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#player1 Jim_Burlant Jim Burlant
#player2 Winter Winter
>Jim_Burlant: EGINNRY 8H GINNY +26 26
#note Best.
>Winter: BEIRSU K5 BUR.IES +36 36
>Jim_Burlant: ADENRST H8 .RANDEST +86 112
#note Best bingo. STANDERS 11D and 6F TRANSUDE only score 68 and 63 respectively. 76% to win.
>Winter: AEGIS L2 AEGIS +18 54
>Jim_Burlant: AEHIKLT J10 HAIK +34 146
#note Lots of strong choices with this no-go (HATLIKE doesn't play, and there are no 8's in AEHIKLT?), and this is one of them. But it's not best. Best would have been J7 ANKH for 40. I missed it. Regardless, still in good shape at 84% to win.
>Winter: JT 6J J..T +27 81
>Jim_Burlant: DEILTWY 3I WYT.D +32 178
#note Again, a strong choice but not best in Quackle's eyes. It's a tough call - WIDELY does leave a better combination (ET instead of the EIL that this play does), though its main drawback is that it does set up a juicy spot for the X or potentially something like UMIAQ, though those are admittedly very much worst-case scenarios and not the most likely ones at this stage of the game. Is it worth 2 scoreboard points to give up the board position for leave? Quackle says yes; YMMV.
>Winter: ADELOSV N6 SALVOED +79 160
#note Winter's only other bingo is SOLVATED 15C for 63. This is definitely his best choice and he's back up to 29% winning chances.
>Jim_Burlant: EEILRVW O11 REVEL +33 211
#note While I've had a couple of mild imperfections in how I've played to this point, they weren't significant in determining the outcome. This was the first of several critical positions. I spent a LONG time on this considering 14B plays (REVIEWS, VIEWERS, RELIVES, and I couldn't think of WEEVILS) and LEVER/REVEL O11. I struggled, trying to reconcile what the right tradeoff was between leave and board position. He's just drawn a completely random rack and what this came down to for me was, which was more likely? That he's drawn a bingo out of the bag on a 7-tile pick? Or that he's picked up an assortment of clunk that can score 36+ down the O column? I played this, figuring that if he didn't have a bingo, X, or Z, he wasn't going to score. Yes, I know keeping the W sucks, and that was part of what I struggled with. But I felt that, with this play's giving me a 51-point lead, this left me in good position and I would deal with the W on the next turn.
>Winter: AAENNOT 15B ANNOTA.E +59 219
#note So much for probability.
>Jim_Burlant: ?ACHINW 14A WHA +30 241
#note I saw WATCHING, SANDWICH, and CHAWING. Unfortunately for me, the only bingo that plays is the 26000-probability WHINCHAT F8 for 69. You have to know it to play it. That said, I don't think this is awful per se. It still scores well, does defend against something like ZOO or ZOA 14B, and leaves me CIN?. And if I can draw any of the most probable tiles in the pool (E or O), I'm pretty likely to have something on row 2. As for the sim: the bingo wins, and if you miss the bingo, Q prefers that I play at L10 with WHIN or WHA. While I'm fine with my play given that I didn't know the bingo, the bingo would have defintely been best. I'm still 76% to win with this (the bingo wins 79), but what followed was a bad omen about how the rest of the day would go.
>Winter: DIPR 13C DRIP +22 241
>Jim_Burlant: ?CINRTU 14M CU. +10 251
#note I spent a lot of time here looking for a bingo, my time was spent in vain: Quackle confirms that none play. The irony of this position is that, after reminding myself to repeatedly look for the U back hook to HAIK for several turns, I had any number of fishes available that played there and I whiffed on them. Why? After spending several minutes looking for the bingo that wasn't there, I put this down in speed Scrabble mode to not burn any more time. A fish is the right call here, though I should have played something like UT or UN J14.
>Winter: QU 10F QU. +32 273
>Jim_Burlant: ?EINRTZ -Z +0 251
#note No idea what to do with this and this was another position where I burned a terrible amount of time. The only Z plays I could see were WIZ I3, and I hated what it did to the board; it kills row 2, severely limits row 4, and surely Winter will kill the D column if I play WIZ. I didn't see ZaNIER D8 for 48, and looking at it now I don't like it as it gives way too much back and burns the blank. And ZINE 4F looked like a disaster waiting to happen. So why this? I felt I needed the bingo NOW, not 3 turns from now if I blew the rack apart. If Quackle is to be believed, best is apparently to fish with J1 TRY, though I'm not sure how long row 1 will stay alive if I do that. This felt wrong when I did it, but like I said, nothing felt right and I'd wasted enough time that I was of the mindset that I had to, as my parents would say, "either s#$t or get off the pot." Short term, this worked out. But as you'll see later, throwing the Z back into the bag was the final straw.
>Winter: IX O7 XI +42 315
>Jim_Burlant: ?BEINRT 4C BoRNITE +73 324
#note Or TRIBUNE or TURBINE. Any is as good as any other. All the bingos win 44%.
>Winter: CEOOTU D7 ECOTOU. +24 339
>Jim_Burlant: AEEFGMO 3B FAME +31 355
#note Against a random rack this is best and when I put this down I was thinking that just maybe I still had a good shot at winning this despite my earlier struggles. I was worried about his scoring 35 with the Z, as I'd just turned 11 tiles in my last 2 turns and it was still unseen...but I never expected his next play to do what it did.
>Winter: AIMRZ 2F ZIRAM +61 400
#note The death blow. I'm toast.
>Jim_Burlant: ?EGLOOP 5B LOGE +26 381
>Winter: EFILOO 8A FLI. +27 427
>Jim_Burlant: ?OP 7C P.sO +15 396
#note Time on my clock when this went down: 0:00. While my plays of HAIK and CUE left a few points on the scoreboard, the obvious inflection point was when I whiffed on WHINChAT. Bottom line is that this was one of those games where you don't get a second chance.
>Jim_Burlant: (EOO) +6 402
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