sr_orangepants

Melted down midday. The getting outdrawn bit is getting quite tired. I know that two of my losses were games I may have been able to win, but that's not good when you have eleven of them. I'm hoping the last four go better, although I jokingly considered asking the directors to pair scrabblek8 against me four times tomorrow so she'd emerge victorious.

I don't want to sound like a downer, but I think this is probably the most telling set of stats for me from MM:

Record in non-baggings: 4-3
Average opponent rating in non-baggings: 1714

Record in baggings: 2-5
Average opponent rating in baggings: 1531

I only had one person rated higher than me outdraw me (Andy Bohnsack, and I blew a challenge against him, so I'm not complaining about that so much). I still was within a bingo's range and had hopes of winning three of those games only to pull a tile that screwed me. My tracking let me know that they were left with really nice tiles. Two of those games ended with me losing by over a century. In the third my opponent made a play of UH to open an extra bingo option (8 from an H to go with an 8 to an S or a lower-scoring 8 through an R), where even opponents with a triple-digit rating would have at least blocked the line to the S. I phonied him for 107 points (HIVELIKE*) and ended up losing by ten.

There were a lot of positives to take away. I made two really nice endgame plays against guys named Steve (maybe I'll get around to posting them; at least the one against Krieger was not obvious), and only really blew one endgame (I picked up a winning play against Paul Epstein. NOOO!). I stayed above 1600, so I'll be staying in Division 1 in Albany, and if the former stat might be an indication, watch me do better next weekend. (And I know that I can't do worse in terms of losing to people rated lower than I, because it looks like I'll be the last seed.)

The non-Scrabble stuff was pretty neat. I got up and did Waterloo despite being a bit of a chokles. Unfortunately the key wasn't really good for me, but people were kind (and surprisingly, a lot of people there didn't even know about it before I sangn it). My personal favorite parody was dallaswj's "I Just Can't Wait to Beat Stock," although there were a few other ones that were right up there, and stmonday did a mean "Friends in Low Places." scrabbleshells, you have to come to the Madness next year so we can do a duet of "Baby Got Back."

ididjonassalk is too much. As we got to DTW, he told me to take something out of the glove compartment for him. It was a green envelop with a "Good Luck with Jeopardy!" card, with about ten signatures or so. I couldn't believe it. I was so touched that had to keep myself from breaking out in tears until I got to the gate. If you signed the card, than you for the well-wishes. I love you all, and I hope to get the call as soon as possible. If and when I get on, I'm going to bring the card to the lectern. Maybe I'll get to show it on camera.

It's the RETURN OF THE SEXY TABLES! Now with some stats as well.

( The unsexy first half... )

( The much sexier second half... )

( Overall... )

Hmm... Am I going to re-emerge like Lu Chen? I kinda thought that more of the same was coming when I watched finds like SQuAMAE get nullified by things like REAGENTS, but I think my rage was sublimated into focus. I made some ballsy moves to take the first three games, winning two by opening lines late and then bingoing from my setups, and winning the third with a well-timed phony. Then I suddenly found myself at Table 4 (much to the surprise of dugy1001) and bagging goldfishbw. I capped off a 9-1 second half with a win over vinylchances, movin from the bottom third (perhaps?) all the way to ninth. If only redessence had tied the last game with key_lime_guy. Ah well.

I loved the dance party. It was like I was 13 again and going to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah party seemingly every weekend, except that I was not as awkward on the floor. I danced my ass off, and, if it wasn't mentioned earlier, ORANGE-PANTED PELVIC THRUSTS! I was surpised, but happy, to be doing the Time Warp and getting my groove on. cheezchick was awesome on the floor, and lordiceman was pretty good too, but I think the revelation of the night was Paul Avrin, not sighing, but bringing a lot of energy to the party. Your eyes are not deceiving you. If you missed the dance party, Paul Avrin was dancing the night away.

Other highlights:
- My opponents. I think it made a world of difference that practically everyone I played was someone who I had talked to and/or spent time with before. I didn't really feel pressed at all, and I knew that regardless of what happened, a good time was to be had.
- dianagram gives good neck and shoulder rubs.
- A photo of spherulitic and me, cuddled up in the back seat of the Ubeikas' car, was snapped and sent to ididjonassalk.
- olaugh compared WHAT to APL. Actually, wouldn't it be funny if WHAT were actually written in APL?
- Congratulations in LJ comments and via E-mail. You all rock!
- Huggles! Lots and lots of huggles!

I want to send out my congratulations to eurobikermcdog and everyone else who finished ahead of me, and to thank our hostess extraordinaire for the weekend, kangarau. It was an awesome time.

The awesomeness of `80s night can be summed up in four words: orange panted pelvic thrusts. Lamesauce people will be named later.

I rallied for 4-4 after starting the day with an eight-point loss due to a blink (chickened out on a bingo I should have known) and two baggings against. I pulled it together in the afternoon. Perhaps unfortunately, I started to build momentum at the end, getting the endgame against satireblank pretty much right and then winning the last game by 314 points. Still happy, although I do think I've had a few more hopeless games at this time than I deserve (I count four). I get another nice opponent to start tomorrow, glamdragon. I'd love to have a good last day here; it's been a while. Keep sending luck my way.

I'm managing pretty well. So far I'm maintaining my goal of staying calm, and I'm pretty happy with 4-3. It's not as sexy as spherulitic's 7-0, but I'll take it. It's been very comfortable. I had an awesome Fontes pod; rafij52 gives good huggles, and I've felt at ease with almost all of my opponents. Today I start off against Chris Guilbert; another nice matchup for me in terms of feeling comfortable with who's across from me. I can keep it up. Keep cheering me on (or start cheering me on if you haven't already)! :)

I could really use a good tournament showing or two right now. *crosses fingers and takes the plunge*

My tournament performance was a travishamockery.

I felt that there were four games in which my opponents played noticeably worse than I did, three of which I lost. Of special note is the loo-loo who tried SATIONS* on me (and seemed to be responsible for at least a few egregious phonies on other boards of his that I saw) and blocked a phantom out bingo.

I had two awful mental mistakes (bad three, not holding NOTARISE* due to lack of focus) that cost me two games. I let a third one slip because I chickened out on ANTICULT.

In one game, I threw back VV late, knowing that (1) I needed to bingo to catch up, and (2) if I spent two turns playing off Vs, I'd be short on point. I caught a bingo, only to empty the bag of all of the drek that was left. (My opponent held all but one of the vowels left and a blank.)

Down about a bingo with two in the bag, a rack of EGLMRSV, and an open S hook lane, I notice AAO left in the pool. There's almost a 50/50 chance that at least one of those tiles is in the bag (and a 9 in 28 chance of me pulling a tile that gives me a bingo), so I fish off my M, and draw... a W. The other tile is an O, which is what I needed.

Two baggings for, two against.

I feel kinda soiled; not that I played flawlessly either, but I felt like I had seven losses where bad luck really played a part. That's a little much, though I could stand to just focus on the three that were my fault. I think my goal for the HO is to just stay cool, and then hopefully, things will take care of themselves.

Fortunately, I did have good company this weekend. I'd almost want to move out somewhere in the Rust Belt for the Scrabble. (I said almost, ididjonassalk.) Thanks to everyone who put up with me, though I guess I was OK once I opened the steam valve. I had my first Golden Corral experience, my first experience with Racklash, winning what is purportedly the closest game ever played to date, and even did OK in Texas Suck-Out. Thanks to you guys who were there; you know who you are.

And of course, congratulations are in order for stmonday, who needs to teach me how to draw tiles like that.

Just because this sorta came up in a GChat conversation, the 2009 SkateCanada International is being held in KITCHENER!!!!!!!!!

jquintong invited a few people, including me to the New York site of World Quizzing Championships on Saturday. I decided, "Why not?" I'm glad I went. The competition was a 240-question test broken into two one-hour halves. I hadn't really done much in terms of trivia or useless knowledge in the past year, since Bennigan's went out of business, leaving me without an NTN home base, and since I lost most interest in quiz bowl beyond mocking, so I went in with low expectations. I was happy to see a few softballs on the first page. I made a few comical guesses that ended up being right, and I really enjoyed myself. I got about half of the questions correct in the first half, and found myself sitting in third place out of everyone at the site. The second half started with an audio segment where I could recognize two of the samples out of seven, but couldn't place anything, but that portion also included quite a few questions on classical music, which I was pretty good on. The "Sport" and "Science" categories were also part of this half, so I felt like I was in the ballpark on a lot of questions. I did balk a little, and I wasn't so happy that games and social science detracted from those categories (though OTOH, other categories had some more favorable topics for me squeezing out things like movies and "pop" music), but I didn't feel so strongly about it. I patched, getting 62 right in each half, and ended up finishing second on site and seventh in North America (no update on the overall world standings yet, but from what I gather, I'm likely in the top half?). I'm pretty happy, and looking forward to next year's incarnation.

On Yahoo! Weather, I checked the forecast for Philly tomorrow. I was redirected to the forecast for Camden.

I think I did pretty well today despite the sleep issue; just wasn't lucky enough (which I think I say a lot, but I made a lot out of what came my way today). I'll take what I can get, and I realize, hey... maybe I ought to slow down a little during games.

( Sexy tables... )

I can't sleep. Third night here. Third night this sort of thing has happened.

I'm really bummed about Arden right now. I started out fine on day 1 at 4-4, got to 5-5, and six games later, I'm still at five wins, with the worst loss in said stretch being 49 points. I blew an endgame against scrabblek8 (482-490), lost by 5 to BriCap in which I spent the last five turns with no more than one vowel in my rack (though to his credit, he found what I thought was one of many wins he had, but it might have been the only one), and got Y-stuck against Ken Kasney (and if there were any karmic justice anything else but the Y, as in, any winning tile including an unseen V, would have been the last one in the bag).

Perhaps what's most frustrating to me is that I feel that I've gotten better since BAT, and though I understand that I'm up against a tougher field, I don't feel like it's been showing. For one thing, the result is about the same as it stands right now. For another, I have made some really bad moves with obvious lines that I should have played on. (Against Marty Gabriel, for one, I had a 30-ish point play of LEDGE to a triple, and I played GELD elsewhere for 17. What was I thinking?) I spent much of the afternoon feeling like I had just... lost my light. Not fun.

The drek racks are getting me. Too many times I've been asking myself what to do with some rack like... BEOOOSV, or MORRTTV, or MNPQSTU, or VV(insert other five tiles here), and I've just not quite made the right call. It's not about emotions as much as it is picking the least sucky option. On the plus side, I've found that I do quite well with racks in which six of my tiles are AEOUU?.

Four games in a few hours. I'm hoping I can salvage some pride and ratings points, but I need some huggles.

I've already been to the Bay Area and back. The weekend was lovely, albeit hot. I arrived on Thursday night, and was pretty wiped. On Friday, my parents and I helped my brother with a few last-minutes in his apartment, and then took off for Sonoma, interrupted by a trip to In-N-Out for lunch. On gingerv3's suggestion, we went to the Benziger Estate Winery, which was fantastic. The rest of my family is not much for viniculture, but the tour was very informative. The wine was also great; I tasted a reserve Chard, their attempt at a Bordeaux blend (which was better than most American attempts I'd sampled), a Petit Syrah (incredible!) and a Muscat. I would have liked to have tasted a bit elsewhere, but we had arrived quite late in the afternoon. My brother walked on Saturday morning. The speakers at his graduation ceremony were incredible, and for small miracles, we were happy that the festivities started at 9 AM, because by the lunch reception, it was hot by Berkeley standards. After a bit of activity near campus, I was ready to collapse. I crashed for a bit, and then had a wonderful celebration dinner. xpmorgan, if Chef Jackass hasn't done so already, he might want to consider Skates on the Bay in the Berkeley Marina.

It was a great weekend. The only downsides were that I was in a hotel with no A/C and spotty Internet access, and that I didn't have nearly as much free time as I thought I would. If you thought I might reach you in the Bay Area, sorry! I guess I'll just have to go back for a longer stay or less busy stay sometime.

Somewhat organized thoughts from me...

Prize structures. I think about the ITF under the ATP and WTA tours. Winners of challengers and futures events don't usually face highly-ranked players (although I remember a recent Zagreb challenger that served as an Apperance Fee Open for Ivan Ljubicic when he was in the top 10), and purses are much smaller than, say Masters/1000/Tier I events. But even with sponsorships, I think the costs associated with entering big tournaments are bigger. Certainly, in Scrabble if the top players are amongst themselves, it does make sense for them to get a bit more than those who aren't playing at the top, but there's only so much that can be done in terms of allocating prize money if everyone is paying an entry fee that is no different (or no more than $10 different, let's say) for any division. I also think about the work that I did to move up the rankings and would like to think that at least some of the people who win lower divisions are looking to move their way up, and so they deserve quite a bit of what they get.

Increased graduation in entry fees. I'm sure this is out there, but would top division entrants pay, say, $75 more than the bottom division to enter, if they knew the returns would be greater? Certainly that would increase the prize funds for the top division...

Pay up to play up. It increases prize funds for the top division, and seems to please participants. When I won in North Salem, the prizes were probably double what they would have been had everyone stayed in divisions corresponding to their respective ratings, but I was thinking about airlines and how we might even be able to pump a little more cash into such events. Airlines let you buy miles. Why not allow entrants to buy their way up a division at a cost of, say $10 per 50 or 100 rating points?

Opens vs. Divisional tournaments. Despite Dallas, I still like opens, but previous experience tells me that divisional tournaments are still reasonable to hold.

( Life... )

( Scrabble... )

On Sunday, I told students to start their exam, and some loo-ree (it was pretty obvious that he was both a loo-loo and a ree-ree) decided to take out his headphones. He seemed shocked when I told him to put them away. Later, he took out a cell phone. I told him it had to go, and he asked, "What if I get a text?" Seriously? Why not just announce "I'm going to cheat!" to everyone at the start of the exam?

On a more humorous note, the last assignment that students in my class had to submit involved writing classes to play a simplified form of blackjack. Players are prompted to hit or stand. One of the students that I'm grading, in his prompt, asks "Player (insert player number here), would you like to hit that?"

New audition date and early time, but I'm OK with that.

Who wants huggles? :)