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#player1 Howard_Pistol Howard Pistol
#player2 Jesse_Day Jesse Day
>Howard_Pistol: AEIILYZ -AEIIL +0 0
>Jesse_Day: EEELNRW 8D NEWEL +18 18
#note wow, how did RENEW not occur to me? Might've still been steaming over that last loss...
>Howard_Pistol: AAEKP 7F APEAK +29 29
#note I actually held him on this one for a while to make sure it wasn't just APEEK, but it looked right.
>Jesse_Day: ?EEMRVW 6D MEW +33 51
#note all I can say is that my board vision was pretty clearly off for this game. I suspect I might've just been exhausted. Whatever the cause, I miss the better spot for MEW as the underlap.
>Howard_Pistol: GOR E3 GOR. +10 39
#note not sure that I get this move.
>Jesse_Day: ?DEGRRV 4C GR.VE +18 69
#note )$@*)$! Really disappointing how badly I managed to play in this game. I missed the pretty easy bingo, OVERGIRD, and then inexplicably left off the D from GROVE just to give him an easy play.
>Howard_Pistol: EPSZ H1 ZEPS +59 98
#note and that's why GROVE sucked.
>Jesse_Day: ??DLORU 2G L.mUROiD +68 137
#note spent ages on this play looking for something decent, but there really wasn't much to work with, evidently. The best bingo in quackle's eye is at the same spot but doesn't give the triple back so easily - DECOLOUR or REDOUBLE, or POULARDE from the P, which seems bad but sims best. Not sold on POULARDE, but LEMUROID is clearly not great, even though he held.
>Howard_Pistol: AESSTTU M1 S.TUATES +66 164
#note I guess he either wasn't sure that LEMUROID was good or didn't think it took the S.
>Jesse_Day: AAIINNT 8J ANI. +11 148
#note this play is garbage, making my life a lot harder and forcing me to start playing catchup instead of being useful given my rack. Either AMI for points or AIN at N5 is significantly better. In fact, anything that doesn't seal the board is better.
>Howard_Pistol: ORVY 5K OV.RY +22 186
>Jesse_Day: AINNTUX 1M .IX +33 181
#note my first play of the game where I didn't make a mistake.
>Howard_Pistol: HOTU O5 .OUTH +33 219
>Jesse_Day: AILNNTU N9 ANNULI +21 202
#note another hold, but no challenge, unfortunately. I thought that this was the right sort of play given the circumstances, but maybe I was playing it wrong given that I wasn't that far down. Quackle's fave is UNMEW, which I didn't look at but makes some sense - it gives howard very few ways to score whereas it also leaves me bingo chances for next turn. I still kind of like ANNULI though.
>Howard_Pistol: EJOT 10J JETO. +28 247
>Jesse_Day: ADEEIOT 11J ODA +25 227
#note IOTA looks a little bit better inspite of the Bs being unseen, just to balance. But actually, I'm not so sure - I would rather reduce turnover to try to make the game a little longer and give me more time to catch up. My win percentages here are surprisingly low - under 20%.
>Howard_Pistol: AABLNY 13I BANAL.Y +30 277
>Jesse_Day: ADEFIIT 14F FETID +32 259
#note yuck. FETID is a self-descriptive word here, because it pretty much ends the game, shutting the board down and leaving him up by at least 40 after his next play. For the second time this game, the right play is AMI at I1. It's tricky to see, but basically it does the job by maintaining my lane at the bottom, slowing the game down, and keeps FETID for next turn if need be.
>Howard_Pistol: CEOR 15E CERO +31 308
#note hence the problem with FETID.
>Jesse_Day: ACIIMOQ D6 .I.IM +9 268
#note ok, now it gets really interesting, relaly fast. This is the kind of play that I don't think quackle can possibly figure out in its current incarnation but that might be able to be deduced by a human player thinking rationally. But I also might be making too much of a completely hopeless position. I played what I did in the faintest hopes of pulling the T or ID and getting a really big Q play. I suppose that I could've just played NIM to do the same thing, but I liked the fact that I was setting up the last A as the potential to do some kind of damage. However, I think quackle is completely right here and that the best chance of me winning is an exchange, which I guess I should've thought about harder. The thing an exchange does is that it leaves the potential of him picking up the Q and getting stuck with it, even if he draws an I, and by keeping something like AM I leave myself MYNA to get back in the game if I draw an N (odds of that are 5/14). Even though my chances are still low, I think that that exchange pretty clearly does the best job of giving me a chance to win, rather than the half-hopes I envisioned when playing MINIM.
>Howard_Pistol: IR 10D .IR +7 315
#note howard actually dropped an I at C10 with his previous play before switching to his actual one. I may have gotten a little bit angry. Sorry, howard. Still not sure that I understand what he was trying to do, though - block a potential bingo? I guess I should be happy that my play made him do a weird move, but it was more frustrating that I didn't draw my T.
>Jesse_Day: ABCEGOQ 7C B. +7 275
#note any idea what I was trying to do here? because I don't have any. Distraction tactics? fishing for the bingo with ACEGOQ? Championship player takes her sweet time about it, and says that there are literally no wins to be had at all with him playing well - it says to play QI, but I suppose that I'm hoping that he'll make some kind of blunder and fail to do anything on row 11 or something like that.
>Howard_Pistol: IN 3H .IN +10 325
#note my annotation to end this game is so sloppy that I have no idea what actually happened, but it was something like this.
>Jesse_Day: ACEFGOQ 11C CAFE +40 315
#note actually the best play, shockingly.
>Howard_Pistol: DEHIST O12 H.TE +53 378
#note he should block my Q spot with ECHT
>Jesse_Day: GOQ 9C Q. +21 336
>Howard_Pistol: DIS 12F DIS +9 387
>Howard_Pistol: (GO) +6 393
#note I can sum this game up in a sentence - I played badly, and therefore didn't deserve to win. Seriously, it was pretty disappointing to end nationals with such a mediocre loss and to fail to make it back to .500 as well. I suppose that by this time I was just supertired and that might explain why I played so bad, but it felt like I'd let myself down after managing to play ok for the last couple of days. But so it goes - I'd have to say that I learnt more from this nationals than from any other tournament, and this game was part of it - the lesson being that games like this tend to be a symptom of bad play, not bad luck, and you have to work harder to find the right play rather than start grousing as I did. on a sidenote, the bus just drove past Hardscrabble Road! How cool is that? Oh, and to those of you who have stuck with me for this long - thanks!
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