit for this c6. I have invented this move during experimental games with Arek at iggamenceter. He played it first but I realized its importance and the benefit to play it immediately at the joseki stage.

I mean 7 c3 not c6

The bots of course have introduced the other "main" joseki namely d8 and a11+d7 or a1+e10. As far as I know human players never considered d7 or e10 even if in hindsight it's perfectly obvious. A11 as a first move was recommended by me on this forum a few years back and Arek started playing it a lot.

D8 is something I was considering but I never managed to experiment on (we used to play our experimental games with E7 instead of D8).

Basically before bots there was a lot more human experimentation, but we were still a lot behind, with a lot of stuff that we had not experimented yet. And yes, we all the strong players knew that we were very weak and there was a lot of unexplored theory. At least I knew it very well.

Also don't forget the only two games where we humans have won: #2158403 #1999024.

In truth humans can play much better than we do here. We would still lose against well-designed bots but it would be by a much smaller margin.

i have learned what you have termed "undermining" from Maciej. I don't know who introduced it. Maybe Maciej? And who introduced the concept of playing along diagonals? Maybe again Maciej? I think he had a natural intuition for hex, for seeing what is the big idea that explain the vast majority of the results.

In general neither me or Arek are "natural talents" but we played a lot and experimented a lot, and by force of that, we reached an high level.

In general it's difficult to find beautiful games among humans because most of our games are dominated by blunders, even at the top level...

There are very few exceptions but I don't recall them now. I'm a bit rusty.

Nice topic!

I see great propositions above, thanks for sharing those, also thanks David and HappyHippo for mentioning my games!

I think the highest quality must have been between gzero and leela.

The most interesting for me personally is what lazyplayer already suggested:

me and him combined forces against gzero

I will also give you some background: as we found those days that I played stronger openings and he - stronger middle/endgame, I was supposed to start the game and then pass it over if I smelled a chance. We did several failed attempts before, but here after 18 moves I recognized I was onto something. Lazyplayer took over and indeed he was able to finish the game with the only ever win over gzero_bot.

Last, a tribute to Maciej Celuch, when he destroyed me in the only quality game we've played.

Correction: the 18th move was already played by lazyplayer

Well, previous attempts we played pathetic because neither of us wanted to take responsability for the choices to be made...

In our experience playing as a team requires some rule to define who does what...

"Last, a tribute to Maciej Celuch, when he destroyed me in the only quality game we've played."

I love the final move!

@HappyHippo, yes, in fact the final move is what I missed in my analysis when playing this move. I realized several moves later, but I played on until the move in question was on the board, for the future viewers :D

It's similar to the tall variant of Tom's move, which I only found out about recently. I wonder how common knowledge is of this kind of move? I was able to eek out a rare win against Daniel with this move.

not sure if the game was amazing, but for sure the same tricky move which ruined my analysis ;)
https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2233753&nmove=39
even the same coordinates as in https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=1861983&nmove=35

A game that I remember is this.

This one also seems well played. Probably I'm just biased in favor of the games that I have won... ;)

I would say for a game to be amazing or beautiful it has to be played well by both sides and it's difficult to find such games...

A very nice game was played in the 15x15 championship between
hexanna and Warren Bei

Black played a little better in the opening because white 8.f11 is suspicious, later white equalized, but to my eyes there was no significant advantage to any of the sides. In the endgame I thought white was better with 52.k3, however it's not clear.

Congratulations to both players!