I won't join it. Used to be a fan, when I thought the name was a reference to Community, but since it isn't, I'm not a fan anymore!

I've just given you the chance to see how puzzling is without knowing the target scores. Has it been that terrible? Or has it actually been more interesting? Have you changed your mind on hiding the target scores?

In reality I've just been super busy lately, played some timed while being drunk, don't think I'll be able to solve any puzzles while being drunk, so won't even try that.

I made 4 new puzzles just for you. Didn't really have time to see if they are actually difficult, but let's hope they provide at least some kind of challenge.

It has not been terrible. I think I made the nuts in most, not sure about donuts.
Maybe for a couple of players hiding the score is good, I think for most the puzzles are tough enough.

If anything, Zac could hide the score, but include an option to show it - so the player can choose to go either way.

That is what was bothering me, especially because I have a good shot at getting to the top without this win. However, if that Challenge win was to be annulled, it would have to set a precedent and a firm rule. Otherwise if it happens again and the winner doesn't decide to annul it then I'm just handicapping myself.

Also, this: provides some justification for letting it stand, along with the fact that no-one apart from TH and me seems to care.

So I guess my thoughts are that I would like it to be annulled, but only if a concrete rule is made to deal with future cases. If no rule is made to deal with future cases (which is likely given Zac's post) then for the reasons given above, and the fact that I've made this post (giving all opportunity for it to be removed), I'd feel relatively comfortable with the win standing.

That was beyond a joke. How anyone can decide to play Round 1 like that I will never understand.

Kinda obvious. He is not good enough to beat the field by playing normally, so he plays against the field by connecting 2s in rack 1-4. He has a rather large amount of wins for his rating (20 wins and not in rating top 50).

Alex does the same, to a lesser extend. He quickly decides to play 3s and has won a nice number of DC´s with that strat, but his rating is not in accordance with his wins (he is a LOT better than triplechang obv).

Also I think you talk way too much about that DC when the site was down. Fairly easy to let the win stand.

This is what I suggested previously. Making some rule, that if there are less than X players who complete the DC, it will be wiped out and considered as if it never happened. X should probably be something like 10-15. But obviously if Zac doesn't want to do this, then it will have to be like it is now.

I would like to nominate the rounds 5-8 of my DC yesterday as the worst played rounds 5-8 by a player considered to be good. I mean wtf. Not sure if I know how to play anymore, have had some really bad DCs lately, but that takes the cake, absolutely atrocious. No idea what happened there, embarrasing really.

http://triplechain.net/reconstruct?chain_id=1449187

i thought what you did was odd, then i replayed my own game yesterday.

I would have played rack 5 the exact same way.

I would have played rack 6 differently. The setup you choose for 5s beats the field if 1-2 5s follow in rack 5-8. So I would go for that and put the 5 in the upper corner. I would gamble to put the 4s in right and lower center, the one fits nicely in the middle and the 2 is ldo (blocking the hope for 5-zoning the 5s).

Board 7 is 66332, I would put one 6 in the left zone, one in the middle (upper left), one 3 goes in the bottom, blocking the 2, one 3 in the right and the 2 in the top.

The 62444 in rack 8 is only one way to play.

The 9th rack gives you a 21120 score. One zone more for the 4-chain and one more for the 5-chain.

Your error is rack 6, obviously. Trust your 5s setup and ride it. You would have been 4th.

I had a pretty disastrous score too, but when I replay mine score from yesterday, I see no glaring mistakes. I went for basic strat. Too many 4s and too few 5s and 6s in rack 5-8 to be profitable.

yeah, I think putting that rack 1 5 not in the middle is an error.

Well, if you replay the winning score from yesterday, I don´t like it at all. Immediately committing to Dynasty strat with 5s and 3s and even placing a 6 outside in the second rack. After rack 1-2 the racks play automatic to the topscore, but he made an elementary error in rack 8 (without effect).

anton-09 is caught up with puzzles.
I´m not surprised he is good at puzzle mode, he was doing that before zac even invented it

He is going to have to redo maecenas though. I just improved it and now I think I made the nuts.
Site going awfully slow for me, fwiw

The centre zone in Round 5 is a huge error in TH's game, which then forces you to take big gambles with 4s vs. 5s. TH and I had almost exactly the same setup, and I think my play Rounds 5-8 was very close to optimal.

SIGH. I hate it when people take wins off me with terrible plays. Happened twice in the last week.

Yeah, that is elementary. Not that I'm qualified to comment, I made a very basic bonus error in Round 8 of the DC on the 13th (which luckily only cost me one place - that's how far behind I was).

It appears we may have a fairly decent new player (although it could just be luck).

Yea, that is pretty awful. Although your biggest mistake seems to be in the earlier racks with the setup.

I haven't looked that closely, but I think that is how bingo plays, forcing Dynasty setup and choosing the 3rd chain right away, even committing to 3s very early. It seems to be getting good results, and based on that bingo probably knows how to play the setup well.

What Paul said, the bottom right corner of center zone is the "useless" square with this setup, so that should be the one, where the 3 is dumped in 5th rack. 6th rack is obviously terrible too, and after these 5th/6th racks, there wasn't much I could've done in 7th and 8th racks to save the situation. Would've ended at that 21120 score if I had played it correctly. That is more than 1 rating point wasted, really can't afford to do these kinds of mistakes (knowing how it should be played, but just failing completely), if I ever want to make the Daily Master.

Funny thing about that DC was, that I usually play one game to practice before playing the DC, or two if the first game fails and so on, just want to get one decent game before playing the DC. That day I played 4 and all failed miserably, something was off, don't know what. I knew I couldn't play it later that day, so was thinking just not playing the DC at all, but then went ahead and played it anyway, now I should know better the next time this happens, can't waste those precious rating points.

Speaking of elementary bonus errors in 8th rack, made one yesterday that cost me the win. Such a waste.

Based on the games played so far, I'm going to say it is the latter. But he has only played 7 games, so plenty of time to improve.

I don´t agree how you disregarded the 4s early game, but you got rewarded with rack 4

I don´t think rack 8 was much of an error. It is only wrong if there are 2x1s in rack 9 and the alternative play weakens your 3rd chain.,

The real interesting rack in your game is rack 7. I´m looking at it and still don´t know what is the best play. Here is the board after putting the 5 in the obvious center zone:

1. You can do what you did: 6 bottom, 2 right, 1 left, 3 top.
2. Playable is also 3 bottom, 2 right, 6 left (blocking off the 5s) and 1 in the top.
3. Playable is also 1 bottom, 2 right, 6 left, 3 top.
4. You can also gamble for a 6 in rack 9 and go 6 top, 1 left, 3 bottom, 2 right, assuring a decent third chain, also when no 4s appear in rack 8.

Even the following gambit is possible: 5 top, 6 middle, 1 left, 3 bottom, 2 right. Only if no 5 comes in rack 8 you really screwed up.

You clearly haven't played enough advanced to know that 4s suck!

I would only lose 16 point from 3rd chain though. So I disagree, I think the last rack has two 1s more often than the 16 points I would get from 3rd chain are going to matter.

5s are 270 points whether you connect them center or top in 7th rack.

Blocking 5s is terribad here imo, even though there are 2+ of them only 20 % of the time in 8th rack, the other chains don't really have that much going, so 5s should be preferred. Missing the 6 isn't great either since it is most likely worth more than the 3rd chain altogether! I think what I did is probably the correct play, playing 5 top, 1 left, 6 center, 2 right, 3 bottom would be the other good option, we really don't want any 4s in 8th rack playing like that, but it is definitely an option. Playing the way I did leaves open 3-zoning 4s and playing 2x2 to center-right in 8th rack though. It is close between these two imo.

Tbh I think I made some mistakes earlier in this game, but they aren't that obvious. I'll have to look at them more closely at some point to see if I'm right about them, but I'm pretty sure I am. Idk, we're getting really deep into strategy, not sure if I should reveal all the secrets. Maybe I'll look into this during the weekend and make a post about this after that.

My dc today is my worst relative performance in a while. Massive overthinking, or maybe under.

Aha that is right. For some reason I thought the center 5 made more points.

So isn´t it the best play to center the 6 (top-right), 2 in the right, 3 in the bottom, 1 on the left and 5 in the top?

Looks superior over your play, because you don't kill your chain of 3s which might be relevant if no 4s come in rack 8.

Today there is a 2-point difference between two players in the DC.
I don't think I have ever seen a one point difference, so that is a record AFAIK

I was very happy with how I played today, but when finished it didn´t feel like a winning score.

For the moment however, it still does (1/22). There´s still a guy named Dynasty that has to play yet....

I agree with this, think it's a fairly big mistake, the slightly reduced third chain is going to matter so little, one or two places max, but bonus mistakes can have a huge impact.


Yeah, I think you made some minor outer zone mistakes in Round 2 (I made some of the same ones) and a big mistake in Round 3. Was I right? Btw, I saw before I played that you'd gained a rating point, and knowing how you play, was very tempted to discard the 4 in Round 3 like you did, but realised there was a very good chance that pseudo Dynasty/altered advanced was optimal, so played the 4 in. I'm giving away all our secrets, you don't need to bother. I've noticed that we seem to be getting close to the same setup in about 50% of games nowadays, with a fair few identical scores.

Regarding TH's Round 7, I think 6 to centre, 5 top, 3 bottom is the correct play.

Wow my DC today was an absolute trainwreck, haven't had a game that bad in a looong time.

I was looking at my stats for the year - I was 10 DC wins in 263 games at the start, now I'm 19 in 369, meaning i've won 9 times this year in 106 goes. That's moderately surprising to me given what a car crash all of march was.

otoh i was nut last yesterday, and just got sniped today

welcome to my life

Lifetilt.jpg

I read this thread before playing the DC yesterday, and saw this. I know we play similarly, so I thought about not playing at all, or playing in a way I wouldn't play normally. But then I just play it about normally, and failed completely. I'm too honest (or stupid), having TMI available and not using it to get a better result. Since people won't stop posting about DCs, I really have to avoid this thread before playing them from now on, I'll just get tilted for no good reason when things like this happen. Maybe lifetilt is too much, since I still had the self restrain to not post anything DC related until today, but whatever.

Anyway that DC was amazingly poorly played by me, I even made a last rack mistake. Should've had two more bonus too, if I had paid any attention to what I was doing with 1s/chains. Should probably put a clock (have to wait one minute on each rack before placing the dice or something like that) on myself so I wouldn't do this many stupid mistakes. #nevergonnagetthateffindailymaster

I actually meant mistakes in the chain racks (5-8), I obviously assumed I had played setup racks (1-4) perfectly, as always. No but seriously I meant mistakes playing that setup, I don't remember the earlier racks, and am too lazy to take a look, but it is very much possible I made mistakes there too. It is pretty rare to have a game without any mistakes. For example I think the normal mode record is extremely well played, but not sure if even that was what could be called mistake-free game.

I think 3s only count if there is no 4 in 8th rack, or there is one 4, and more 3s than 4s in 9th rack, or in some other cases that are pretty unlikely. But like I said I think I prefer leaving 3-zone 4s open, I think that has more win-EV, but it is very close. If I'm right about doing mistakes in racks 5-6, playing them correctly this wouldn't even be a problem, but I'm not sure about that, since I don't remember what the racks were exactly. Will try to take a look at some point.

That is a good winrate, not far behind the goal, still plenty of time to improve too!

r u serious

i hate the DC!

the fact that I can't play for a week means that I will have gone like 3 months without a win adlgjdflgjdflgjadflgjdf