played it. closed the wings around line 43% with the pocket at 53, got VICTORY / "encirclement: tight", 53 Romans still inside. to your question: losing the middle read as a plan, not a mistake, because the intro tells you to lose it before you touch anything. so the real decision isn't whether to give ground, it's when to close, and the meter does all the tension work.
the one thing that pulled me out: during play the buttons read HOLD THE MIDDLE / CLOSE THE WINGS, but the intro taught me "give ground", so my first clicks were looking for a verb that wasn't there. same idea, two names. matching the labels would clean up the first ten seconds.
closing the wings felt good. the pocket number ticking up is the whole payoff.