dogshitpacker

Last night I made dinner, greatly overestimating the servings needed.  I thought there'd be nine and a third guests (including two-year-old Sammy), when, in fact, only Spouse and his parents were home.  As Spouse noted in his blog, Aunt Mary decided not to come in protest (and to punish us heathens) because of what we'd done with her nativity figurines, posing them in X-rated acts.  As much as I wish there were a God and heaven, I don't believe in either, and our proud atheism often causes trouble with his devout mom and aunt.  But, back to dinner. . .

So, I made coq au vin using fourteen pounds (!!) of chicken.  The prep work took at least three hours longer than usual, even with my sous chef's help, as each chicken has to be cut into pieces, trimmed, partly skinned (to reduce the fat content of this already-fatty dish), seasoned, floured and browned in rendered bacon fat, and then the frying has to be done in small batches. 

Spouse is scarily inept when it comes to using large sharp knives, even after I demonstrated proper technique, but he gets an A- for effort!  I was equally inept with the flambe - and nearly burned the kitchen down - when I added two cups of brandy and lit it over a too-high flame.  Honestly, I came this close to scorching my face off when the flames shot up about three feet from the pot.  I immediately covered the pot with the heavy glass lid, and Spouse said, "Well, now, you've completely extinguished the flame; don't think you wanted to do that."  "Really?" I said.  "Well, sure, you've just cut off all the oxygen."  "Oh."  Turns out Spouse was 100% wrong (or the lid not tight-fitting enough).  When I took the lid off a minute or so later, the flames shot up again. And once again, I just missed getting scorched. Scary!!

I then added two whole bottles of pinot noir, tons of fresh herbs and an entire bulb of fresh garlic.  Two changes I made to accommodate the onion-loathing, vegephobic Raus was to omit the onions and mushrooms completely.  As a result - and  to my disappointment - this made the dish unrecognizable as coq au vin.  Ah well. . .Still tasty,  but not as good.

I am still deciding whether to go to Albany.  OP has offered to drive me there if I make it up to his place - and this would make for a fun trip, but that's still a lot of time in the car.  I'm not concerned about OP's driving skills, but my driving, though much-improved, still makes me nervous. Since that really bad accident coming back from the Maine tourney (wherein I totaled my fairly new Hyundai, and broke my finger), I haven't taken any trip longer than an hour by myself.  Albany would mean at least six hours' driving roundtrip, just to get to OP's place. Feel like I'd be rolling the dice no matter how careful I was.  I know this may be shocking to some, but I Am a Bad Driver.

BUT 2010 seems like a milestone new year, and it would be fun to hoot an' holler with everyone. . .so, maybe.

i didn't go to club today because my sister came to visit us earlier in the morning (i haven't seen her for like a year) and not because i'm sitting on my club lead! as it is, it's not guaranteed yet, but i'll try my best to make it to the final club session on Dec 30 barring any last minute travel...

(hint: after she visited the Galapagos, srockhop told us that there was "white NANG everywhere.")

But not necessarily a top rated one. I picked a random ISC game to show how it goes, my mistakes and all. Okay, this video is more to the speed of the average CGP reader and not the average LJ reader. But it was fun to make! I think you will find this funny.



By the way, I haven't figured out yet how to have my webcam capture what is on the screen.

This was a pleasant little exercise. Might do one in OWL2 later, I guess.

Results:

Total equity loss: 74 (charging the full -26 for one phony)
Word knowledge: 39
Best-simming play not sufficiently considered: 18
Saw candidates, chose worse-simming one: 17
Missed bingos: none
Chose top-simming play or less than 0.5 from it: 37/50
Equity lost on CSW-only words either not known or not considered: 17


( ah, the name is Bootsy, baby )

Today I did something that I had, surprisingly, never done before in my 34-plus years on the planet: I drank some eggnog.

I'm kinda thinking that if another 34 years go by before the next time, I won't be terribly disappointed.

I didn't sim any of these... just used the static evaluator.
Total equity lost: 93.8 Average equity lost per turn: 1.88
Equity lost on word knowledge: 26.6 (pealed, oxlike, carven, potpie, pepino)
Other equity loss: nothing major, lots of little misses... on one of them it wanted me to play TAILFIN at 8H instead of 8C for 6 more points... ya, right!
Toughest racks: AAFQVVZ (score 18 and keep AFQZ, yikes), EGIKNQY (score 16 more points but keep the Q), CIIMRUZ (score 14 and keep MIZ, yikes again... this was the trickiest one IMO)
Missed bingos: none

( results )

For those of you that have iPhones, which application(s) do you use to duplicate what Blackberry Messenger does? I've got Ping!, but it's kinda meh. What else is there, and what's better? I'm thinking about 2010 (which I'll write about at some point) and realizing that I'll be spending over half of it overseas, thus the need for a way to keep in touch without getting charged out the wazoo.

Follow up to yesterday:

My latest "stupefying" video:

someone teach me that Ss suck:

cesar: Turn 2
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O      robin                    DIGESTS   90  
   ------------------------------  -> cesar                    AQUEMVS   30  
 1|=     '       =       '     =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  -       "       "       -  | AAAABCDDDDEEEEEEEEEHIIIIJMNNNOOOOOPRRRRRSSTT
 3|    -       '   '       -    | TTTUUWWXYYZBOS?CEHUGFGIOILPAAILLNR  78
 4|'     -       '       -     '|
 5|        -           -        |
 6|  "       "       F       "  |
 7|    '       '   ' L     '    |
 8|=     '     V I G A   '     =|
 9|    '       '   ' N     '    |
10|  "       "       K       "  |
11|      A T O N I E s -        |
12|'     -       '       -     '|
13|    -       '   '       -    |
14|  -       "       "       -  |
15|=     '       =       '     =|
   ------------------------------
Opp just bingoed with ATONIEs

no cesar, D8 AQUAE is not the best play (not even close, there's MANY things better than it!) i really wanted to play SQUAMA, then I thought, nah, MSV > EV. But no! also, SQUAMA takes the E, which he might not think of.
He did draw DIGESTS out of the bag and it woulda fit with SQUAMA anyway, but he might not have thought of it.

so i've been told complaining about 3-1s is getting kind of old, so this time, i'll be HAPPY about going 3-1. all 4 games today were interesting.

1) vs Alan: DInERIC TRAINED / SUBERIN RAPTURE / W 527-380. i continue the absurd lucky streak against alan. not only that but towards the end all the stars aligned and he gave me a Y I needed for GYTTJA for freakin 66 points, then I draw the other blank and the Q and i get (A)CQUEsT for 74 pts! silly lucky games.

2) vs Maddy: ALTHoRN GAZEBOS / RESHONE ATOMIEs / W 464-399. This game was INTENSE. I pulled away early with GAZEBOS for 98 (drawing it to BGZ, can you believe my luck?) but she was right behind the entire game. At the very end, I had put a C at O1 with the case I, so I wasn't too worried about her having an -IC bingo:

cesar: Turn 11
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O      maddy                    -------   370 
   ------------------------------  -> cesar                    DEGIORV   435 
 1|=     '       =       '     C| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  -       "       "       - R| DAAENORS  8
 3|    -       '   '       L A Y|
 4|'     -       '       - A T '|
 5|        -           -   V O W|
 6|  "       "       " J   A M I|
 7|    '     D '   '   E   ' I N|
 8|P A I K   U   B E A U X   E S|
 9|    ' A L T H o R N   I T s  |
10|  "     O Y   G E E       "  |
11|Q       U           F        |
12|U N C L I P   '     I D     '|
13|I   -   E   '   G A Z E B O S|
14|R - R E S H O N E "   F I N O|
15|T     '     M E L T   T   O W|
   ------------------------------
Her last play was JEU K6

Here with AADENORS unseen I made a list of all the possible racks because for once I had enough time for the endgame. I didn't see any 7s or 8s, but I really wasn't worrying about O1 because as I said I had the -IC. Then I looked at it again and immediately thought OH CRAP. ACDENORS!!! 25% chance of losing (probably higher because she's not going to purposely keep duplicates). I spent most of my time trying to figure out how best to block it, but even though I just KNEW there were no 7s, I could not make myself do ODIC, the best play, so instead I did DOC. Still, I was happy I didn't screw this endgame up! And sure enough, I drew the A out of the bag.

Surprisingly Championship Player is not finding the win here. How do we fix it? It keeps doing stuff like GROVE or OGIVE E3; presumably ODIC/ORGIC/etc don't score enough and they get thrown out too early?

3) vs Robin: VISITOR DECURIA# CRENATE / ATONIEs DIGESTS SALTINE / L 384-446. (must not complain must not complain). I played a purposeful phony after he started running away too quickly, but I could never freaking catch up. I did know it was CSW, so maybe my looking at Causeway and WSC games is paying off ;) At the end maybe the blank could have saved me, or not drawing the J and the Z out of the bag together, but it was not to be.

4) vs Roy: sAFETIED WASTREL / DONNERt TRAILERS / W 414-391.
Everyone at club thought I was nuts for passing up RIDEABlE/REBAItED here, instead playing I6 AB(R)I.

cesar: Turn 4
   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O   -> cesar                    ABIDEE?   62  
   ------------------------------     roy                      -------   114 
 1|=     '       =       '     =| --Tracking-----------------------------------
 2|  -       "       "       -  | AABDEEEEEEEIIIKMNNOOOOQRRRSTTTTUUUVFITUYGHMG
 3|    -       '   '       -    | OVYAHOAEILPSJSWACILLWLPAANRRST  74
 4|'     -       '       -     '|
 5|        -         E -        |
 6|  "       "       X       "  |
 7|    '   D   '   ' I     '    |
 8|=     D O N N E R t   '     =|
 9|    C O Z   '   '       '    |
10|  "     I F       "       "  |
11|        N A         -        |
12|'     - G     '       -     '|
13|    -       '   '       -    |
14|  -       "       "       -  |
15|=     '       =       '     =|
   ------------------------------
Roy's last play was EXIt.

I've heard people use logic like "if I pass up the bingo, I never draw one.. you gotta take the 60 points now!" you can't think like that! You gotta go strictly by probability. I was sure ABRI was better than bingoing here, and it sims 4 points better than rideable and 9 points better than rebaited, despite scoring almost 40 points less. Anyway, Roy was very frustrated because ABRI somehow managed to block BOTH spots for his natural ENLARGER. I ended up slowly coming back and at the end he played GRISTLER* emptying the bag. I saw no way to win with what was left, other that making GRISTLERS*, and I knew HE would challenge it off if that's the only way he could win. I had to challenge, but then I accidentally gave him a spot for trailers! >:( I had bad enough tiles that I was forced to play through, but I was low on time and almost blew it; luckily I was far enough ahead that I still won by a little.

Look at the board diagram above again. Unfortunately, I was a bit wrong. Sure, ABRI is better than rideable or rebaited, but it's not the best play! Find the best play! (I swear, I saw the word on my rack, but not on the board! >.< )

Not sure whether to post this as I don't wish to appear unhumble*. But everybody's doing it. And most of my games were in Australia, which is not always the toughest crucible.

11 tourneys played since this time last year, including WSC and Causeway. That was 197 games in total, with 155 wins (78.7%, or 88.2% domestically) and a spread of 12,665 (average 64.3, 86.8 domestically). Eight tournament wins, one second place, a 15th and a 10th. Earned about $3,500.

Highlights were winning the Australian Nationals and the Australian Masters with daylight between me and second place. But pretty much every game was enjoyable, in retrospect. Also consorting with my scrabble friends from far and wide at the Zon and elsewhere.
Lowlights - I suppose it was my fade into the teens towards the end of the WSC despite intensive preparation...but as I seem to have gained a couple of unmerited wins on the final day due to opponent errors, perhaps my final ranking was fair.
Tourneys for 2010 - perhaps not so many as 2009, but I will still hit the majors and ensure I fall in with the international qualifying criteria.
Goals - I have temporarily put Zyzzyva aside after a feeble couple of attempts to go through my accumulated cardbox (have already rescheduled twice and will need to do so again). But no doubt I will resume before long. Furthermore I will try and play a bit less like a computer and a bit more like Nigel.

A fun game with Ricky Purnomo (rudely billed as 'x' in the file I uploaded). Here's how you can have a superb early game, survive three successive bingos with strong winning chances, and then succumb at the very end thanks to a skilfully-found setup.

http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5222

While directing the WCSC in October I had to deal with a somewhat unusual situation in Division 4. Player 1 was ahead of Player 2 by about 90 points, and it was near the end of the game (no tiles in the bag). Player 2 noticed that Player 1's timer was stuck at zero and not counting overtime. They called me over for a ruling on what to do. Player 2 was adamant that Player 1 was "at least 3 minutes overtime", while Player 1 was flustered and insisted that it had been her turn for less than 2 minutes (as a side note, they were using an archaic chess clock, so the problem was easily avoidable). It was additionally difficult because of the obvious problem that it was impossible to know how long Player 1 had actually been overtime before I was called over. Accounting the score difference and my knowledge of both opponents, I knew that regardless of it being -20 or -40 for time penalty, Player 1 would win. Additionally, I knew Player 1 had no reason to lie or otherwise cheat to win, given her typical results at tournaments. I decided to bring in a new timer for use, assign -20 points as the current time penalty, stay at the board for the remainder of the game, keep track of the additional time used, and when the game was over, assign the final time penalty to Player 1.

Player 2 was not pleased with the ruling, but as I reminded them both at the end of the game, it is both players' responsibility to ensure that their equipment is working correctly (the archaic chess clock did not belong to either of them, it was simply at the board they were assigned to).

1) What would you do in this situation?
2) What would you do if the score were closer? (Player 1 ahead by 30-40 points)
3) What would you do if only Player 1 had a history of dishonesty? Only Player 2? Both?

Tourneys: 10
Games: 131
Wins: 80
Win %: 61.1%
Spread: +5225 (+39.9 per game)
.500 or better record: 8/10

Rating in: 1673
Rating Out: 1724
Rating Peak: 1816
Average Perf Rating: 1863

Prize money: about $600

Highlights: 6-1 start at Nationals twice in a row. Winning an Orange County tournament, woohoo! First time I've been Gibsonized. A 6-tournament streak of increasing ratings (7 if you count Albany as 2009). Vancouver Early Bird is my biggest Div 1 win (i.e. biggest tournament, at all of 24 ;) MAYBE being first at the "killer" club for the first time. won't know for another 3 weeks, but i guess i just jinxed myself.

Lowlights: Pretty much most of the year, especially towards the end with two shit-tacular performances at the CO and Durham, went from 1816 to 1724. Need more sleep. Need to satisfy my penchant to play opens with something else?

Next year: Obsessive Quackling and studying. Will learn all the words. Also, working right now on a little strategy "brochure" for my own use, where I take positions from games that I've screwed up, and try to categorize them and break down my thought process; I'll review this document before every tournament so I can make sure I don't make those mistakes again. These are for the mistakes that are non-word-knowledge related; the ones where I just didn't know the word, that's what studying is for.

Tourneys planned: maybe NAST finals if someone freaking holds a qualifying tournament already, otherwise, I don't think I'll pay the $180 entry fee. maybe Reno. Vancouver for sure. Nationals, the next California Open, and my usual Orange County tourneys, why not.

A la scrabblek8:

Tourneys: 9, 7 NSA-rated, 2 WESPA rated
Games: 135, 84 NSA-rated, 51 WESPA rated
Record: 86-48-1, .641 winning percentage
Total spread: +5006 (+37.1 per game)
.500 or better: 9 of 9
Winnings: about $950 ("winnings barely missed out on" would be considerably higher)

Starting NSA rating: 1874
Ending NSA rating: 1939
Peak NSA rating: 1939
Average perf rating in NSA events (weighted by # of games): 1986

Tournaments won: 1 multi-day, 1 one-day
Other placings in multi-days: 1 second, 1 third

Starting WESPA rating: 1968
Ending WESPA rating: 1963
(For roughly equivalent NSA ratings, subtract 100)

Club record: 94-37-1 (one 3-game session remaining)

Highlights: trips to Bangkok and Malaysia, finally winning my hometown tournament, AEEFGLLOST to win, bingoing with CCWYY in a tournament, 21-game club winning streak (not a strong year in club overall, but there was that), being in contention through most of nearly every tournament, enjoying the games as much as ever and enjoying getting to know more Scrabblers near and far

Lowlights: having almost every tournament go south at the end, a few notable silly blunders as usual, motivation and focus ebbed sometimes...I dunno. Not much comes to mind. Hard to call any Scrabbling a lowlight, since I enjoy playing tournaments even when I don't win, though winning's preferable of course.


Tournaments:

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I’ll put up a few WSC positions of interest that arose, then move on to the Causeway games.
( read )