Often you will have the situation that you can attack a defending peg either on one or the other side.
Attacking on the strong side gives you a local breakthrough, the weak side can easily be defended by your opponent.

Nonetheless it might be a good idea to start your attack on the weak side and put some cheese into the mousetrap.


In the diagram above Blacks 4.i12 (weak side) can easily be defended - but Black continues attacking on that side as long as he can threat to break through without a defensive reaction from White.

But now, as late as possible, the mousetrap snaps and Black catches the mouse with 14.i18 on the strong side leaving White with a huge disadvantage (see diagram below).


White cannot break through on the left bottom side, e.g. 15.e17 16.f21 -/+ (Achilles Defense) or 15.e18 16.e20 -/+ (Medcalf Defense).

On the right side of the board White has only left the rows 'k' to 'w' but the whole range of lines '1' to '24' for the remaining match.
Black otherwise has a lot of possibilities with much shorter ways thanks to his earlier mousetrap strategy.

Conclusion: Be careful when you smell some cheese. It might be healthier for you to continue attacking your opponent somewhere else on the board!

Some examples for mousetraps (including the above example):

• Kd Hoffmann vs. Pete99
• alain vs. Kd Hoffmann
• Kd_Hoffmann vs. nie_wiesz
• nie_wiesz vs. Kd_Hoffmann
• tasuki vs. Alan Hensel