I don't know how to play a rack 1 6644, but it would never occur to me to not place both 6s in the center. Are you really aiming in rack 1 to play dynasty with 4 major chain, 6s inner major chain and 5s inner minor chain?
Also if you are aiming for this, I would place the 6 in the bottom right, because in the left-top there belongs a 1.

But really, 6s aught to be played, they are the highest scoring number.

If you aim for Dynasty rack 1, at least play it like this:


Or switch 4s and 6s. 6s as inner minor chain is fine if you get to optimal dynasty, as they are also fully snaked with just 4.

Rack 2-4 play automatically, you got optimal dynasty. But with 6x5, 5x6 in rack 1-4 you still need 4 of both to fully snake them - that is the problem with this strat. You will often get less than 4 and your score will suck (especially if other players fully snake 5s76s with just 3 of them) and you did this to be able to get 4s as your major chain, which is the least scoring number.

Rack 5-8 I think are played fine. I can't help but find it terrible to have to place the 6 in that spot in rack 5, because you immediately block your 5-chain. if only 4x5s appear in rack, you have botched it.

If you would have played 6s in the bottom, as I said in my previous post, you would have been able to put the first 6 in the bottom to connect with the others and have all dynasty options still open. In this rack 5 you restricted your options for 5-chain. The idea of Dynasty strat is to be flexible and keep options open.

In Dynasty strat, this rack 5 needs to be played as such:



To keep all options open.

Round 1 is really really gross. You should 10000000% be playing both 6s - not doing so is an enormous leak. 6s are worth about 1.5 times as much as 4s and 5s at this point. If you do only play one 6, it should be next to a 4, for various setup reasons.

Round 2 I think there's a great argument for trying to salvage an advanced strategy, playing the 6s top of centre zone and top of bottom zone, and not playing the 5 in.

Round 5: What Gaby said. Play the 6 to the bottom zone so you don't block the 5s. The fact that you're worried about connecting to all those other 6s in the left zone tells you that perhaps they were misplaced in the earlier rounds.

Round 6 is standard, but had you played the 6 to the bottom zone in Round 5, you'd have a semi-interesting decision here with your 5-chain.

Round 7 is bad. You make mistakes because you're not prioritising properly - for example, I would always play the 4 first in this round. The main mistake here is the 5 - this should be in the bottom zone, connected to the other 5s. You should always try to connect unless there is a good reason not to. Here, you have to play something to that square, so it might as well be the 5. The other, smaller mistake is that the 1 should be played to a zone with a 2 in it. This isn't a big problem in this game, but would be in other games where there are more 1s.

On Kokiri's 66443 question, how bad is the option below? It allows for the dynasty or advanced, and the 4 in the lower right will get connected if you achieve either one.

So what's the benefit to that setup vs. putting the 4 at the north of the bottom zone?

The only thing I can see is that leaves open the possibility of advanced setup with 6s and the rest of the chain spots filled in with 5s which is strong. But it seems a lot better to get the 2nd 4 into play right away.

What's rationale behind putting the 4 to the west in the center zone (connected the 6) vs. the east? It seems like if no more 6s come, you are better off with it in the east. I think I've seen Paul agree with you so I've been curious about this for awhile.

That is all I was thinking was that with the 4 lower right you could deal with 5s or 4s coming next three racks.

That's so rare, and even if that is possible given your later dice, you would often want to play 4s as a minor chain anyway. It's much better imo to just play the 4 in and leave yourself more options to get good setups. The later rounds are not always good, they sometimes suck! I try to have 5 setup dice in place after the first two Rounds (or maybe 4 if I'm going for Dynasty).

Moreover, if your setup is flexible, not playing the second 4 creates problems for yourself, as it's hard to predict exactly where your chains will face. For example, you might place a 4 to the south of the centre zone and play Dynasty strategy. It's then much harder to connect to that spare 4.

If you play east, both the next 4 and the next two 6s you want to place are in the centre zone (assuming non-Dynasty). This won't very often cause problems in Round 2, as you won't often want to commit at that point to playing that strong a 4-chain. But in Rounds 3 & 4, when you want to commit, things can get ugly.

LOL at me giving anyone advice though, given today's DC, and the fact that I have won 9 in the last 6 months.

Oh I see. You're avoiding this type of unpleasantness:



With your play, this won't happen because the outside 4 won't be connected to the inside 4.

The reason why I said if you get no more 6s, 4 to east in round 1 does better is because if you start playing a standard Dynasty after your play, and get no more 6s, you end with your 6s and 5s blocking each other:



which doesn't happen if you play the 4 to the east in round 1.

Not claiming this is more important, just that it's an argument.

Exactly. That top position is horrific, I want to avoid that any way I can.

No more 6s is pretty rare (1 in 20), but even so, you can still avoid this situation a fair amount. For example if there is no 5 in Round 2, you play 4s or 3s aggressively.

On this note, I think if you play Round 1 my way, then 54xxx is quite interesting. I probably play 5 north of centre, 4 to right zone.

Which then means that the only way I end up in your second position is if Round 2 contains exactly one 5, and no 4s or 6s. AND then the later rounds also go badly. Pretty unlikely!

Going to be on 2 hrs from now trying to get a Timed game going.

wow...that was awesome. numerous timed games with 6 or 7 people.

I don't know how you folks can do it. I never timed out but I built several openings wrong ( I don't just mean bad!!). I was also like....I'll pair this 2...no wait....the other 2 wont be open if I don't get a 2 next roll, so UNDO and i'll put the 5 here...wait no....that will block my 6 chain UNDO....and UNDO....and on and on....lol

glad I have time to think things through in regular games.....

sorry if I slowed the pace down...

I don't know how people play that fast either. Whenever I play timed games I'm usually a minute or two behind the others.

Thoughts on a the best play for a (6, 5, 4, 4, 1) opening rack? Maybe it has been discussed ITT before, but I don't really know the best way to play that one.

Yay, just joined the 10k+ goosegg club. I realized in about round 5, but had such a fun setup going that I just went with it.

Awesome to see some timed mode going lately - I think that's the best triplechain mode other than a live tournament with lots of spectators.

Does anyone have feature requests or bug fix requests? I should have some free time starting in about a week.

Off the top of my head, here are a few that are on my radar:
- Change daily challenge rating colors (As Paul pointed out, we have too many reds and blues)
- Use bonus as tiebreaker for goose egg
- Fix DC wins calculation bug
- Fix score overwriting bug (thanks to Alex for giving me some good info to work with)
- Better scoring system and display for the big free-for-all tournaments?

Anything else y'all want to see?

Is the multi-game goose tiebreaker fixed (low total score wins)?

Also, is the quit DC = game played and score of 0 in place?

What is meant by using bonus as tiebreaker for goose egg?

As always, thanks for running the site.

Fix count on number of Tourneys that you're entered in and it's waiting on you. My count has been 1 higher for a while.

Also, thanks for the site. I love the game.

I'd love to know the best option for that too.

I don't have the confidence to take an opening like that anything other than dynasty, so I go with the one below. I guess person could start an outer chain with 4s but that seems like conceding too quick to me.

For people who play advanced for most openings, I'd love to know how to handle it that way.

I thought I made the nuts yesterday

alas velourfog, FU

Same thing. before I placed my last number I thought nobody is beating this score. but it was T2....grrrrrrr

had every 6, 5 and 4 counting, and full bonus

I know the feeling. I've had a lot of second bests.

My current problem is I keep ping-ponging from near the top one day to neat the bottom the next. Consistency has not been my friend lately.

You are probably playing against the field then. This gains you lotsa of bottoms and some wins.

Tournament rating.

Challenge mode!

So I replayed Dynasty's and Th10's 9 games in the 2015 December Championship. Dynasty won 5-4. I find it instructive how the very good players play the same draw.

Dynasty must have been tired when he placed the numbers in rack 9 of game 9. Didn't cost him the game or match though, but his score of 27445 should have been 32435.

Nice to know even the best can make mistakes like me, though glad it didn't cost him the match.