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Team Chess
Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

Fladimir, please read my post fully, before commenting. I did see and say that the h pawn would be undefended and i also said this would only be temporarily.
You have a point with blacks Qe2 though, so it would indeed be best to use the bishop for blocking off and then reprotect the h pawn(like i already said) with the queen on h2.

[edit]Ah, you edited.

Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
avatar

If we double our rooks in the H vertical, what can you do then?

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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote:

I only see that the position is tricky and that we must pay close attention to what we move and in which order.

Damn straight. And the last thing white should do (should have done) is open up more lines to his own king.

Quote:

I do see that white also has many strategic options,

White has a bad bishop, a weak pawn on c3, an open file that is owned by black and poor defence around his king. Apart from looking what white might have, have you looked at what black does have? In your plans have you at all considered what options black has and what he can do to counter any of teh attacks you see for white? I don't think you have.

Quote:

just think the move options I listed above a little further and it becomes visible that the positions in which we might have bishop and/or queen then will be fortunate, because they can be used to disturb blacks attack plans, as they will threaten fields that black will have to move to, if they want to have a raid on our king.

Your countering single threads. But as I said before, that is not enough: white can probably counter against any single thread, but white will not be able to keep defending against all of them.

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Also we might get options to disturb them by putting them into check, spoiling their movement possibilities even further.

Black can afford to take his time to prepare: there's nothing white can do anyway.

Quote:

And when they are in check they lose a move, which we can use to build up our attack group.

Our what?

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Maybe our disagreement results from the fact that you are thinking in terms of passive defense, while i think in terms of a defense by attacking and disturbing all of their possible attack patterns?

You mean, defence by suicide? Because that's what it looks like to me. By proper defence in this position, I mean not budging one inch, not creating any more weaknesses than we already have. Do a headcount: how many pieces does white have protecting weak points? How many does black have?

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I wouldn't call the position hopeless

Hopeless? Maybe not completely hopeless, but black will need to really screw up badly.

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and if I was black I would not think that I'd win the game easily.

Who said anything about winning easily? If I were black in that position, I'd be confident that I can wear down white's defences if I just keep the pressure on and keep looking for new weaknesses.

Quote:

You said for yourself that we shall make them work and sweat for that point and that's what we're doing right now.

Believe me, it isn't. You're just creating more weak points in white's position with moves that look good when you look a move or two ahead, but turn out to be wrong five or six moves (or more) ahead.

Quote:

This plan can be countered by putting whites bishop to d4 to block off the black queen. Or by using the white queen on d4 for the same effect.
I'm not sure though, which one is better. Using the bishop would leave the h pawn undefended, but only temporarily, as it can be protected again in a follow up move by putting the queen to h2.

Do you see what I'm talking about? Yes, you can counter this one thread. It leaves something else undefended, but never mind, we can defend that again later. Once you start thinking like that, alarm bells should go off that something is terribly wrong with your position, because if you do not pay attention for an instant or don't move the correct piece at the right time, you suddenly find yourself with a position where you have a weakness that you can no longer defend.

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Other expressions I would use to describe our position would be: "challenging" and "interesting"

I wouldn't call it interesting.

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but please don't call it hopeless or horrible again,

It is horrible. One of the important things about chess is accurately judging a position. If it's horrible, then that's what it is and euphemisms don't help at all. Having made that determination, one has to decide on how to react to that. There are three reactions:
1) Hang your head, tug tail between your legs and weep. You lose very quickly.
2) Do a desperate all-or-nothing charge and hope your opponent will be overwhelmed. You normally still lose just as quickly.
3) Batten down the hatches and lock up. Shift your weight and don't budge an inch without making them work for it. This becomes a battle of stamina that you may very well still lose, but if you hold out longer than your oponent, then you may escape with a draw.
What I proposed to do was 3, what you're doing is 2. Having chosen 2, there is no going back to do 3, so you must continue with 2.

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because our team morale seems to be low enough already without that.

That's tough for the team, but if it can't appreciate an honest evaluation of the position, then how is it going to play?

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What we need here is optimism and a strong will to survive, no matter how stupid that might sound.

What we need is the realism to see the position for what it is and make sensible moves. Optimism is a dangerous thing in this case because it leads you to overestimate your own chances, which will cause you to make a mistake and lose much more quickly than you had to.

Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
avatar

DB, after the moves you suggested the board could look like this. What could white do next? Black's going to move Rh7 and Rbh8

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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote:

What could white do next? Black's going to move Rh7 and Rbh8

I'd seriously consider Rb2 in the position you linked to (didn't look much beyond Qxb2 Rxh4 though), but I guess you would have moved the rook from b8 to h8, right?

Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
avatar

Yeah, that sounds good, too. I just wanted to play for sure (there's really not much that white could do to prevent Rxh4 anyways...)

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Kirr
Member #5,060
September 2004
avatar

I don't see any immediate win yet, but it looks promising. White has too many weak points, they should eventually have troubles defending them all. But who knows, may be they'll manage to defend everything..

We should continue to increase the pressure on both flanks. On queen side it would be Rb3, on king side it would be Kg7. We could also move Rc7-c8, which is useful for both plans - it can go on b8 or on h8 later.

If we move Bf5 now: After 31...Bf5 32.Bd4 Kg7 white will have trouble defending pawn h4. So they will probably move 32.Qd4 which we reply by 32...Qe2. (because we don't want to exchange queens). At that point I think they have only move 32.Re1. Then if we move 32...Qf3, they move 33.Re3, and then I am not sure how we should progress. We will probably have to move 33...Qh5 which is not good because the queen will be locked there and we will not be able to take the pawn h4, protected by the bishop. So I don't like playing Bf5 now, unless someone has a good plan what to do after 31...Bf5 32.Qd4 Qe2 33.Re1.

So my main alternatives are either 31...Rb3, 31...Rcc8, or 31...Kg7. Any preferences or better plans? FMC? Flad? :)

Dennis Busch said:

option: black advances f pawn to line 6
our countermeasure: bishop to d4
(then if they pick either pawn we will repick it with bishop or queen)

If you promise to counter 31...f6 with 32.Bd4, I'll move f6 in a moment.. But I'm afraid you will change your mind and capture the pawn instead.

--
"Go to the NW of Stonemarket Plaza to the Blue Glyph Keeper Library door and enter."
- Lunabean's Thief Deadly Shadows Walkthrough, day eight

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

Evert said:

Your countering single threads. But as I said before, that is not enough: white can probably counter against any single thread, but white will not be able to keep defending against all of them.

No not just that, please look again. Countering those threats as I listed them in my (option,countermeasure)-post on the previous page always also prepares for an attack on vital black pieces, mainly the rooks and also aims on disturbing their king.

Evert said:

That's tough for the team, but if it can't appreciate an honest evaluation of the position, then how is it going to play?

Is Evert implying that my evaluation of the situation is dishonest?
We are playing like we've done all the time, by taking votes on what to move. With the problem that this is difficult now, because it seems that Dustin has completely decided to ignore this game, and since our(Everts and mine) thinking is so different in almost every way, that taking votes doesn't do any good. It only puts more tension to everyone and wastes our energy, asking ourselves "Why the hell does he not SEE it?"
What do the black team members think?

Should we fork the game? I don't feel like the discussion between me and Evert is leading anywhere, because we both are blind towards the respective other ones way of playing chess.:-/
Sure Evert has much more experience in chess but that doesn't automatically make my view of the situation invalid and I have the impression that I'm the only one left actively thinking about moves and tactics here, while Evert is always just saying this or that is not good but has completely stopped to make suggestions himself.
Not saying that i don't appreciate that feedback, because it helps us staying alert.

Sorry Evert, I don't mean to piss you off or appear stubborn or anything, but I think all we can do here is to agree to disagree.
And next time(if any) we make a TeamChess, we should pick an executive dictator(!) for each team that will have the last word in every decision and also maybe three members per team is not a good number, because it has the drawback that if one member drops out, the remaining ones will have problems to come to an agreement, especially when their way of analyzing, looking and playing is so unfortunately different like it is the case here.

Fladimir:
In that position you show, the threat of your original plan of putting us into check with the queen is gone again, because your bishop is back in his original position.
We could just move our bishop back to its previous position then, having two pieces defend the h pawn and in case you were going to get a rook on line two then that rook would be blocked off by our bishop and if you take that bishop with that same rook, it would get recaptured with the queen and then our h pawn would still be protected by the queen.

[Note since posts are getting so long that there might be other posts inbetween: This post was written after Fladimirs question on what to do in the theoretical setup of the board after a previously discussed sequence of moves.]

I'm not going to make any more posts now, until the black team has moved, because i think everything has already been said at this point.

Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
avatar

In that case, we're more than happy to move Bf5 and exchange your bishop and queen with our rooks.

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Evert
Member #794
November 2000
avatar

Quote:

Is Evert implying that my evaluation of the situation is dishonest?

I'm saying it's wrong and too optimistic. I think you want to see it in a more optimistic light than it is and in that sense the evaluation is dishonest.

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"Why the hell does he not SEE it?"

That is indeed what I'm thinking.

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Should we fork the game?

No. I'm not going to spend time trying to defend the position as it is now.

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I don't feel like the discussion between me and Evert is leading anywhere,

Where should it lead? It's a discussion on the evaluation of the position and the proper strategy to emply in defending it.

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Sure Evert has much more experience in chess but that doesn't automatically make my view of the situation invalid

No, but honestly, I wouldn't mind at least getting the impression that I'm being listened to when I take the effort of explaining why some strategies are bad or why certain moves were wrong.

Quote:

Evert is always just saying this or that is not good but has completely stopped to make suggestions himself.

It's not white to move for one thing. For another, I said a while back that advancing pawns on the kingside was a bad idea. What do you want me to suggest in this position?

Quote:

And next time(if any) we make a TeamChess, we should pick an executive dictator(!) for each team that will have the last word in every decision and also maybe three members per team is not a good number, because it has the drawback that if one member drops out, the remaining ones will have problems to come to an agreement, especially when their way of analyzing, looking and playing is so unfortunately different like it is the case here.

I don't think team chess in this sense makes much sense, unless the players on one team are of roughly the same playing strength. As it stands, I can propse a tacktic, make a few moves based on that idea - and then someone else decides to make a couple of moves that don't fit into the previous plan, which creates a position in which none of the pieces are working together properly, none of the threads are properly defended and none of the weaknesses are properly exploited. It has the same effect as playing without a plan, which is worse by far than playing with a bad plan (which is why I pulled out a while back and why I said that having chosen for a head-over-heels rush on the kingside, you have to stick to it because if you don't you've just created a weakness without even a ghost of compensation).
Taking a look at black, Kirr seems to have made most of the moves and done most of the proposals. This gives a consistency to black's game that white's game lacks.

There are alternatives for doing a team-based chess though. I don't know the term in English, but the Dutch name for what I have in mind is `doorgeef schaak'. Take a team of two against two (can be more on each team, but they must be the same size). One of them plays black against a member of the other team, one plays white. Whenever you capture a piece, you pass it to your teammate (or to the right if there is more than two players on each team), who may insert the piece into the game instead of doing a move. A few rules apply: 1) The piece cannot be inserted with check, 2) Pawns cannot be put on the first or eight rows, 3) You cannot insert a piece in the same move you received it in (effectively, you cannot delay playing a move until your partner passes you that queen), 4) Pawns always promote to queens (for simplicity) and revert to pawns when captured.

For this variation, form teams of roughly equal strength and have players of similar strength play eachother directly.

ImLeftFooted
Member #3,935
October 2003
avatar

Quote:

Quote:
i disagree to "the position is so horrible"
Read a chess book and then comment again.

Could you be any more egotistical and conceded?

Just in case you were curious (which you're not, but I'm going to tell you anyway) I've read numerous chess books and am familiar with lots of strategies.

BTW, black, its your turn.

[edit]
You know I was just going to leave it at that. Evert you're getting way into it so I thought I would be the bigger man and just leave it be. But you know what, I changed my mind.

Evert your strategy sucks. Whats a pain in the ass about you is all you see is your strategy. And it sucks.

You get it in your head that some move is the golden move and then can't all mad and argumentative and defensive about your stupid move and wont listen to anything anybody else has to say. And then we have to 'prove' it to you that our move is better then yours.

You're a freakin hypocrite.

Dennis and I can go through possible moves and strategies and be right or wrong but actually benefit from having talked to each other about it. All you want to do is play the game by yourself. What use is that? The point of team chess is to work together to figure out your moves. A skill which you seriously lack.

Honestly, who gives a shit if your move is slightly better then their move, or if you saw something they didn't see? If you see something they didn't see then TELL THEM and help the logic progress farther. Winning about how your always right and everyone else in the world is always wrong and how you've read so many chess books and your a chess master and we all suck at chess doesn't help anything.

Its just retarded and stupid.

You've turned a game of chess into a bitch fight.

Alright, now I've complained too much and am going to start a flame war. So I'll resign from this game instead of causing shit loads of arguments and halting the game. I'm gonna delete the thread. If for some reason Evert changes his mind about how he wants to treat the game or he leaves, private message me to come back and i will.

Good Game.

FMC
Member #4,431
March 2004
avatar

hum.. hum... King to g7?

[FMC Studios] - [Caries Field] - [Ctris] - [Pman] - [Chess for allegroites]
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them. -Anacharsis
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

Fladimir da Gorf
Member #1,565
October 2001
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Sure!

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Kirr
Member #5,060
September 2004
avatar

Yeah!

--
"Go to the NW of Stonemarket Plaza to the Blue Glyph Keeper Library door and enter."
- Lunabean's Thief Deadly Shadows Walkthrough, day eight

FMC
Member #4,431
March 2004
avatar

31. ..., Kg7

. r . . . . . .
p . r . . p k .
P . p . p . p .
. . P p P . P .
. . q . b . . P
. . P . . . . .
. . . Q . B . .
R . R . . . K .*

{"name":"show.php","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/c\/cca19593394050eed01ad10bae6ee918.gif","w":400,"h":430,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/c\/cca19593394050eed01ad10bae6ee918"}show.php

[FMC Studios] - [Caries Field] - [Ctris] - [Pman] - [Chess for allegroites]
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them. -Anacharsis
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

I would like to put the queen to f4, as already said on the previous page.
Why?
Because it prepares to get the queen to f6.
They can prevent that by moving the bishop, in which case we can make a queens exchange, or they can prevent it by moving a pawn, which we could take after both of that pawns movement possibilities.

As Dustin said he doesn't want to play anymore and Evert said he doesn't want to defend the situation... I'm not sure if that means that I can just move.
Am I allowed to just move?

Kirr
Member #5,060
September 2004
avatar

Dennis, I think we will not try to prevent your queen from coming to f6. It is harmless there - our king will simply step to h7 or g8. We then can lock your queen at f6 by moving our bishop to f5. Your queen alone can't do any harm at f6, and with that queen out of the picture our pieces will feel much more free.

--
"Go to the NW of Stonemarket Plaza to the Blue Glyph Keeper Library door and enter."
- Lunabean's Thief Deadly Shadows Walkthrough, day eight

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

Good point, though:
I would only want to put the queen to f6, if the king stayed on g7. If you just move it away after queen to f4, there'd be no reason to proceed to f6 immediately, so you wouldn't be able to lock the queen then. And if you only move the king away after the queen already is on f6, then you can't lock it either because I can just put it back to f4 then.
But thanks for pointing the lock possibilty out, because I didn't see that.

[append]
Hm, though even If you locked the queen on f6:
Your king on h7 would spoil the plan of doubling your rooks on h.
Your king on g8 would also spoil that plan or even if you already had put one rook to h8 then, I could proceed the queen to d8, putting the king into check and after that pick away the other rook.
So there is some danger in whites queen coming to f6.

Kirr
Member #5,060
September 2004
avatar

Dennis, I have the real chess board with this position right here. This game is not a blitz, I can think for days about the next move. Do you think I will miss a two-move combination where we lose a rook? I calculate for about 8-10 moves ahead before moving, generally, and that does not include common sense and strategic points. So please give me a favor and don't imagine I will blunder a rook. If you see that you can capture our rook for nothing - it just means we will not continue to that variation.

Well of course everything is possible and people blunder in correspondance chess too, but saying like "I'll move here, you there, and I'll take your rook" just shows that you don't have slightest bit of respect to your opponent. Do you think I have chess board in my avatar for nothing? :)

--
"Go to the NW of Stonemarket Plaza to the Blue Glyph Keeper Library door and enter."
- Lunabean's Thief Deadly Shadows Walkthrough, day eight

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

Cool down, I didn't mean to be disrespectful, never. If you feel that way then you are really reading my posts with wrong (angry? or arrogant?) intonation.:-/
I too have a real chess board setup next to my pc, which is starting to collect dust already, because it sits there for several months already and I think about it every day and even move it around here and there and play against myself, playing black and stuff...
All I wanted to say is that locking our queen on f6 isn't the end to everything and that I still think it would be good for white under certain circumstances.
That of course depends on what you do next and where you move your king or rooks.

I am well aware of the fact that you are probably very intensively into chess and that you won't do anything totally stupid, so if you do anything after queen to f4 that would spoil the plan that I mentioned, we (or I, since I'm not sure if my teammates are still around) would also not continue into that direction.
So what's the point?
I don't disrespect you at all. I'm just publicly thinking about moves.
Why does everyone always seem to take that as a personal attack towards his chess-mastery?
I really don't understand that and I'm very unhappy about it. People always get me wrong, even If I stay totally neutral in my descriptions of my thoughts. It's pulling me down.

And I never said "I move this and that and then I will...". I use words like "could" for a reason, since imho there is rarely anything SURE to happen here.

I feel that this thread is really more about politics and psycho-warfare than about chess and I have to say I HATE that it turned into that direction.:(

Kirr
Member #5,060
September 2004
avatar

Dennis, sorry if I sounded unhappy. I'm far from that. Just it keeps surprising me that you keep discussing variations where we lose rook or queen as some kind of real possibility. That's all I wanted to point out, really. :) Actually I was also sad about recent battles in white team, you should work together to find better moves, not arguing about the past.

About the plan to move to f6, I think if you move to f4 we will not remove the king immediately, but do something more active instead. I don't know yet what (or may be I don't want to say yet). Anyway it's too bad you now know about the trap, I'll have to think something new now.

Evert's idea to do that kind of team chess (with passing captured pieces to teammates) is good too. I played that in the past, it is lot of fun actually. I'm just not sure if it will be easy to handle in just one thread. :)

--
"Go to the NW of Stonemarket Plaza to the Blue Glyph Keeper Library door and enter."
- Lunabean's Thief Deadly Shadows Walkthrough, day eight

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

Pointing out the trap was indeed very nice of you Kirr, but I still play with the thought of walking into it nonetheless.:) (no really, I'm not joking or being sarcastic, if you promise to keep the king on g7 after white queen to f4 then I am likely(given that the way doesn't get blocked by something) to move to f6 afterwards. With the exception that if you do something, which I don't see, that would turn out alarmingly dangerous, then I would not.:-X So nothing is sure.)

The only thing that's keeping me from moving the queen to f4 now, is that I am still unsure if Everts comment that the situation is hopeless was final in his opinion and if he hasn't changed his mind in the meantime.
If he stays with his opinion and doesn't want to defend the situation anymore, then if nobody objects, I will just take full responsibility for everything that has possibly gone or will go wrong in this game and if white should lose this game, everybody may say it was entirely my fault.(please don't be too harsh though...)

If Evert should have changed his opinion and would like to defend the situtation again then I would like to fork the game and still play Qf4 to prevent further unnecessary arguing between us, because it's pulling us down.
Or in other words: I really want to try this, because I am very excited and curious about how the game is going to go on in that direction and I can't be convinced otherwise. (Call that stubborn if you want, blame all faults to me if you must, but please don't feel insulted or disrespected.)

Kirr
Member #5,060
September 2004
avatar

No, I don't promise to keep king on g7. You have to take the risk. :) Also my team-mates may have some different idea, we will see and discuss what to do.

--
"Go to the NW of Stonemarket Plaza to the Blue Glyph Keeper Library door and enter."
- Lunabean's Thief Deadly Shadows Walkthrough, day eight

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
avatar

I waited a few days to see if the white "team" wanted to contribute something but since that's not the case, I will just go on playing the game now, without waiting or asking anymore, because the game has to go on.
If someone should think i'm not allowed to do so, the game should be considered forked then.:-/

32. Qf4

. r . . . . . .*
p . r . . p k .
P . p . p . p .
. . P p P . P .
. . q . b Q . P
. . P . . . . .
. . . . . B . .
R . R . . . K .

{"name":"show.php","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/d\/bd8f632b866c989718c968f4a1e5ff02.gif","w":400,"h":430,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/b\/d\/bd8f632b866c989718c968f4a1e5ff02"}show.php

FMC
Member #4,431
March 2004
avatar

I was thinking of either c7-b7 (and prepare rook attack on the other side), or b8-h8, i'd leave the king where it is for now.

[FMC Studios] - [Caries Field] - [Ctris] - [Pman] - [Chess for allegroites]
Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them. -Anacharsis
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain



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