I decided long ago to "defend the honor" of the system I created. I rarely use anything else.

Agree with kokiri

I'm not connecting the 4s, because it will suck if 3x4 follow in rack 3-4 and you cannot full snake 4s

If just considering outcomes in that particular game, positioning the 1 in the centre in first rack was not a problem. Sugarstatic, Radisto and lilrascal all had the same 1 placement as Dynsaty and had a sub-optimal dynasty opening after 4 racks and were co-winners. Gabe had a sub-optimal dynasty without the 1 and co-won. NP, me, Zac et al had an optimal dynasty opening and co-won as well.

I need to do more strategy research but I am just not good enough to recover from playing a 1 in the centre there. With no 6 and that opening rack I pretty much have to place the 5 in the center cell, left position or else I am lost

true. but this is result oriented thinking. i dont know the actual math behind it, but i would think the 1 in the middle hurts more than it helps most of the time. if you put the 1 in the middle there you eliminate some setup options.

the more i think about it though, the more merit i can see to putting a 1 in the middle. i don't think either 5 or 1 in the middle is terrible. being a DC, i would guess that the 5 in the middle lets you hit a higher max EV maybe 55% of the time? I only lean that far since i think there's prolly more rack 2+3 combos that could really hurt you with the 1 in the middle...

You always want to try and have a 1-less zone after rack 8, to be able to handle 1's in rack 9. That means that other zones often have multiple 1's. You don't want that to be the center square, because multiple 1's in the center will hurt your chain development - the center is needed for chaining.

QED

It's even simpler than that Gaby. EVERY good setup except Dynasty (basic is not a good setup) uses all four centre squares. Thus, placing a 1 in the centre restricts you to playing Dynasty strategy. And losing flexibility for no reason is bad.

Alex, I think your play is 100% correct. You definitely want to leave flexibility in Round 5. The real problem lies in the placement of your 1s, and that 5 in the left zone, which you really want to be in the bottom or right zone. These problems stem from your Round 1 play.

Yep, would have won. Such has been my luck the past 15 months!

Also, is strategy discussion restarting? Fun!

Expert strategy post incoming:

When playing a normal game, try to score a lot of points. When playing a goose game, try to not score many points.

For some reason this simple rule is hard, lol.

I haven't spent much time thinking about the goose game, but I probably should because what I am doing right now sucks, lol.

Yeah Alex, that 1 in the left zone is misplaced.

Definitely agree. Thats what i was saying about the math part. Given a starting rack like 51122, how often is a dynasty setup going to be optimal? How much does the optimal change if we start 53122 or similar instead?

I understood at the time that the 1 is better in the north than the south of the left section, but by the time round 3 came, that was the only spot left where I could naturally put the second 5. Presuming I was going to stick with the Dynasty strategy, which seems at least OK.

So maybe I played round 2 wrong. Should I have put the 3 in the east of the right section, so as to not take a natural 5 spot (in the south of the right section)? That takes a natural 2 spot away... though I do have 2 of those left. Or maybe even 3 as connecting the left 2 isn't so bad if I get 3 more 2s.

While folks are primed to talk strategy, what are thoughts on this opening? In the first frame below it looked the player was going to complete a standard dynasty and place the 4 high center, but then he went in another direction and placed the 4 low center. Then later the 6 takes spot in the top of the bottom cell that the 4 would normally take. What would be the advantages of the "dynasty declined", for lack of a better name for the opening..lol. BTW, he 5 zoned the 6s....

The whole game is in the link below..

http://www.triplechain.net/reconstruct?chain_id=6236332

In my mind, that's called "Dynastying the 6s." It's a Dynasty setup, but the 4s and 6s have switched roles.

I would not have done what TH10 did in round 3. I would have left the south of the center zone open for a 6 in round 4 so I can snake the 6s with only 4 of them.

In round 3, if you place a 4 in the north of the center zone, as you suggest, and leave the north of the bottom zone open, it looks like there are a lot of good options. Depending on what comes in round 4, you can play basic strategy with either the 4s or the 6s as the major inner chain, you can play a standard Dynasty, or if two 4s and no 6s come, you can put the 4s in both the center and bottom zones, and that's an OK setup too.

It does do a little worse than TH10's play if no 6s or 4s come, though.

I guess what he's thinking is that since there's 3 4s and only one 6, you should give extra weight to snaking the 4s. I tend not to think about that this early, but maybe I should.

That makes sense. Basically with more 4s you are promoting it as the major inner chain and then flipping the minor chain (6s) to track up the left side as opposed to the right.

It was an interesting play so I thought I'd ask. With the difference in value of 4 versus 6 I doubt I am smart enough to figure out the equity advantage on when to make that switch. One thing that would trouble me by not going the traditional route is that it would seem to be conceding that the 6s wont be making it to 5 zones (though they did in this game).

I would have played it the same round 3. If you get two 6s more, your "minor chain" is still full snaked with 4.

If you play the 4 in the bottom and a 5 in the center, you will have a bad setup if no more 6s come and two more 4s (you could have made a setup that full snakes 4s with just 3).

The only slight deviation I would make from TH10 play is the 5 in round 2, I would have placed it on the right, so I can get an advanced setup with 6s as major chain if 6s get spammed round 3-4.

Going into rack 4, this is imo the second nuts:

(the nuts would be if that 4 was an empty spot and the empty spot would be a 5).

And playing as he did, TH10 could only get this setup with 4s being the major chain, which is of course << 6s being that.

If you don't get this much good numbers, this is also a setup that is really really good setup after 3 rounds



You will have a very good setup with 66, 65, 64,54 in rack 4 and not as good (but not a complete trainwreck) with 44 or 55.

Thx -Z- and Gabe

BTW, what is mrgibson's 2+2 handle?

Aicirt

Your mouse-slip in our first game of BW 480 was a nice gift to me... When I saw your score after I finished I went WTF, then I replayed your game and felt your pain

Anyway, you are about the 5th person (including me) to play a goose game as a normal game.

My biggest problem is when I play the very top players in tourneys I think I have to get all FPS to beat them. I usually end up losing 9800 to 21000.. Have to start playing smarter and stop playing more against the grain. Even losing by less will help my game when I study the games I have lost.

And, based on recent experience, am not believing there is actually an 83% chance to hit my number in rack 9 to complete a 5 chain from the middle square.

thx

It is funny that I should just post this a couple of days ago, and then this happens......

I thought I played the final of Kraken 12 really well, but then had to wait for Th10 to play his games....... Can't believe I won. Must have caught him on a bad day.

Zac should consider a new tournament option to decrease the amount of time a player has to complete a round.

TH10 seems to always waiting until the last 12 hours to play.

LOL on that game I played a few Goose games, then started that BW game. Played a few racks then got distracted by something. Came back to the game later and played it like a Goose game, lol. Not even the fact that my board was colorful was enough of a hint that it was a regular game.

Also I apologize to everyone for holding up some tournaments lately. Went on some trips with limited internet access. I should do a better job of not signing up for tournaments when I'm going to be gone.

I'd appreciate the Gaby (or anyone else) takedown on this, especially round 7:

http://triplechain.net/reconstruct?chain_id=6257820

I thought about it a lot, and then got the perfect perfect round 8, but was that just luckboxing?