| Player 1 |
|
#player1 David_Pearl David Pearl
#player2 Jesse_Day Jesse Day
>David_Pearl: DHU 8G DUH +14 14
>Jesse_Day: AAFKNPU G6 PA.AUK +15 15
#note I was a little bit unsure about PUNKA (getting confused with PUCKA) and PUNKAH, and taking way too long in general, so I settled on my play and hoped that just maybe he'd challenge or something. The best by a long way, however, is KHAF at I7, because it's more points and keeps the board a lot tighter. I think that I would've chosen KHAF had I considered it.
>David_Pearl: ?ADNRSV 9A VeRAND.S +64 78
>Jesse_Day: CEFIILN D8 F.CILE +30 45
#note on the static evaluation quackle likes FIVE much better than anything else, and my play catches up some but not all the way. The reason is pretty straightforward: FIVE blocks the triple, which is currently the best spot on the board, and the subsequent leave of CILN bingos 30% of the time versus the 18% of IN. I noticed as a consistent trend that I was undervaluing triple lanes, and I underestimated how much better CILN would be simply by cutting down on the number of bad tiles that can be drawn. In general, I think I tend to prefer playing through tiles rather than keeping leaves, but here I should've recognized that CILN had some quality to it.
>David_Pearl: UU 12C U.U +3 81
>Jesse_Day: ABEILNY A7 EN.IABLY +107 152
#note oh, I suppose that's why I didn't play over there.
>David_Pearl: ?EIIMST 12G STIMIEd +82 163
#note note SEMIFIT and KISMETIC as cute plays. even though this was a fair number of points, it's still hard not to be happy that his draw of the blanks has been nullified by my own stroke of good fortune.
>Jesse_Day: EHIIIPT 6D HIP.IE +19 171
#note no excuse for missing pithier. hell, when I looked at this again I even thought pithier before anything else, but evidently I couldn't do it over the board. on the other hand, he might not know that it takes the r.
>David_Pearl: AR J5 AR +20 183
#note nevermind, I guess he does.
>Jesse_Day: BEEFITY 4H BEEFY +35 206
#note here's a question for you - on average, what's better: IT or EY? quackle seems to think EY. wouldn't have guessed that. in any case, BEEFY plays for one more point vertically, but it certainly isn't worth opening the board.
>David_Pearl: AW 3H AW +22 205
>Jesse_Day: EGGIOOT 2H GOGO +22 228
#note somehow I didn't even think of moving GOGO over to the left, which opens up a small hot spot but doesn't give up the triple. it's only .5 better, though, and maybe you could even argue that the 2H placement is better because he has bingo tiles and thus won't be able to kill me at that spot usually, and the 2F placement sets up a hard-to-block lane at the top. Tough call, but I would've moved it left had I seen it.
>David_Pearl: AOZ 5C ZOA +33 238
>Jesse_Day: AEEINNT 13H ANENT +19 247
#note the key move. I'm not sure that I had a complete great justification for it, and it took me about six minutes to make up my mind. Essentially, he's played off two or three tiles per turn for the last three turns and opening lanes the whole time. indications therefore have to be that he has a pretty big rack and that his leave after ZOA was good - somewhere in ERS territory at least. maybe his last play was just for points, but I certainly felt that he had a huge rack. At the same time, the spot at the top was worrying, so I considered something like TENIA for a long time. But ultimately I went for what I thought was the best defensive move available, ANENT. Plays such as ANTE underneath are out because they give huge X plays back, which would leave me in lots of trouble on a newly closed board. Quackle's favorite makes some kind of sense, though: playing YEN at 14B and hoping to hit a bingo at the spot which he doesn't take. But I only bingo about 46% of the time with AEINT even after an opponent play with a random rack. Let's say instead that my opponent has ERS. The sim suddenly becomes just about a dead heat, though YEN stays up a few on the win percentage. I could play around with more guesses given what his actual rack was next turn (he told me afterwards) but I have to disagree with quackle here, and it least it sort of backs me up. (ok, fine, he would probaby have played TZAR if he had an R, but still)
>David_Pearl: DENORRS 1K DRONE +24 262
#note so I really did manage to block something: ENDORSER.
>Jesse_Day: CEIJORV 4D ORC +25 272
#note this, on the other hand, was a pretty solidly mediocre play. I suppose I thought that JIVE would be able to do something on the board that resulted, and I was reluctant to make any JIVE plays given the way the board looked at the moment. but quackle likes COZ or JIN better. I think JIN is off because quackle thinks I'll be bingoing a quarter of the time with CEIORV - that's not the kind of play that david's going to make after JIN, so I think that one can be thrown out. COZ, on the other hand, keeps a flexible tile that allows me to better dispose of the J and the V. I still wonder if I should've just played them off now, though.
>David_Pearl: ALRT K8 RATL.. +12 274
>Jesse_Day: EIJMTVX 8K .EMIX +45 317
#note yuck. I would consistently miss this spot throughout the rest of the game, to the point that I started wondering if I had a transcription error. MIX would've been miles ahead of my play, though both make me the favorite to win. It might also have been partially do to my eternal bugbear, time pressure. but MIX would've really helped me out a lot.
>David_Pearl: DEENORW I11 W..D +8 282
#note I was looking at the tile pool and wondering if he would make a play like this when he in fact obliged.
>Jesse_Day: GJNOQTV N7 Q. +11 328
#note uhoh, this doesn't look so good. especially given that I just took all the junk out of the pool. I don't really agree at all with quackle's suggestions of JOINT - of course I saw it, but I think it's a recipe for losing. Obviously if I play around with it too much I'm going to be guilty of tampering with the sim results, but JOINT seems terrible because it sets me up for a Q stick unless I draw another T. plays like JINGO or JOIN keep the T for QAT if it comes down to it, but I'm still losing if he bingos, and he's going to get another turn to fish, and I'm going to have to block and allow him to Q stick me even if I drew one of the Ts. This is not how I want to lose. Playing QI blocks some lanes that could come in handy for him and gets rid of the worst tile on my rack, with spots for the J. I give him one shot at hitting the triple lane, but I have no blocks anyway - GOD down below just keeps too horrible of a rack. Maybe I should take quackle more seriously here, but I ain't winning anything with JOINT, JINGO or JOIN against an intelligent opponent, which david most certainly is. Note that if I'd played MIX I would have JIVED as an easy block.
>David_Pearl: EEORSST 13C S.T +12 294
#note dodging the bullet.
>Jesse_Day: GIJNOTV 14G GO. +8 336
#note my blindness to that spot at the bottom left should've cost me this game, because my play likely should be JIG to go up by 74 , and a bingo leaves me down six with INOTV and two tiles trying to score enough to win, and if I draw an E I pretty much always win with VIXEN. The odds of me drawing an E are 48/90, so that corresponds to just about a 50% chance of winning minus the times he draws the S for VIXENs. But quackle actually seems to like VAW slightly better to preserve JIG for next turn, I guess - but I would much rather make him empty the bag with a fish, in which case I should make a two tile play...in any case, GOD actually starts to pull ahead in the sim given some assumptions. another tough call.
>David_Pearl: O 8C O. +7 301
#note given the bag the only thing he could fish for was STERILE, and he obliged by playing off the O. Bag is empty - what's my play?
>Jesse_Day: EIJNOTV K8 ......E +7 343
#note I thought this was maybe the best single play I made at nationals. It's the only winning play available that I could find, and quackle agrees. I had about a minute and a half, and it took me about half of that before I realized that I had the block to save the game. of course, I went on to botch the endgame, but it didn't matter.
>David_Pearl: EEILRST O7 I.TLE +23 324
>Jesse_Day: IJNOTV 3G J.. +21 364
#note told you I was stupid. Somehow I just completely missed the spot at the bottom left. again.
>David_Pearl: ERS 9J R.SE +12 336
>David_Pearl: (INOTV) +16 352
#note I was fairly proud of this game. while I made a fair number of mistakes early on the game, I think that I played the series of moves at the end of the game that I had to do to maximize my chance of winning the game - that is, except for missing the spot at the bottom left, which I have no explanation for whatsoever. David seemed pretty frustrated after this game. Meanwhile, on my end, this would be the last time I was at .500 for many, many games.
|
