2009 Year in Review, Part 1

No doubt I’ll get more gaming in before the exact end of year (including a convention over New Year’s!), but it’s close enough to look at what I played, what we played, and what we should have played.

The “Big time” games, for me at least:

• Bridge (a little over a session a week, 62)
• 45 Games of Race
• 30 Games of BSG (My 2008 game of the year holds up nicely)
• 29 games of Dominion

Games that hit the table enough to be respectable:

• Roll through the Ages (14)
• Shadow Hunters (8 … been waiting for the expansion)
• Small World (8)
• Agricola (8 + 1 expansion game)
• Dungeon Lords (7)
• Le Havre, Wabash Cannonball (5 each)
• Through the Ages (4)

Many other games got some play. Homesteaders has been pushed aside by Dungeon Lords (even though I prefer Homesteaders). I’m sure it will get played again. Did I really only play Glory to Rome 4 times? Apparently.

I played ~130 titles (some of them are expansions, so probably closer to 115-120).  Still too early to call game of the year, but I think it will have to be Dungeon Lords or Homesteaders. We’ll know in a few months…

The most amazing bridge hand I’ve held

AK3 — KQJT95432 A

That will be hard to top.

Update — In response to Larry, I simply opened 6. I could open 1, planning on jumping, but I’m jumping to slam anyway. 2 (our strong forcing opening) won’t get me any useful information unless partner has a monstrous hand (with this particular partner I play control step responses, so he can show a weak hand with 1 king or less, a good hand with 1 king or less, one ace or two kings, three kings, ace + king, etc … but seeing as how I can’t distinguish the useless heart ace from the diamond ace immediately…)

The real problem with opening low is that my hand only had three defensive tricks, and if partner has the diamond ace, we probably have a grand slam and still only have three defensive tricks. So I want no ability for opponents to determine they have a ten card heart fit (or club fit).

The final issue with opening 6 diamonds is that it will be nigh impossible to get partner to understand that the spade queen is worth more to me than the heart Ace+King (unless he has the diamond ace). But if partner’s looking at the diamond ace, he’ll know that’s valuable right away. If he does have the Diamond ace and anything good, he’ll bid seven on the theory that if I thought six would have a play, the trump ace makes seven…if he’s looking at random good cards in one suit, he’ll know that I’m likely void and discount them towards a raise. In short, when scientific bidding isn’t likely to work, just bid what you hope to make.

In fact, LHO doubled (which I assumed meant he had both red aces and that he didn’t understand how bridge scoring works) and partner passed, then displayed:

xxxxx AQJT2 — xxx

Since LHO didn’t lead a heart, dummy was worthless … except for the very nice five card spade suit, which meant that only one opponent could protect against my four of spades when I played trump (the doubler had led a club honor, which I won, then tried to cash a club, which I ruffed and then played 8 more rounds of diamonds. And that opponent (doubler), discarded a spade from J96, so that he wouldn’t discard down to Kx of hearts in front of dummy. Of course, if I had a small heart and Ace-small of spades, I was making no matter what, and if I had a small heart and a small spade (without the ace), I was on crack for bidding six diamonds, but stranger things have happened. Making six. I guess I should have redoubled, but who knew partner would the right card (that fifth spade)?

Stereotyping Players by Game

After seeing this delightful post stereotyping readers by author, I had to get in on the act.

Medici

Wannabe mathematicians

Agricola

People who’ve never done an honest day’s work

Battlestar Galactica

Frakkin toasters

Diplomacy

Guys who carefully explained why they were worth dating to that cheerleader, and never understood why she politely declined.

Dominion

I don’t know who they are now, but in 50 years they’ll be playing $5 Blackjack and Vegas and borrowing cigarettes.

Arkham Horror

Arachnaphobics

Caylus

Assembly line managers

Race for the Galaxy

Mewling lifeforms, mainly.

Paths of Glory

Forensic accountants

Twilight Struggle

Conspiracy theorists

Tichu

Damn near everyone

Cash N Guns

Actual mathematicians

Settlers of Catan

Married husbands, intermittently happy

Ticket to Ride

Aleaphobics

Up Front

IRS Auditors

One nickel for each Blackwood abuse

I mentioned reading Danny Kleinman’s site … he’s mildly infamous for refusing to play Blackwood, which is one of the first conventions learned. (I learned Blackwood and Stayman on my first night of Bridge). Playing a random session on BBO with self-described Intermediates, I witnessed 3 abuses in 21 hands. (Blackwood with a void, Blackwood before figuring out which suit were trumps, and one random usage just to hear the answers). My slam was bid without invoking Blackwood, but seeing as how partner had abused the bidding earlier, did not turn out so well either.

Recent things and Round-the-Web

• Dungeon Lords with advanced rules does work much better than basic rules, and I’m halfway to my dime. I’ll probably get there shortly.
• A quick few games of Pegasus to re-whet my whistle. Definitely correct to name BSG my game of the year for aught-eight.
• Been slowly perusing the deals of the week at Danny Kleinman’s site. Lots of technical play and little morsels, as well as his unique theories on bidding. And he also, let us not forget, co-authored the best titled book of the decade. (He was also gracious enough to answer a technical question on conventions that was alluded to in one article).
• Maybe it’s just me, but when you say the computer version of Settlers has soured you on the game, I think of someone who says “I gave up sex because of a bad experience with a vacuum cleaner.”
• Need to get Homesteaders back to the table.
• Your web-game de jour – Gimme Friction Baby. (Safe for work).

Agricola Expansion and Loyang

Good gaming session today, the new titles hit the table, classics were played, the Band was Rocked.

Farmers in the Moors — I knew nothing about this apart from “Expansion” and “You clear your land and need to provide heat.” While those are both true, FitM nicely twists the action mechanic. You can, instead of placing a worker, take one of the action cards. These usually give a reasonable (not great benefit), but they don’t use up an action. As the rules were explained, you also can’t do this if you have no workers left. Each card can be used twice (by different people), but the second person must pay two food (in addition to any costs on the card). These actions are used to clear forest/moors from your land, which free up space. These felt like a  good addition

• You can sometimes get an extra action, which is necessary to balance the extra requirements (for heating and space clearing).
• Taking those actions means skipping a great action, or risking it not being there. In the ‘basic’ Agricola I felt that most of my worker placements were pretty obvious (even in the first few games). Now there’s a “chicken” element involved. Take a great action, or take a card (free action), and hope a good action is still left next turn. The number of tough decisions seemed much higher.
• Clearing land frees up space, but you can also try to work around a few uncleared spaces, since they prevent the “unused land” VP. Also, each player gets a different starting arrangement. A nice touch.

Assuming I don’t find out I’ve got a rule wrong, I could see playing 15+ games of the expansion, and picking up a copy.

I’m not sure how I feel about Loyang. Conflicted at best. I want to play a few more times, but I don’t necessarily want to play them soon. Too much AP. The options are easy, but you can spend 5 minutes performing calculations in your head (“If I trade this, buy that, deliver that, I make $17. If I trade, swap, buy, deliver, I make $18. I need $19. Do I spend $2 to draw two cards, and hope that they can get me a $3? Uh, OK. I got X and Y. Do I play X first? No, Y? Yes, that gets it.” Goodbye five minutes. Now, two players can do this at once, in the four player game, but man. Also, for a heavy calculation game, the helper cards let you really stick it to your opponents. I did very well, but early on I kept getting dealt one great card before the draft, and since you can only keep one card out of your hand, I’d just dump my chaff until another good card was out there, then take it.

Loyang felt like a solvable, tedious, short term optimization. For that, I can play Dungeon Lords and get a few chuckles, and then have the worker placement round for blind-bidding hosage. Or play Moors, and groan when the action/card you wanted gets snatched right before your turn. Loyang, like a job, feels like a chore. It can be satisfying to do it well, but that’s not a reason to spend free time on it. I’ll give it another go, if the game speeds up by 45 minutes or so that would brighten my feelings on it.

Bizarre Coincidence and Expert Systems

So yesterday I’m playing online in a set game (my college partner and I against two experts working out their system) and I hear the following auction:

1NT-2

1NT was a kamikaze variety (10-13 HCP) and 2 was alerted as “Relay to 2D”. Now, I learned Stayman (bidding two clubs after a 1N opener to ask about Majors) on the first or second day I played bridge, and this was the first time in twenty years that I’d ever had opponents play anything else. But amazingly enough, I’d discovered the system they were using online literally a few hours before our game (while searching for “Bridge Play Problems,” and then exploring the rest of the site). Just a bizarre coincidence, or possibly a higher power telling me I should play that system.

Having read the site, I thought a) this system is superior to vanilla stayman, but mainly due to the amount of thought that went into followups, structure and efficient use of bidding space, b) I can handle the memory load (although it would take a while to learn) and c) I’ll never get any partner to play this. (I had the same thoughts this summer when reading the online NT bidding book hosted by the Pattaya Bridge Club in Thailand).

The experts system was a modified/modernized Blue-Club, which has all strong hands (17+, 16 if not vul) open 1 club, a canape’ bidding structure (sometimes short suits are bid before long ones), a kamikaze NT (as we’ve seen), very light openings in general. Of interest (to me, if nobody else) is that they’d incorporated modern Precision big-club responses and a variety of modernizations (and aggresivenizations).

Here’s an example of bidding you won’t see every day… South is Dealer, and EW are vulnerable … South opens a weak NT (11-14 HCP). Care to guess the final contract?

	Q52 J82 KJT A943
T4 AQ763 Q86542 –		AK6 T95 73 QJ862
	J9873 K4 A9 KT75

Here’s that auction.

W	N	E	S
–	–	–	1N
Dbl	P	2!	P
4	P	P	P

If you guessed that E-W got to four hearts, good! That’s pretty good. I doubt anybody would guess that EAST would be declaring, though.

South (Partner) opened a weak (11-14) 1NT. West’s double is a rare convention called Shuler Doubles, showing a two- (rarely three-) suited handed. It doesn’t promise a point range; more shape requires less points. By our system, after a double I pass with moderate values (waiting for partner to redouble, or I’ll come in later). Playing Shuler, a 2 bid by East would mean “We’re scrambling, clubs are not my shortest suit” (two diamonds would be a scramble with clubs as the shortest suit). Any other suit shows real values and a willingness to look for game. East decided to bid the cheap two hearts instead of going to three clubs, and West bid the game.

About the only good play I made here was not doubling.  South decided to start with the Diamond Ace (North dropping the Jack) and then it went Diamond 9-Q-K-7. And now the onus is on me. If I play partner for the heart King, then returning a diamond ensures the set. However, I knew that East had bid 2 hearts with only three … it seemed to me that they should include the king. And if E had good spades, like AQxx, he could have bid 2S instead of 2H (even if he had the HK). So partner may have the AQ of spades … I switched to a spade. Game making and 11 IMPs in the red.  Had I thought about it a bit more, I would have realized that partner’s Heart and Diamond doubleton meant 5-4 in the black suits, and with good black suits he would have bid them instead of 1NT, so he was likely to have an honor in each red suit.

It pains me to say this …

but Peter’s pic from the geekdo both is the winner.

New Game Updates

Now that I’ve played Homesteaders again, I’m (possibly prematurely) updating my rating. I’m still not sure how many paths to victory there are, but it’s enough. My fourth play of Dungeon Lords, by contrast, was fine but I’m mentally putting this into the “experience game” category. I suppose there is strategy, but I don’t care.  (To be fair, I still haven’t played a full game).

Got to play Powerboats, which I enjoyed, and Jungle Speed, which I won. Powerboats inflicted a mental block where I kept forgetting I could slow down and reroll (I always remembered the option when speeding up). It might make a good game for the kids, too. And my boat, sponsored by Digital Motors  (“It’s either full speed ahead or nothing!”), kept me amused even as hopes were dashed.

I’m the only gamer who hasn’t played M.U.L.E.

So I’m somewhat mistified by the love. But, for you lovers out there, Planet MULE launches tomorrow, according to this countdown timer. (I am catching up on videogames by playing BioShock, which I bought on Black Friday …)

1v100 2nd seasons is odd. Last night the rounds all started off tough (usually the first 9 questions are gimmes). I’ve already seen a few repeated questions, though. I still wish that skipping a question only let you preserve your streak, and didn’t count as a correct answer for scoring.

I finished Protector III twice, so it’s off to Protector II.

And I just ordered the new Shadowfist expansion. I doubt I’ll get my money’s worth of game time from it, but I’ll spend a few solar cycles building decks…