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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
real lad scores' LiveJournal:
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| Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | | 10:56 pm |
| | Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | | 12:06 am |
club
it's a battle for first place as maddy and i keep duking it out. we're still about .003 apart with me barely in first. 1) vs Richard, TEASELER / RELEARNT sTONIER / W 422-401. i was fortunate this game that richard missed his outplay of IvIES. i missed HIS outplay of IsSEI. so if i had thought of blocking ivies with something else, i would have lost to issei. the other word there is NISEI. 2) vs Maddy, RUBRIcAL / VOTARIES / L 319-407. i didn't play this as bad as i thought it did. it just kinda fell apart pretty quickly. i made a couple of small mistakes early, but the board blocked up and she got a huge K and X play and i couldn't do anything. at the end my only chance of winning is to draw one of the 3 unseen Es for a LO(OP)IEST triple-triple, and i tried 3 times and of course i didn't draw it. i left it in the bag at the end. 3) vs Mike, NUTRIAS ROADBED / wEEPIES SHiTTIER / W 450-446. this game was interesting, and for once i seem to have not freaked out during an endgame. i didn't TECHNICALLY play it correctly, but check this out:
Cesar: Turn 12
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Mike ------- 395
------------------------------ -> Cesar EGILTTU 388
1|= ' F L A N K ' =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
2| Q I " U " - | IGRYCEILLWY 11
3|F I R M ' T - |
4|A E A U ' R - R '|
5|U S H i T T I E R O |
6|V " " A " A R|
7|E ' Z A S ' D O|
8|S J A P A N ' B O|
9| H O E G E N B E D|
10| C A W " O X O I D |
11| V - M O N |
12|' E - w E E P I E S - I '|
13| N ' O ' T |
14| - " N " - |
15|= ' D ' =|
------------------------------
Mike just played FAUVES
This is a tough situation. It's really tempting to go for GITE or GLUE up at O1 but I just can't bring myself to empty the bag and let him plan out his own out-in-two. After about 5 minutes of thinking, I suddenly saw the right play! (See next turn) Then,
Cesar: Turn 13
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Mike GIRWY 419
------------------------------ -> Cesar EGILLTY 403
1|= ' F L A N K ' L| --Tracking-----------------------------------
2| Q I " U " - I| GIRWY 5
3|F I R M ' T - C|
4|A E A U ' R - R E|
5|U S H i T T I E R O |
6|V " " A " A R|
7|E ' Z A S ' D O|
8|S J A P A N T ' B O|
9| H O E G E N U B E D|
10| C A W " O X O I D |
11| V - M O N |
12|' E - w E E P I E S - I '|
13| N ' O ' T |
14| - " N " - |
15|= ' D ' =|
------------------------------
He just did O1 LICE.
It took me a minute or so to realize this was technically unwinnable. This may not be that hard, but I just put myself psychologically in my opponent's shoes and realized that the easiest play to spot is B12 WIRY. I know in a tense endgame if that's the first thing I see, I might latch on to it and not see much of the rest of the board. Of course I'll lose to WRYING, but there's no chance he's going to miss WIRY, so I can't do something like TILLED. Anything that attempts to block both WRYING and WIRY will score little and will give him another very easy spot at G13, it'll be impossible for me to win. My only chance to win is to hope that he doesn't see WRYING. So I do M3 LILY, setting up GET to go out, and he takes the pts and I barely win. So I'm 2-1 but should be 0-3, I guess I'll take it. The final game, I just drew everything: 4) vs Daniel, RADIUMS UPSTAIRs SCHIZOId ANISEED / INVERTER / W 545-333. i won 3 bucks in the lottery ticket for high opening play of radiums! i barely saw it, though, and i also tried SAR*. whoops. | | Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | | 8:21 pm |
| | Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | | 6:48 pm |
there should be a way to let your opponent know online (or in person) that you saw their setup. for example, i was playing someone on ISC who was behind by a bit and does UNCLE at B2 thus forking the board; i can hook it with nuncle on the left or get easy points to the right. i did have an N but nothing obvious, and then later on i had a couple more Ns but better plays elsewhere. anyway, i'm ahead by a lot, but near the end he bingoes with antlion/nuncle. i still won the game, but i don't want them to think i'm dumb. should i make my next play after their bingo very quickly, so they don't think i'm dumb and that was just the play i was expecting, or should i wait a while, as if in shock that that was a good word? i quickly did an "all ozmarules" to see who was watching my game; if there had been a few people i woulda been forced to kibitz "i saw that", but thankfully no one was watching. in person you can sometimes see people taken aback by a setup they missed, but there's no way to show this or the opposite online! (by the way, i am being completely tongue-in-cheek in this post, in case it isn't obvious) | | Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | | 1:16 am |
MOAR CO LOSING LOL
this was my first loss of the tournament against bryan goolsby, to make me 2-1: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5071i remember being kind of annoyed about it at lunch at 3-1, like enough that i was pretty discouraged. i got discouraged too early at this tournament. at the end of the day when i was 5-3 i already knew i wasn't gonna be making an epic comeback... but i'm studying, so i'll get better now for sure ;) | | Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | | 12:02 am |
club
i went to club for the first time in like a month today, as all sorts of things were happening on wednesdays. i am locked in an epic struggle for first place with maddy, who just passed me by 0.003 last week! so i had to try to defend my "title".. 1) vs ralph / RANPIKES PRAGMaS* BLANDEST / EnTRANT / W 444-359. i don't know what i'm doing playing pragmas*, i thought it was good. i'm thinking of C #pragma directives. i saw grampas, and i saw grampus, so i don't know why i picked the phony, they all scored the same. blah. 2) vs ira / FRiCANdO SURICATE AERODYNE PLASHIER / none / W 540-266. luckbox alert 3) vs david w / sICKENED ANTiCULT BESTIARY PARIETES / none / W 519-240. more luckbox alert. it's fun drawing like this not in California Open tournaments. 4) vs tim p / none / AUnTIeS ROSIEST / L 340-365. god damn it. i played perfectly until the 8th move where i was down by about 60 and i tried a dumb desperate fish instead of trying to outscore. also i didn't know PONCE took a D. i thought i made a lot of strategic mistakes this game but it turns out it was mostly board vision and word knowledge again. must practice more. | | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 12:53 am |
| | 12:36 am |
| | Monday, November 9th, 2009 | | 7:49 pm |
More CO losing
Wow, I sure lost a lot of games at this tournament! Here's another one vs Mark Milan: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5044#0See, I thought I'm playing all of these horribly and it turns out I lost like 25 equity points. That was about the number for most of the other losses I'm seeing. Maybe I did get a little unlucky. | | Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | | 10:10 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | | 7:02 pm |
| | Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | | 9:44 pm |
how upsetting
while it's not quite ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tailskid 's record-breaking 1018-point upset at Albany, this 840-point upset against sub-1000 rated Gloriosa Agdeppa will forever remain a blemish on my pulchritudinous tournament record. or not really. this, along with 7 other scoresheets from the first day of the California Open were last seen at a delicious Japanese restaurant called Kiji somewhere in San Francisco. after I kept looking at them in between lapses in conversation, xpmorgan took them away and sat on them, and then nagekinoki stole them. it's a fair price to pay for treating us to an absolutely wonderful dinner, but i sure do hope they don't become compost, as he seems to be suggesting in his LJ poll. after much cajoling, he's released a single hostage - my round 8 loss to Gloriosa... annotated by james: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5015#0if anyone has any advice, it would be EXTREMELY appreciated. i was convinced that BLOOP was the wrong play in relation to LOP, because i need to kill her easiest way to score, but i don't know anymore. | | 5:44 pm |
probably going to reno
road trip through the beautiful, scenic 395! i think two days is a new record for scrabble sabbatical turnaround. | | Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | | 10:45 pm |
some co games
this game had one interesting decision in the middle that i screwed up, i hope the position becomes instructive to me later. i've been wanting to make some sort of brochure/newsletter type issue with a bunch of different positions from my games, that illustrate several aspects of strategy that i screw up, so that i can review it for every tournament. i might work on this soon. http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5009#0 vs Mike Frentz ---- against maddy, another game: http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5010#0 it seems i was playing ok and just getting killed by everyone. most of my games were like this. one notable exception was the game against chris lipe, which is the worst game i've ever played, EVER. (including when i was just learning to play literati and didn't know the 2s) | | Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | | 10:53 pm |
CO
wow, my last california open post sure looks dumb in retrospect. 9-10, +300ish is pretty much awful, but i made a promise to myself that i wouldn't complain about this tournament at all; that i wouldn't complain about drawing about 12 blanks in 19 games, having opponents open with a bingo 7 times on me (and me once), only double-blanking one person (my good friend yak), and the fact that in 10 of the last 11 games my opponent bingoed in the first 2-3 turns (almost always a blank bingo). i think i played catchup in almost every single game. the 900 player that i lost to played SEXIEST for like 110 points after i was unable to shake her off for the first few turns (that is she kept getting ahead of me) and then despite getting away with LIGOLAS* i literally could not draw any rack that made up an even slightly plausible-sounding phony after that. i came up with some pretty creative phonies this tournament, like TRIPLINE*. one funny story is in the gloriosa game, where after much thinking i came up with a million-to-one shot to win, that is to play a high-scoring phony that sets up a decent spot, hope she will pluralize it to go out, and then challenge it off and win by a couple points, and it turns out the phony i played was actually a word. i also promised that i wouldn't complain about opps drawing RAZEEING for 107 pts to something like aein to quickly end the game. the main problem was that i simply don't know any words. pretty much every lost game except for two of them i had big word knowledge mistakes, from missing bingos to most of all not knowing 5s (i never finished them :( ) AAIJNRSY. oh there's a bingo in there! instead i lost to a 900 OFTER is a word KNARR* is not a word. that one is funny. i played KNARR and then my opp put an S on it with an 80+ point bingo. what if that comes off? need to find GASTRULA to win a game BRUMBY?? HENRY takes an S. actually, i used that a couple turns later, but it didn't click right away, so i missed a better play twice before. AFFINES is a word. now now, don't challenge it GYNOECIA doesn't take an S or an L. play the bingo you just drew out of the bag in the right spot and you have an 70ish percent chance of winning the game, rather than losing by 150. i actually had a great deal of fun at the tournament. san francisco is an awesome, awesome, awesome city, the tournament was greatly run and organized, and the location is just fantastic. great food, great people. my family was around and they made it a lot of fun. also, i actually had some pretty good games. i played better than i usually do for the most part, in terms of equity and seeing things. from what i've simmed so far it seems that i've made a small number of equity errors. james stole my scoresheets for the first day though, so i don't know how i played there. anyway, i've said it before and i didn't follow through, but i'm done with tournaments until i learn all the words. i'm simply too perfectionistic to fully enjoy myself at tourneys. i had fun, but i was miserable at the end of the 2nd day mostly because i was extremely tired -- i have a hard time sleeping at tournaments but i think i can figure out how to fix that, it's mostly because i need to do more exercise, i think. so i leave you with probably my favorite game of the tournament. i wish i hadn't blown it at the end. http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=4997#0 against nathan | | Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | | 12:45 am |
california open
i would THINK chances are with me placing. i'm third on the matchups list, that has to count for something. i don't deserve it yet though, i didn't finish even the 5s let alone review everything else, so feel free to play phonies on me guys! my brother his wife and two cute kids are over here for a couple weeks.. we're heading up to san fran next thursday. i'm gonna try to take next week off, but i'm gonna be busy as hell for the next month after that with work.. i would care more about studying if i could make myself care anytime outside within a couple of weeks of a tournament. right now i care about too many things, like finally teaching myself ajax programming, trying to play gta chinatown wars on the DS, catching up with working, and getting a bike for riding along the beaches. i must fit in an hour of studying there. maybe i'll have to give up reddit. /ramble | | Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 | | 10:04 pm |
| | 9:40 pm |
woo
ok one more goal, salvage the tie guys! | | 9:27 pm |
gah
come on USMNT! costa rica has outscored you 5-0 so far.. ridiculous! | | Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 | | 11:35 am |
This southern Virginia accent is hilarious
and barely intelligible. I'm sitting in a hangar for tiny Danville airport coding up stuff for my robot arm.. we expect the robot to be delivered from California later today. This city is poor and sparsely populated. But the air quality is great. It smells like trees. |
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