Comments | porosus: A tale of two tournaments

porosus

A tale of two tournaments

May 26, 2008 20:31

I was playing well and in great shape after two days at the Arden Cup, and then the wheels came off.
With three rounds to go I had to win one game to clinch division C. I lost all 3 through a mix of bad luck and bad play and finished third. I attribute part of the problem to a bout of insomnia the night before. After wkaing up to a thunderstorm ( Read more... )

Comments 5

aibretty May 27 2008, 18:21:21 UTC

I've just gone through game 1 so far and it doesn't look like you played TOO bad. You probably should have seen MISSEND, but other than that there's nothing terribly questionable until your ALEPH play.

I don't see a star play, but barring a really awesome draw (or a really dumb move on her part [i.e., exactly what happened]), you're going to be stuck making some pretty low scoring plays for the next few turns. I don't know.

It's too bad after GUT there isn't any blocking plays for the M hook, cause you have to think she has it at that point, maybe even in combo with a blank. Unfortunately, exchanging bingoes didn't work out. Tough luck.

porosus May 27 2008, 18:54:41 UTC

Or she had a bingo from the G there. With both blanks unseen, I had to exchange. I hated ALEPH too. I should sim the position. Most of Quackle's suggestions slot a vowel in the TWS lane which seems like suicide at this point. POILU has a decent leave. But it's only 10 points and likely gives her points playing to the TWS.

Even had I seen MISSEND, I wouldn't have been sure enough to play it, not when I have a guaranteed 87 points.

porosus May 28 2008, 00:37:03 UTC

I just ran ~8000 iterations of a 4 ply sim of the top 50 suggestions. The top 5 plays are:
D1 POILU
2M PIU
2C OUPHE
2c OUPH
D4 LOUPE

They're only separated by about 1.5% difference in win percentage, and ALEPH is 9th on the list and about 3 percentage points behind POILU. I'm not really crazy about any of the plays here. I think I may dip into my simulated games to find positions where you're stuck with a rack like this where exchanging isn't the right play but nothing scores well.

hector31 June 25 2008, 08:55:34 UTC

For the most part it looks like Dave didn't have much to play with in the final three games. That would get to anyone. That said, one play I disagreed with was WAIT in the Mary K. game, Turn 4. Obviously AOUU is a nightmare leave, and this board doesn't have a lot of dumpability to it - on different boards it might be easier to start shaping your rack going forward, but it's going to take a while to get out of this jail (granted you hit the perfect storm; no improvement, and she created a scoring area you were powerless to use). If WAIT scored more perhaps I'd take it even with the feeling that next turn probably is a pre-destined exchange, but I don't think 20 is enough here, not for my taste anyway.

At the end of the day this might be simply a stylistic difference, and I respect that your first instinct was to play through the crap rather than mail in the turn, but I think I'm reaching for the bag here.

Thanks for the posts, I respect players who aren't afraid to show games like this.

aibretty May 27 2008, 20:22:35 UTC

Game 2 was just painful. Once you got those orphans, you just lost your mind. Believe me I understand, but you have to think that you don't need a bingo to win this game, and with both blanks unseen, you really should get some turnover and score as much as you can. Also, on this board ENRST is not a great leave because your lines have to end in E or play through a G in the middle of the word. Even if you draw a bingo, chances are it won't play with that kind of leave ( ... )