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#player1 Orry_Swift Orry Swift
#player2 Jim_Burlant Jim Burlant
>Orry_Swift: ?EINPSS 8C SPlINES +72 72
#note Round 11. In case you're counting, this is the fourth opening rack bingo an opponent has drawn and the second consecutive time Orry has drawn one against me. This is Orry's best bingo.
>Jim_Burlant: ACDNOOQ F6 QA.D +34 34
#note While this is the no-brainer best play, the sim runner up is an interesting choice that I never even considered: exchanging OQ.
>Orry_Swift: GIR G5 GIR. +20 92
>Jim_Burlant: CENOOOT E8 .OCO +13 47
#note Not that I'd have known it, but there is an 8 in this rack through a Z, ECTOZOON. I had one half-decent option that I missed - H1 CONTO - and there are 5 plays that stand out at the top of the sim. This is one of them; they all win within 3/4% and sim within 2-1/2 points of each other. Best would have been H1 CONTO. Other good options are E7 CLOOT and 7B COO.
>Orry_Swift: ELZ D11 LEZ +26 118
>Jim_Burlant: AEENOOT 13B OO.E +26 73
#note I'm a little surprised by the sim result - Q wants me to turn the rack with OZONATE for 36. Yes, I saw the B front hook but figured that drawing 3 to AENT was worth keeping the rack together, B hook or not. The sim says this is a 4-point dog. I'm guessing that, everything else the same, but the B hook given up is down a less dangerous line, this is the star play. Whatever, this worked out.
>Orry_Swift: DIR 14A RID +15 133
>Jim_Burlant: AEFILNT C1 INFLATE. +74 147
#note Yay, back in the game!
>Orry_Swift: ACENORT 15C ENACTOR +84 217
#note Sigh..down a bingo yet again.
>Jim_Burlant: JNRTTVY 1B T.VY +14 161
#note Erring on the side of rack balance. I considered JIVY but (a) didn't like the duplicated T's, and (b) didn't want to give back 29 points if he had to dump OE with a B1 play. I figured I'd be able to play the J on the next turn. Q prefers 5B NAVY and JIVY, saying this wins roughly 1-1/2% less often and sims not quite 4 points down.
>Orry_Swift: ADW F11 WAD +28 245
>Jim_Burlant: AGJNRST 14H JAG +26 187
#note Considered 3 plays here: 14H TAJ, 5B JAGS, and this. TAJ scored best but neutralized my S. The appeal of JAGS was the much better ANRT leave, but I just couldn't bring myself to part with my S, even though the ENACTOR hook is the only place to play it. Ultiimately, I felt the pool had a healthy distribution of vowels, so it was worth it to play this and set up the S hook. Q agrees - this is best.
>Orry_Swift: FLU 4A FU.L +22 267
>Jim_Burlant: EINRSTU K8 UNITERS +76 263
#note Yay! Back in the game again! I was less worried about how easy it wasy for him to hook it than how easy I thought it might be for him to extend to O8, which is why I chose this. Quackle is in mild disagreement; Q says TRIUNES was better, winning 33.33% to this play's 32.2.
>Orry_Swift: ?EEILOT 2E ETOILEs +65 332
#note Sigh - down 65 yet again. The L column plays give me too many more options while this makes it harder for me to bingo. I agree with Orry's reasoning; Quackle does not. Q thinks he should play L3 ZEOLITE. Pfft.
>Jim_Burlant: GHIMNSX H1 M.NX +63 326
#note Yay, back in the game! This is insane!
>Orry_Swift: ABIMU 13I BA.IUM +37 369
#note This is by no means bad, but Orry hit the clock and instantly realized his mistake: UMBRA A11 scores 54 and doesn't give back what this play did.
>Jim_Burlant: ADGHISW N10 WHI.S +42 368
#note The critical position. "Oh, look - something shiny!" I saw that I could triple the W and hit for 40+ and only made a token effort to find something down the O column. WISHA, which I never saw, plays at O11 and scores 47. While this play isn't awful, it may have cost me the game. Or maybe not, as I'll explain in a bit.
>Orry_Swift: AEHKNRY 1J HARKEN +48 417
#note Ouch! This was Orry's rack. He said that, at the time he put this down, he hadn't noticed the WHIMS back-hook yet.
>Jim_Burlant: ABDEEGP A13 B.A +33 401
#note Q says that I should just dump the rack with FEEDBAG for 42; with the B in hand, I'd been fixated on the OOZED front hook. I saw this, saw that it scored, and took the bag to one. And despite Quackle's opinion, this forced Orry's hand...
>Orry_Swift: EIOOTVY O7 VETO +26 443
#note Unbeknownst to me, Orry had a rack of EIOOTVY,and from his perspective the unseen pool was AABDEEGPRU, which threatened an out bingo of UPGRADE down the O column. He couldn't just auto-pilot TOYO 15L given that possibility.
>Jim_Burlant: ADEEGPU A4 .ADGE +30 431
#note Right idea, wrong execution. FUDGE for the same amount of points sets me up to go out with APE J10 for 25, saving a lot of spread. That said, this didn't cost me the game, as I don't have a win here.
>Orry_Swift: IORY 15N YO +32 475
#note The other reason WHAMS might have been better. If I play WHAMS he's playing (FULL)Y/YO for 22.
>Jim_Burlant: EPU I8 .PUE +9 440
#note While WISHA would have scored 47 to WHIMS' 42, the big problem with my play of WHIMS was that it allowed Orry to milk his V and Y for 58 points, which WISHA would have prevented. But the big unknown if I had played WISHA was whether I would have drawn an A for (F)EEDBAG with the extra tile I turned, or if I would have picked something like the V and left the A in the bag for Orry to get it after he played HARKEN. While there was room for improvement on my end and I won't claim that WHIMS was the best play, did it really decide the game? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on whether the extra tile turned (WISHA turned 5 to the 4 tiles that my play did) would have been something good, or a rack killer. Frustrating to figure out. Regardless, this was probably one of the most enjoyable games I had this past tournament.
>Jim_Burlant: (IR) +4 444
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