Belated portland games

[magratheazaphod]

I'm finally catching up on my backlog of tournament games. Some of my early bird games were already up (including this highly entertaining thread about some questionable decisions I made) but I am finally getting to the main event. I had forgotten how entertaining my first four games were - that's all I've had time to go through for now, but there'

Comments

[nigelbo]

I see that there are some other factors at play with (H)OE in the game against Ron, but I kind of cringed when you said that blocking pARFLES(H) was one of them... I would have instantly rounded whatever chances i estimated that my opponent had of seeing and playing PARFLESH to zero- if he is lucky enough to have it and good enough to see it and know it, then doesn't he deserve to win anyway? I prefer to treat my opponents' chances of finding obscure words like that as if they were nonexistent. When they hit them, hooray for them. But most of the time I play with the assumption that they will play "in line" with what I expect them to do, and quite often it allows for easier, quicker decisions for me that rarely get punished by that worst-case-scenario type of play.

All that being said, yeah, ok, maybe I woulda left it open and he woulda parfleshed the shit outta me. but at least I got beat by a brilliant play, you know? that's a win in my book anyway, because I got the opportunity to witness a moment of brilliance.

[magratheazaphod]

give ron some props...he has pretty damn good word knowledge, and I believe he said after the game that he knew PARFLESH. That's not a guarantee that he would see it necessarily.

I deifnitely catch your point - I think blocking the lane on the far right should've been my priority.

[nigelbo]

I do remember that guy, and props are definitely in order (I unsuccessfully challenged a bingo of his myself that tournament, lol), but I don't know. Should keep in mind that "knowing a word" can mean that a person saw the word years ago, and perhaps wouldn't challenge if it were played against them, but they might not have a snowball's chance in hell of finding the word on their own. Then again, "knowing a word" could also mean (of course) that a person knows it COLD, has studied the letters contained within MANY times, and can unscramble them with the correct answer instantly, every time, no matter what. Lots of players are this way (second scenario) with lots of words. but I imagine PARFLESH is much closer to the first scenario for most players, including experts and even top experts.