Bridge Match 3 - Board 34

Board 34 - Dealer East - NS Vul

Opponents convention card: Standard American Yellow Card
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ A K 7 2 ♥ K Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ 8 5

East opens 1 diamond. I decide I have a safe bid if partner chooses clubs over a takeout double because my heart suit is pretty good. West redoubles and partner bids 1 spade. This is a free bid since I get to pull from 1 diamond redoubled so I assumed it shows something interesting. And since partner is pretty much capped at 4 points from the opponents bidding I assert that has to mean good spades. Queen fifth, that sort of thing. So after East makes a cuebid of 2 spades I go to 3 spades which gets passed out.

East leads the ace of hearts.

	NORTH ♠ 6 5 4 3 ♥ 9 5 3 ♦ Q 8 ♣ T 7 6 4
		EAST ♥ A
	SOUTH ♠ A K 7 2 ♥ K Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ 8 5

West	North	East	South
		1♦	Double
Redouble1	1♠	2♠2	3♠
Pass	Pass	Pass
110+ points
2Unassuming cuebid

Four spades to the 6 with decent support for every suit is not what partner should show up with here. He's happy no matter what suit I choose so he needs to stay silent here. As far as the hand is going to go it isn't terribly interesting. I'm going to lose 2 diamonds, 2 clubs, 1 heart, and at least 1 spade. I might lose more if they ruff hearts in the short spade hand. They decide to cash their high cards and take the first 5 tricks. I don't see any play other than draw 2 rounds of trump and then run hearts and hope trump splits 3-2.

It does, so I just lose one spade. Down 2.

	NORTH ♠ 6 5 4 3 ♥ 9 5 3 ♦ Q 8 ♣ T 7 6 4
WEST ♠ J T 8 ♥ J 7 4 ♦ K T 5 ♣ A J 3 2		EAST ♠ Q 9 ♥ A 2 ♦ A 9 7 6 4 2 ♣ K Q 9
	SOUTH ♠ A K 7 2 ♥ K Q T 8 6 ♦ J 3 ♣ 8 5

The other 7 tables all played in game from the East-West side and they all made either 5 diamonds or 3NT with overtricks. So our -200 for down 2 undoubled is a top board. If they'd doubled us it would have been a bottom board though, so I'm not celebrating our aggression too much.


Jack disagrees with my double because he thinks double should be takeout and my hand isn't a takeout double. I really think it is. With my majors it's hard to get into trouble here. Even 2 hearts is fine support so partner would need to have 2 little spades and 1 heart to not have a decent major partscore. And that gives him 10 minor cards, so we'll have a fit there. Absolute worst case is he's 2-1-5-5 and we get stuck playing 3 clubs and that's still fine. And the upside of finding a major partscore is worth that risk I think. He also disagrees with my 3 spade bid. Hey, Jack, if you had your 1 spade bid the 3 spade bid is a standout winner. Qxxxx of spades and nothing else and we're probably only down 1. And down 1 when they have a game is awesome.

Ranking after board 34/60: 4/16 with 54.83%

More On Streaming

I followed up my test stream on Tuesday with another test stream on Wednesday. I want to post a bit about what I learned in the process and what may be next.

First things first though, I should actually link my Twitch account in a post in case anyone who wanted to find it missed when I posted it in the comments earlier this week. http://www.twitch.tv/thegreatziggyny Ideally I would have used the name Ziggyny to keep my 'brand' constant, whatever that would mean. But it turns out that account is already taken, by someone who has never streamed anything. I actually suspect the Ziggyny account was created by me, on Justin.tv, to watch an MLG quite a few years ago. Twitch merged with Justin or something, at least they absorbed the accounts, and I suspect my ability to get back into that account got broken in the process. TheGreatZiggyny has been my general fallback name forever, but it may be a little over pompous for something I actually use. Or maybe I just need to go all in and get a top hat and cape to run with it.

I looked into Twitch chat and it is just an IRC server with channels named by the Twitch account name. So irc.twitch.tv/6667 channel #thegreatziggyny is my chat channel. They have an authentication token thing setup so you need a special password to login to the IRC server so there were some hoops to jump through to get setup, but now that I've done it it's done. Putting the chat on the stream itself is as easy as running an IRC client and using the streaming software (OBS) to capture from that window. I watched a video from someone about how to set up transparencies such that I made the colour black in the IRC source into transparent so I can have chat overlayed onto a game if I so desired.

I couldn't find a place where I was happy to overlay chat in SolForge so I just broke the screen up and shrunk the SolForge window for my test. To add to the test and fill space I stuck in the time splits I built for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest back in January. Supposedly there's a plug-in to connect LiveSplit with OBS but I just added it as an extra source to capture for now. It seemed to have worked reasonably well regardless. Except that I was using Mystic Quest splits for SolForge which makes no sense at all.

The layout sure wasn't pretty, but it was reasonably functional and as far as a test goes it was definitely a success.

I didn't look into it very hard, but I couldn't figure out how to limit which sounds got broadcast. I did find a way to turn down the music volume though so that I could play something for background noise while playing SolForge (which has no music, or I found the music annoying and turned it off). I don't think I quite got it quiet enough, or maybe I just need to speak up more, but it worked well enough. Good proof of concept like the layout I guess.

My computer was pretty good when I built it 5ish years ago, but it may be a little outdated now. Or perhaps more likely Flash is just a poorly optimized CPU hog. I had to close Chrome and FireFox to not have my CPU grind to a halt while streaming. (Though I also was trying out streaming to disk at the same time as to Twitch and that probably didn't help.) Closing my web browsers meant I couldn't log in to Twitch to mess with settings (like the stream name) while actually streaming. This actually seems like a fairly common complaint. So much so that people have created tools to interface with Twitch without having to open a web browser. I downloaded one of those (TeeBoard) after my last test. Something to play around with next time I guess.

As far as next time goes I want to try streaming something more CPU intensive like League of Legends. I also want to try streaming something off of my SNES. I got my TV bench put together this afternoon so I should be able to get myself setup with my TV to give that a spin. I would have already tried a LoL stream except my right arm has been hurting again. Really all I've been doing is watching streams (DreamHack Winter is on this weekend) and clicking heroes with my left hand. And I really can't imagine a Clicker Heroes stream as being interesting to anyone so it didn't seem worth it to even try such a thing.

Clicker Heroes: Who To Gild?

I've been running with all of my Clicker Heroes gilds on Frostleaf for some time now. I've mentioned it in posts twice, and both times people have commented to say it would be better to have someone else gilded. (The Masked Samurai in one case, Terra in the other.) Both times I plugged some stuff into my spreadsheet and determined Frostleaf was, in fact, the best option for me at those precise moments in time. I was posting a comment to Sky about how Frostleaf was still the best for me so maybe he was wrong when I thought about it a bit more and decided Terra probably was better for him than Frostleaf...

My problem so far (and quite possibly Sky's as well) is that we're looking at specific moments in time and deciding who is the best to gild at that time. Once a hero has been established and you've bought all their upgrades they all scale in exactly the same way. For every 25 levels you buy the cost will have increased by a factor of 5.42 and the damage done will have increased by a factor of 4. Under this scaling system whoever is the best choice will flat out stay the best choice for all time. You should gild whoever is best amongst heroes you can afford. There is one catch... Every time a hero levels to a multiple of 1000 they get a damage boost of 10 instead of a damage boost of 4. Essentially, you get a 2.5x bonus for hitting the multiple of 1000. So if two heroes are close to each other in power level then having one of them get a 2.5x bonus can easily swing the balance of power between them.

In the specific case Sky brought up, with Terra and Frostleaf, my Frostleaf with an equal amount of money spent on them does a little over twice as much damage. But my Frostleaf had recently crossed a 1000 barrier, and my Terra was close to breaking her own 1000 barrier. If I removed 300 levels from each hero Terra will gain 17% more benefit from being gilded than Frostleaf would. This is the state Sky is in, as he mentioned his Terra was around level 1500 which is about the same cost as Frostleaf to 2950. But pay just a little bit more and bump them up to 1550 vs 3000 and suddenly Frostleaf gains 111% more benefit from being gilded.

One other interesting thing to note is the above comparison isn't exactly fair. Terra and Frostleaf don't actually gain precisely 4x damage when you buy 25 more of them. You're also adding on 25 more levels which get multiplied through by all your other multipliers... How much of a boost this is depends on how many levels you already have. For example, taking Terra from 1000 to 1025 actually multiplies the damage done by 4.1 while taking Frostleaf from 2450 to 2475 is only a damage boost of 4.0408. This seems like a small difference, but it is a crucial one. Frostleaf at 2450 is 7% better than Terra at 1000 even though it's the same level difference as the 2950 to 1500 comparison and no extra 1000 level barriers were broken along the way.

This does mean that as you keep leveling and leveling the 'right' choice would (very slowly) shift up the depth chart even if there wasn't the weird quantized breakpoints at the 1000 marks. The difference does start getting really small as you get more of them, though, so it wouldn't be enough to swing a huge gap in any reasonable length of time. The 2x gap that Frostleaf owns at the 3025v1575 mark doesn't go away until sometime after my spreadsheet breaks from numbers getting too big. At the 11000v9550 mark Frostleaf maintains a 26% edge over Terra. But at the 10975v9525 mark Terra is up to a 99% edge over Frostleaf!

So now I have a couple questions... Can I work out a more general formula of some kind to actually rank who I'd want to gild at any given cash level? And how much does it cost to switch between two gilded states?

Assuming I never ascend again Terra will be 'right' for 550 of every 1000 levels when compared to Frostleaf. And she'll be 'wrong' the other 450, and she'll be more wrong than she is right, so I'd stick with Frostleaf if I couldn't switch. I have 173 gilds, and they cost 80 souls each to move, so I'd have to pay 13840 souls to make that swap. I have 111805 souls right now. So I'd have to give up more than 12% of my damage in order to pick up the 17% benefit from having Terra gilded during that window. This is a gain, but it's such a significant amount of my damage that it's a terrible idea if I'm going to keep ascending and ever play in a range where Frostleaf is way better. So I think the back and forth swap is right out. (Unless it actually lets me push on to the point where I earn more than 13840 extra souls? At my current depth I'd need to be able to push through 150 more levels to make that much. Since each level has a boss that has double health that's not going to happen by getting a 2.5% damage boost.)

What about the start of a general formula? I feel like the first number I need for each hero is their self buffed value at level 200. This is a high enough level that you'll have all of their upgrades, and is also where the 4x multipliers start showing up. None of the other multipliers should matter since they'll impact every hero by the same relative factor.

Ok, I get that value, and it isn't very interesting. Each hero is better than the one before it except the truly terrible ones (Betty, Midas, Amenhotep). So then I tried dividing by the base cost of the hero, but that wasn't any better. Now each hero is worse than the one before with a couple exceptions. Mostly around the terrible ones again, though The Masked Samurai performs a lot better than the two before him.

What I really care about is comparing how two heroes would perform if I could spend all my money on just them. Which means I want to be comparing the cost efficiency of each hero at that gold value. So I added a cell to my spreadsheet for each hero to work out how many levels I could get for a given amount of gold using the formula for summing a geometric series.

...BREAKING NEWS...

It also turns out there's a cap on the hero multiplier. 4100 is the last level where you get a 4x boost! So once a given hero is getting above that value they really fall off the cliff in terms of usefulness. Like, to the point where I'm thinking you'll almost never want to buy level 4101.

...BREAKING NEWS...

Ok, but I still don't have a simple formula for who to gild... But now that I have all this stuff plugged into my spreadsheet I can just enter in an amount of money to see what hero is best at that money level. And because I'm still obsessed with Frostleaf I also want to look at how much better the best hero would be compared to just leaving all my gilds where they are on Frostleaf.

And now that I did that, I don't think it's very useful to post. The problem is there are so many different values I could use, and the 'best' actually changes a lot between them. I tried doing every multiple of 10^20 and then every multiple of 10^5 and things would swingly wildly. 1x10^125 had The Masked Samurai on top, but 1.5x10^125 has Orntchya on top with Frostleaf almost equal. Once Lilin becomes a reasonable option she seems to stay on top, but that's likely just because her breakpoints line up well with the ones I randomly decided to look at. Even by 1x10^130 Lilin is almost 4 times as good as Frostleaf, and she runs almost exactly 3000 levels behind him so they're never going to get offsync on the 2.5x multiplier. So if I ever reach the point where I can have Lilin up after I ascend it'll be right to gild her up for sure.

What does this all tell me? Well, I've been pretty lucky to always have Frostleaf math out to be the best when I've checked since he doesn't seem to be showing up as the best in my random samples. It's entirely possible he's just frequently the best in the little chunk of the leveling curve where I've been playing the most. Which certainly implies that gilding him up was a good choice.

What confuses me a little is I've been trying, and I can't find any times when Dread Knight, Atlas, or Terra are the best. Even at the 1500 Terra mark where Sky rightly pointed out she's beating Frostleaf... She's worse than Orntchya, Ivan, Treebeast, Aphrodite, and Brittany. Ok, I found one... At 4.2x10^129 Terra gets to buy level 2000 and marginally jumps ahead of Orntchya to take first place. But Orntchya is at level 979 at that point, so she'll take the lead back by 1.8x10^130. And while Terra was barely ahead at her 2000 mark, Orntchya has a _commanding_ lead at her 1000 mark.

I think the main thing that's going on is some of the earlier heroes are just really good and the new heroes like Dread Knight and Atlas are stuck competing with those heroes when they're breaking into their primes. By contrast when Orntchya gets up to 1000 everyone from Natalia and earlier has wasted multipliers thanks to the 4100 cap.

Ok, I fiddled with it a bit more and now I can easily have it give me the amount needed for a given hero to hit a given level. Like, say, 1000. Some heroes are the best at the precise moment they hit 1000 - Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Fisherman, Samurai, Forest Seer, Frostleaf, and then every hero from Phthalo on up.

The 1000 level mark feels like it has to be the time when a given hero has hit their power apex relative to the others. It has an edge compared to the 2000 mark because there's no one further up the food chain close to hitting the 1000 mark and blowing you away. Terra is the best at 2000 as mentioned above, but only for a _very_ brief period of time. And then it tails off even more at 3000 where she gets passed by Cadmia, whoever is after Cadmia, Orntchya, and Lilin.


Anyway... What conclusions can I draw from all this rambling and numbers? I think if you're not even the best when you're at level 1000 you should never be the primary gild focus. As time ebbs and flows it feels like quite a few heroes are reasonable choices, and they happen to be the ones who are the best at 1000. I can see a case being made for any of Treebeast, Ivan, Brittany, Fisherman, Samurai, or Forest Seer when you're at the stage where buying Frostleaf is non-trivial. I think I'd lean towards Brittany myself, but Samurai is also a fine choice. Perhaps the best plan is to spread out your gilds amongst all of those bottom heroes to smooth out your boost from gilds. You'd need to level them all up, but that's fine. I do think once Frostleaf becomes an easy buy he becomes the dominant choice, mainly because I like only having to buy one hero on an entire ascension. (I click once to kill a unit and advance to level 140 thanks to Iris. Then I click the holiday trinket to make some money, buy some Frostleafs, and win. (I do buy 200 of everything just to make sure I get all the relevant buffs.) It's easy, and while Frostleaf does get passed for top spot by different heroes as time goes on he always stays near the top in power. Or at least, he did. The new heroes shake things up a bit. But the cheapest of the new champions are stuck competing with previous good heroes, including Frostleaf himself, and I don't think you can justify switching off of him to one of them. Phthalo might be where things change. Certainly if you're reaching the point where Frostleaf is running over level 4100 you have to make a change to something further up the chain. Even at something like 3900 Frostleaf he's still the 5th best option and only off the best (Cadmia) by a factor of 5.

So, I think the right strategy is to gild a bunch of the low level heroes. Then switch to Frostleaf. Then switch to something higher up when you reach the point you can afford that higher up hero pretty trivially. And I think I'm going to wait until at least Phthalo and maybe even Orntchya before I made a switch.

Clicker Heroes Update

Earlier this week Clicker Heroes came out with a new patch that added in 9 new heroes. I'd stopped playing recently but having some new things to enter into a spreadsheet was enough to bring me back. More numbers! Must make them bigger!

Unfortunately it doesn't seem like a whole lot of interesting thought went into these new heroes. Each one costs 1x10^15 times as much as the previous one. It does 7.37x10^12 times as much damage as the previous one. They all have the exact same upgrades, with the same cost progression, and all of the upgrades only work on the individual champion.

In short... Not a whole lot to figure out, sadly. Each one is worse than the one before it because the cost escalated more than the damage did. It'll probably shake out the same as Frostleaf did... Overpriced for a while, but eventually you get enough souls to make it trivial to get a bunch of a new hero when you ascend and then you'll want to pile all of your gilds onto that one.

On the plus side they did add in a shortcut where you can pay a little more to guarantee you gild the hero you want with a single click. You expect to spend 66 souls by doing it manually or you can pay 80 souls and get it done in one click instead of 33. That is a price I will _gladly_ pay should I ever decide I want my gilds on someone other than Frostleaf.

Will this update keep me playing? Well, it got me back into the game... And I can't buy some of the new heroes so maybe I want to stick around until I can do that... Or maybe I'll just quit again soon. Time will tell!

Streaming Test: Success?

Back in January I tried to stream from my apartment in Toronto with no success. My internet didn't have a high enough upload bandwidth which caused me to drop all the frames. The game also lagged massively which may or may not have been related, or it may have been a CPU issue with LoL and all the things I had open. It wasn't worth looking into since I couldn't possibly stream with my internet as it was. I wanted to get it fixed, but I was too averse to talking to people to call up Rogers.

I'm now living in Riverview, and while it's still on Rogers it's a much better connection. My upload in Toronto was 450K when you need 1.5M to stream at a minimum. I was supposed to have 2M, but the connection sucked. Here we're supposed to get 10M and I actually get 11M, so huzzah! (Interestingly, my mother had to call Rogers to change plans so that we'd have a bigger download cap, and it turns out she was also grandfathered into an old, expensive plan. So the internet got faster, with a massively larger download cap, and was $6 cheaper. I hate people.

Anyway, I now have enough upload bandwidth to try streaming again. My right arm started acting up again the last couple days so I didn't want to try with LoL... I fell back to the game I was playing a lot when I hurt my wrist in the first place: SolForge! A nice, slow card game where I can click with my left hand just fine.

I ran into some issues with the game lagging out, but Chrome and Firefox were eating up a ton of CPU usage. I shut those down and pretty much just left OBS, SolForge, and chat programs open. That sped things back up fine, and I was actually able to get something out. I had some issues with sound, but I deleted those videos while I figured out what was going on. I'm streaming all sources of sound, it turns out, which meant when I had the stream open I was looping back on myself over and over again. But once I closed Chrome that all went away. I need to figure out a way to only pick up certain audio sources, or I need to figure out a way to get Twitch chat without watching my own stream.

There's got to be a way to do that, since Path of Exile could actually allow chatting on Twitch through their client. I think maybe they're just IRC channels? Something to look up tomorrow I guess!

Blood Bowl: Injury Decisions

My awesome Chaos Dwarf team has finally run into injury issues after two and a half seasons without taking much damage. And they all came in one game... It's almost like claw is problematic as my opponent this time was Chaos Pact. I suffered three permanent injuries and the apothecary's only suggestion was that we put poor Miss Peacock down instead of trying to deal with her bad hip. Thanks Doc.

So now I need to decide what to do with the three players who got hurt. There are six games left in the regular season and I currently have a commanding hold on my division. My team has 7 wins and 1 loss while second place in my division (the aforementioned Pact team) has 5 wins and 4 losses. I won both the games against them this season so he has to earn 5 more points over his last 5 games than I earn over my last 6 games. That's certainly possible, but it's not terribly likely. And even if he does, I may still be able to get a wildcard spot in the playoffs.

My goal with this team is to win the Superior Bowl. I like scoring, and I like hurting people, and I like leveling up my players... But all my decisions should ultimately be focused on the end goal. This team is the two time defending champions and going for the three-peat is key. So the question with the injured players has to be if they'll be more helpful in the playoffs in their crippled states, or if I'd be better off buying replacement players now and getting 6 games to level them up. (Scoring with a 4 movement, 2 agility player is not easy but I'm willing to try it. Especially since I can afford to absorb a loss or two along the way given my big lead in the division.)

There's also the fact I have a healing potion from a big site milestone and the league decided it was allowed to use them on players in the league. So I can always use it on one of these players as well if I want.

First up, Didit. He's a hobgoblin with guard and dodge. I like him because he's a mobile way to stick some guard where it's most needed on a critical turn. He was hoping to level again to get block and become a real pain... He was also serving as a bit of a blitz magnet. People really like to send their tackle/mighty blow guy after him even if it wasn't tactically sound at the time so I could use him as bait to get the defense going one way while the ball went another. On the downside with two doubles he costs 100k in team value for a 7AV guy without block. Anyway, he'd lost a movement in a previous game, and now he's lost an armour. The movement loss was annoying but not the end of the world. The armour loss is troubling. Now a guy with mighty blow only needs to roll a 6 on 2d6 to break his armour. He'd still make great bait, but he's even less likely to take a couple hits before he goes out, taking his 100k in TV with him. I'm pretty sure this one is a cut. I'll be sad to not have a 3 agility guy with guard anymore, but it's not really the end of the world.

The other two injuries came to a pair of identical blockers. Miss Peacock and Miss Scarlet have both rolled 4 normal skill rolls thus far and both picked up guard, mighty blow, stand firm, and grab. They're both really close to getting a 5th skill roll as well, with Peacock only needing 9 more SPP and Scarlet only needing 5 more. I'm a little sad to roll so many skills with all of them being normals, but the first three normal skills on a blocker are all awesome. Guard, mighty blow, and stand firm are all fantastic and they're especially potent when all of the blockers have them. I often get into situations where if the opponent has a block or two without a pow in it they lose control of the board and I get to bash them right out of it. Grab is not very good on paper, but it actually has worked out pretty well for me when I play against elves with a lot of sidestep. Having grab, even 2 copies of it, lets me peel off people marking key players without them just sidestepping around. Theoretically it also lets me set up crowd surfs (in theory my ball carrying bull and all my blockers have stand firm, so I can play on the sidelines) but mostly people just let me by to score if I set up that board state. Which is a good thing. And since I expect to face elves in the playoffs I like having access to grab. One of the injuries here was a movement loss, the other was an armour loss.

Losing a movement on someone with 4 base movement is actually pretty annoying. I had one of those last season (he was a salary cap casualty before this season) and he always had to lag behind the play. Having someone willing to just stand around and fight an enemy tough guy while the play moves away isn't such a bad thing, but it does power down the grab if the player can't get into a good position. Against a bashy team where the grab was irrelevant anyway she'll still do exactly what I need her to though, as guard and stand firm still do everything I want them to even with 3 movement. Go down to 2 and you can't stand up without rolling dice which is terrible, but at 3 you can just stand up as your turn if you get knocked down. And with stand firm they can't push you away without following up, so you get to stay in tackle zones. So I think the movement loss gets to stay on the team for now. I am slowly leveling up the blocker to replace the last movement cut and going down to too many unskilled blockers would leave my team in real trouble I think.

Losing an armour on someone who's job is mostly to stand around getting punched is a real problem. Someone with 8 AV is 60-70% more likely to be removed from the pitch on any given block (depending on if the opponent has mighty blow or not) compared to someone with 9 AV. On the other hand against people with claw it doesn't change things at all! My game is all about pushing my players beside the enemy players and daring them to roll dice. This works more often than not because all the stand firm on my team negates the pushes and having all my players be 9 AV with thick skull means they're pretty likely to be able to just stand up the next turn if they get knocked down. Then all the guard and mighty blow get to take over and I can crush the opponent! But having someone with only 8 AV gives my line a bigger potential point of failure. And the plan only really works when my whole team is around... Once I lose a couple of the good players I can no longer really surround the opponent and my whole plan falls apart. And if I can't win a bashing game with this team I can't win anything!

So keeping a player with 8 AV is bad for my plan, but so is bringing on a new player who doesn't have guard, mighty blow, or stand firm. The new guy either gets pushed away or put into multiple tackle zones and ignored. I know this for a fact, because I have that one new guy trying to level up and he's an afterthought in many games. I did score a touchdown with him to give him guard, making him a little more useful, but he's still easy to just push away. He's played 12 games so far and only earned 12 SPP, and he got an MVP which is a tad above expected since I normally run with 14 players. So a new blocker, in 6 games, will probably get one skill, but only one skill. Which is not the 3 skills really needed to fill a role in my team...

Maybe looking at my next 6 games will help? Khemri, Slann, Underworld, Skaven, Nurgle, Dwarf. Three of those are completely undeveloped teams which are new to the league. A 4th has been decimated and is down to 3 players with any skills. The Skaven team has some skills, including a guy with claw and a one turner, but it also has a whopping 4 players with niggling injuries just begging to get popped for SPP. The last team, Khemri, has a bunch of skills but only one tomb guardian with block.

This tells me I'm going to be giving up a lot of inducements in every game. There are plenty of opportunities to scoop up casualties and most of these teams will be unable to really win a punching war even if I drop a skilled blocker or two. And actually, my conference as a whole has one elf team in it total. They're leading their division right now so will probably make the playoffs, and they do have a couple of annoying players with side step... So am I building my team to beat that one team that I might not even face? I feel like maybe I should be. But there's also next season to think about, and both these guys are going to get cut for salary cap reasons then I would think. Getting one of them started leveling now is probably a reasonable thing to do.

Ok, I think I need to fire both of the players who picked up -AV and keep the one with -MV for now. And then try to use the last 6 games of the season to feed touchdowns to the new blocker if at all possible.

Bridge Match 3 - Board 33

Board 33 - Dealer North - None Vul

Opponents convention card: Standard American Yellow Card
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ 7 4 2 ♥ A 6 ♦ T 5 4 3 ♣ A Q J 5

I open a weak 1NT in 3rd seat. Partner bids 2 hearts (to play) and East bids 2 spades. It looks like that's going to get passed out, but then partner bids 2NT. I'm not really sure what that means, but if we don't get doubled I think I'm happy with it. We don't get doubled. Hurray!

West leads the 8 of spades.

	NORTH ♠ Q J 3 ♥ K Q 7 5 4 ♦ J 8 6 ♣ 9 3
WEST ♠ 8
	SOUTH ♠ 7 4 2 ♥ A 6 ♦ T 5 4 3 ♣ A Q J 5

West	North	East	South
	Pass	Pass	1NT
Pass	2♥	2♠	Pass
Pass	2NT	Pass	Pass
Pass

Partner's spade stopped for his 2NT bid was QJx. That might not even be a stopper! (If I play low here, East could win the T. If I split my honours East can win, find another entry to West's hand, and finesse away my other honour.) Even if it is, I have 3 heart tricks and 1 club trick. I might be able to get extra club tricks if East has the K (or if I just lose a trick) and I can conceivably get a diamond trick and 2 extra heart tricks. So if everything goes my way I might be able to get 8 tricks. On the other hand they have 5 tricks right off the top so losing to the club K is actually going to set me.

Oh well, not much to do now. I'm going to split my spade honours and cross my fingers. East wins the first spade and fires back the T of clubs. Well, I've already acknowledged that I'm going down if West has the K of clubs. I can't conceive of how the cards could be aligned now such that he doesn't have it. So the question is if I want to go down now or later. I suspect they can only take 9 tricks off the top here, and I can only cash 4 tricks if I hop with the ace. Unless hearts split 3-3, in which case I can actually hold the contract to down 3. Down 3 is only -150... That might be good for some MPs? Well, actually, probably not. It'll only beat tables where the opponents make game. So I think I need to hope they screw up here. I cover with the J.

Spades actually split 4-3-3-3 (wow, what a 2 spade bid by East) and I need to pick what I want to pitch. My 9 of clubs is actually set up, but I need to keep a low club in hand to get to it. And I need to keep Ax of hearts to get back. Which means pitching my diamond 'stopper' of Txxx. Well, actually, after they take 3 diamonds there will only be 5 tricks left. I don't need the club because that would be trick 6. Except East actually returns a club, not a diamond! Hearts don't break so I just get my 5 tricks. Down 3.

	NORTH ♠ Q J 3 ♥ K Q 7 5 4 ♦ J 8 6 ♣ 9 3
WEST ♠ 9 8 6 ♥ T 9 ♦ A K 9 ♣ K 8 7 4 2		EAST ♠ A K T 5 ♥ J 8 3 2 ♦ Q 7 2 ♣ T 6
	SOUTH ♠ 7 4 2 ♥ A 6 ♦ T 5 4 3 ♣ A Q J 5

All 7 other tables passed this board out. So by scoring negative we get 0 MPs.


Jack disagrees with my opening bid. He wants me to pass. Bah. Things broke pretty terribly for us here. I feel like on many layouts we get a positive result from my opening here. I think part of the problem is Jack is always focused on us getting to a constructive contract while a lot of my focus is interfering with the opponents and keeping them from finding their constructive contract. Weak no trump is a preemptive thing. After I bid it we should be scrambling to find a safe place to play, not trying to find a game by bidding silly things like 2NT off of a 9 count with QJx as a stopper.

Ranking after board 33/60: 5/16 with 53.46%

Bridge Match 3 - Board 32

Board 32 - Dealer West - EW Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Good

My hand: ♠ ♥ K J 5 2 ♦ J 9 7 6 5 4 ♣ J 7 3

West opens 1 diamond, partner overcalls 1 spade, and East bids 2 clubs. The enemies are playing Dutch Doubleton, meaning they have at least 4 diamonds when they open 1 diamond. This means we probably don't have a place in diamonds ourselves despite my 6 card suit, and without that my hand is pretty trash. Especially with a void opposite partner's suit. So while I'd like to bid, I don't think I can or should. West jumps to 3 spades which is alerted as a splinter. East bids 4 hearts to show a control in hearts for clubs. I could double this as lead directional, but pinpointing the heart king probably helps declarer more than partner and I want him to lead a spade anyway if he ever gets in. So I pass again. West bids 4 spades to show a control in spades for clubs. I guess that means he has stiff ace? Anyway, they made some more bids and end up in 6 clubs.

I lead a low diamond, hoping to find partner with a void of his own.

WEST ♠ 9 ♥ Q 9 4 3 ♦ A K Q T ♣ A T 6 5
	SOUTH ♠ ♥ K J 5 2 ♦ J 9 7 6 5 4 ♣ J 7 3

West	North	East	South
1♦	1♠	2♣	Pass
3♠1	Pass	4♥2	Pass
4♠3	Pass	4NT4	Pass
5♥5	Pass	6♣	Pass
Pass	Pass
1Splinter
2Control in hearts for clubs
3Control in spades for clubs
4Ace asking for clubs
52 aces, no queen of trump

6-Q-8-2. Interesting, West didn't have the ace of spades. I wonder why he splintered and then cuebid? Anyway, partner didn't have a void and now declarer is going to draw my trumps away. 5-4-K-3. 2-7-A-2 of spades. 6-8 of hearts-Q-J. Declarer now goes about taking tricks by leading a diamond. I wonder if he's going to finesse me? 3-9-K-6 of hearts. Ok, I have stoppers in both red suits now. Hopefully partner has spades and they won't be able to come to 12 tricks. Declarer immediately attacks spades. 9-3-4-4 of diamonds. Now a heart. 3-A-8 of clubs-5. Ok, his cuebid was a void and partner has an undisclosed 5 card major. Declarer ruffs a spade back to board. Then he plays some more cards and it doesn't matter because he's up. Making 7.

	NORTH ♠ J 7 6 5 3 2 ♥ A T 8 7 6 ♦ 8 ♣ 4
WEST ♠ 9 ♥ Q 9 4 3 ♦ A K Q T ♣ A T 6 5		EAST ♠ A K Q T 8 4 ♥ ♦ 3 2 ♣ K Q 9 8 2
	SOUTH ♠ ♥ K J 5 2 ♦ J 9 7 6 5 4 ♣ J 7 3

Two tables made 6 clubs just in, two tables made 7 clubs. The rest of us played 6 clubs making 7. So we get a flat 7 MPs for this board.


Jack disagrees with my opening lead. He thinks my lead is the standard one but that underleading my K of hearts and leading up to the guy who cuebid hearts is a better plan. I think you're crazy, Jack. Especially since you have a hand with ELEVEN cards in the majors and made one bid. And that bid wasn't Michaels! And we're white on red! We may well have had a good sacrifice in hearts. I went back and forced Jack to bid 2 diamonds and it results in us playing 3 hearts doubled. Which I held to down 3, for a clear top board.

Ranking after board 32/60: 4/16 with 55.13%

Bridge Match 3 - Board 31

Board 31 - Dealer South - NS Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Good

My hand: ♠ T 3 2 ♥ K 9 6 2 ♦ J T 9 6 ♣ Q 5

West opens 1 diamond in second seat. Partner doubles and East bids 1NT. My hand is not great, but with 7 cards in the majors I feel like I should bid something. I go with 2 hearts. Everyone passes.

West leads the K of spades.

	NORTH ♠ A 8 5 ♥ Q J T 5 ♦ K 5 ♣ K J 6 3
WEST ♠ K
	SOUTH ♠ T 3 2 ♥ K 9 6 2 ♦ J T 9 6 ♣ Q 5

West	North	East	South
			Pass
1♦	Double	1NT	2♥
Pass	Pass	Pass

We have half the points and an 8 card fit, so this should be a decent spot to be. I have a club loser, two diamond losers, two spade losers, and a heart loser. That's one loser too many. I might be able to avoid a diamond loser. And it's possible I can get a pitch in clubs to get rid of a spade loser if they don't cash out. My best hope of making that happen will be if the person with the ace of clubs only has 2 spades, so I think I want to hold up one round here. K-5-7-2. West shifts to a club. Sweet! T-3-A-5. East returns a spade. 9-T-Q-A. Communication here is a little awkward and I'm going to have to throw away a club trick to get my spade pitch in time, but that should be fine. I can ruff that club. So I cash my K of clubs dropping my own Q and then play the J to pitch a spade. West ruffs. So much for that plan. He throws back a spade, which I ruff.

I don't think there's even going to be an endplay or anything here. All they need to do is win their A of hearts and then wait for me to play diamonds. But then they don't take the A of hearts on the first trick. So now I can ruff the club high back to my hand and then draw trump. If they're split 1-1 at this point they'll be forced to lead a diamond or give me a ruff and sluff? Except I'll be out of trump in hand. And I risk being forced to lead away from the K of diamonds. So I can't ruff the club. I just draw trump, making sure to leave J5 opposite 9 so I can choose which hand to win the next trick in.

Hearts split with West winning the A. He then fires out a diamond, putting me to the test. I can float it to my J (winning when West underled the Q of diamonds) or I can hop with the K (winning when West underled the A of diamonds). East has shown up with 5 points so far and should have had 6-9 for his bid. West has shown up with 9 so far, and he opened. So they're each short points, meaning the diamonds should be split. Would West have opened an 11 count? Probably. So there's actually nothing to go on here. I just need to guess and hope. West led both spades and clubs during the hand, so I'm going to assert that he didn't lead diamonds because he thought I'd hop with the K and he has the A. So I hop now. The K holds, giving me 8 tricks. Making 2.

	NORTH ♠ A 8 5 ♥ Q J T 5 ♦ K 5 ♣ K J 6 3
WEST ♠ K Q 6 4 ♥ A 8 7 ♦ A 8 7 4 ♣ T 8		EAST ♠ J 9 7 ♥ 4 3 ♦ Q 3 2 ♣ A 9 7 4 2
	SOUTH ♠ T 3 2 ♥ K 9 6 2 ♦ J T 9 6 ♣ Q 5

Two people somehow managed to make 3 hearts. Two more went down 1 in 3 hearts. The other 3 tables had the enemies play contracts where they made 1NT, went down 1 in 1NT, and made 2 clubs. This does mean we get 10 MPs on the hand.


Jack disagrees with my play near the end when I drew trump. He wants me to ruff a club. If he then draws trump he's down, so at that point he needs to play a diamond from hand and guess. Actually, that's the right play. Because if hearts don't break they can hop on this round, draw another round themselves, and then I'll be forced to lead away from the K of diamonds AND lose a club at the end. That's terrible. I set myself up for a false dichotomy. Ruffing the club and drawing trump was bad, so I didn't ruff a club. But I could have ruffed a club and then played a diamond.

Ranking after board 31/60: 4/16 with 55.3%

World of Warcraft: Ding 100!

It took me six days to hit max level of this expansion, which actually feels longer than previous expansions. Part of that was losing a day of playing while Blizzard suffered DDoS attacks from China. Part of it was spending more time doing other things when I was playing, like fishing and archaeology and hunting for treasures. And maybe, just maybe, part of it was from actually reading most of the quests and watching all of the cutscenes this time around.

I only really did quests in two of the zones, too. So I still have plenty of quests to run around and do for fun. I managed to get enough garrison resources while leveling to upgrade to a size 3 town, but I didn't have enough resources after that to build new buildings in all the slots I gained by getting bigger. I didn't build any of the buildings that generate extra resources, and I built one that I think costs resources. I also found a lot of treasures, and killed a lot of rares, to get extra resources. So I suspect getting a resource generating building early on would actually have been a pretty good idea. But if I'd done that I wouldn't have been able to level my followers as fast, and I only have 2 of those at max level so far... So maybe if I'd gone the other way I'd have lots of resources but all my people would be underleveled? Who knows!

Hitting level 100 opened up so many quests around my garrison and in the area I as leveling that I actually ran out of space in my quest log. And it wasn't like I had low level quests kicking around clogging it up! I can't remember the last time I hit the quest log limit... So clearly there's a lot of stuff still to do.

I must say, I'm still happy I got this expansion.

Bridge Match 3 - Board 30

Board 30 - Dealer East - None Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Good

My hand: ♠ T ♥ A 8 7 3 ♦ A J 8 ♣ T 9 5 4 2

East opens 1 diamond and my hand is not good enough to bid. West responds 1 spade, partner stays silent, and East jumps to 3 diamonds. At this point I think I want to encourage partner to get involved if he has something, so I double. The double is for naught as West bids 3NT and partner passes again.

Partner leads the 4 of hearts.

	NORTH ♥ 4
		EAST ♠ Q J 9 ♥ 5 ♦ K Q 6 4 3 2 ♣ A K 7
	SOUTH ♠ T ♥ A 8 7 3 ♦ A J 8 ♣ T 9 5 4 2

West	North	East	South
		1♦	Pass
1♠	Pass	3♦	Double1
3NT	Pass	Pass	Pass
1Take-out

Interesting. I actually have two diamond stoppers so we might be able to set this if that was their primary source of tricks. Hearts is definitely our suit if we have one (hopefully partner has the 2 and therefore has 5 of them) so my plan is to win this one and play another. 4-5-A-2. Ok, partner only has 4. This means declarer also has 4. Well, might as well finesse the hearts if that's a thing... 8-J-Q-7 of clubs. Partner thinks for a while, decides not to return a heart, and picks diamonds as the most likely suit with an entry to my hand. Good call, partner! 7-2-J-9. Hopefully he did this because we're accomplishing something with the heart finesses. So I play another. 7-K-9-3 of diamonds. Declarer exits a heart. Except partner is out, and declarer actually has 5 of them. So he cashes another too. *sigh*

Declarer then cashes a club and plays a spade around to partner's ace. Ok, we may still have something here. If partner fires back a diamond to my ace they're down! He does! Dummy is up, but that doesn't much matter. Down one.

	NORTH ♠ A 5 3 2 ♥ Q 9 4 ♦ T 7 5 ♣ Q 8 6
WEST ♠ K 8 7 6 4 ♥ K J T 6 2 ♦ 9 ♣ J 3		EAST ♠ Q J 9 ♥ 5 ♦ K Q 6 4 3 2 ♣ A K 7
	SOUTH ♠ T ♥ A 8 7 3 ♦ A J 8 ♣ T 9 5 4 2

This board actually had 8 different results. Our side went down 3 in 3 hearts doubled, and their side played the rest of the boards. 4 spades down 2, making, and up 1. 3 spades up 1 and up 2. 3 diamonds making. Our own 3NT down 1 is therefore good for 12 MPs.


Jack disagrees with my double because my hand isn't strong enough. I think 2 aces and 9 cards in the unbid suits is actually plenty strong. I'm not making this double to try to find a game. I'm making it to try to find a good place to sacrifice. If West lets it sit that could be bad (someone did make 3 diamonds after all), but I suspect there are more times when the interference causes us to play in a good spot MP wise instead of a bad one. But that may just be my experience playing against old ladies with Andrew talking. Jack also gets annoyed when I signal incorrect count in clubs after I'd given up on the hand. Sorry.

Ranking after board 30/60: 4/16 with 54.76%

Bridge Match 3 - Board 29

Board 29 - Dealer North - All Vul

Opponents convention card: Dutch Doubleton
Opponents playing strength: Good

My hand: ♠ T 7 ♥ A ♦ J 9 7 6 5 3 ♣ Q J T 9

It's two passes to me, and I have a really sketchy preempt here. Jack empty sixth while red is unappealing, but they're also red and the odds of them having a major game are pretty likely I would think. Part of me wants to lie a little and go all the way to the 3 level here. I think Byung might do that! And if it was white on red I really would do that. But in this case I think I need to start at 2 and leave any craziness to partner if he has diamonds to match. West doubles my bid, partner raises to 3 diamonds, and East passes. West doesn't give up and bids 4 hearts. Unfortunately it seems like they got to their game after all. I sure don't feel comfortable saccing in 5 diamonds doubled, so I let it sit.

Partner leads the A of diamonds.

	NORTH ♦ A
		EAST ♠ K J 9 8 6 5 ♥ 9 7 5 ♦ 4 2 ♣ 7 3
	SOUTH ♠ T 7 ♥ A ♦ J 9 7 6 5 3 ♣ Q J T 9

West	North	East	South
	Pass	Pass	2♦1
Double	3♦2	Pass	Pass
4♥3	Pass	Pass	Pass
1Weak two
2Preemptive
3Strong, new suit after double

A-2-3-K. That K either means declarer started with KQ doubleton or that partner only raised to 3 with AQT8 support. We'll need to have a talk if that's the case. Partner shifts to a spade. 4-5-7-A. Declarer draws trump. 2-8-9-A. I think my hope now is partner somehow has the A of clubs and we can finesse declarer's K? Or are we trying to cut communication in spades? If partner has 3 trump he can keep declarer from ever getting to dummy once declarer is out of spades. That sounds good. T-Q-2-6. There's one spade left, hopefully partner has it. But that would make him 3-3-4-3? And declarer therefore 2-6-1-4? Or maybe 3-3-3-4 against 2-6-2-3? Actually, those both seem reasonable enough. Declarer draws some trump. 3-4-5-5 of diamonds. Then he fires back a diamond. 4-6-T of hearts-8.

Partner, I am officially disappointed in you. Declarer then cashes a club. A-8-7-9. And plays another. 5-2-7-Q. Leading a diamond back would be a ruff and sluff, so I guess I play a club. J-6-4-7 of hearts. Declarer is finally in those glorious spades... And he ruffs it. Turns out he was 2-7-1-3. They make exactly 4.

And I'd like to note that we only go down one trick in 5 diamonds. And you know who knows that to be true? JACK! It was on him to make a more aggressive action than one single diamond raise with AQT8 and an outside K. There are SO MANY TRICKS available on a hand like this.

	NORTH ♠ 4 3 2 ♥ 8 4 ♦ A Q T 8 ♣ K 8 4 2
WEST ♠ A Q ♥ K Q J T 6 3 2 ♦ K ♣ A 6 5		EAST ♠ K J 9 8 6 5 ♥ 9 7 5 ♦ 4 2 ♣ 7 3
	SOUTH ♠ T 7 ♥ A ♦ J 9 7 6 5 3 ♣ Q J T 9

All 8 tables played in 4 hearts. But 4 of them made 6, and 1 of them made 5, so we get 12 MPs.


Jack disagrees with my 2 diamond opener. My suit sucks, so I should pass. I agree that my suit sucks, but in 3rd seat with 3 cards in the majors I think you still have to bid something. Then Jack disagrees with my spade return when I got in with the A of hearts. At that point I was still expecting him to only have 3 diamonds and constructed a hand where cutting spade communication was important. He wants me to return a club, which wins under the under construction where declarer has the K of clubs. Well, wins is a bit strong there? I guess at some point partner might get in and need to exit a club which gives them the club king when they don't deserve it? Maybe the key is we're playing MPs here, so not giving them an overtrick is a fine plan and the club return has the chance of doing that...

Ranking after board 29/60: 5/16 with 53.69%

Clicker Heroes Wall

I'm finding myself running into a bit of a wall in Clicker Heroes. I want to have all the ancients because that seems like it might be a reasonable spot to say I've beaten the game. (Or maybe I need all the achievements?) But I don't want to just buy them, run out of souls, and say that's that. I want to buy them when it might make sense to do so. I've actually bought them all except for three: Thusia, Juggernaut, and Morgulis.

My next ancient is going to cost me 50000 souls, and Morgulis is likely the best of the terrible options left since I don't actually click very often. Morgulis makes all your hero souls 10% better. Which means that in order to break even on buying him for 50000 souls I need to have 550000 souls on hand when I buy him. Considering I only have 92077 souls right now, that's a long way off.

I can scoop up around 30000 souls in a very short run where I just go until I'm not one-shotting pretty much everything, but this requires pretty active playing for an idle game because I need to actually buy more copies of Frostleaf pretty regularly or my progress sputters to a halt. Alternatively I can push on and on, further ahead, but that really doesn't earn me many souls. I've now gone 4 days since ascending (figuring that while playing World of Warcraft I can alt-tab over to pull a full combo to pass a couple levels every now and then), have hit level 1739, but I'm only going to get 67k souls when I ascend. That's twice what I can get in under an hour, and a terrible rate of return. I am getting more Frostleaf gilds which is nice, I guess.

Mostly I'm just finding my motivation to play waning and I'm getting annoyed at how CPU intensive a Flash idle game seems to be. So maybe getting all the ancients is a pipe dream and I should just pack it in now. It's not like I have any interesting numbers to crunch anymore...

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

Warlords of Draenor, the newest expansion for World of Warcraft, came out this morning. For every other expansion for the game I've taken time off of work and I've worked to set my sleep schedule such that I would be ready to go right when the servers opened and could play all day long. This time around I did no such thing. I didn't need to take time off work since I'm unemployed and I didn't see any reason to play the second the doors opened. So I didn't set an alarm and I just got up when I woke up normally. In this case it happened that I woke up 2 hours after the expansion went live, which actually turned out to be a pretty good time to play. I missed the big rush of people going right at the start so I didn't have to worry about fighting for quest items and the like, and the servers weren't overwhelmed, but there were still enough people around to make the world feel populated.

I think a big part of why I didn't feel the need to get up right away was the removal of the realm first achievements. I definitely would have felt the need to try to defend my blacksmithing title, and while I am sad they took them out and I couldn't try for it I'm also happy that I didn't need to worry about it and could just relax and do my thing. So I was able to pet battle, and fish, and dig up artifacts instead of being all in on gathering/buying ore.

By later in the day the large number of people trying to play started causing issues. Most realms had to put up a log in queue and world servers were sporadically getting overwhelmed and crashing. But compared to any other game's launch... Smooth as silk.

The game itself is fantastic. They've put in a fair number of cinematics (at least thus far... I've only done one zone!) and the quest chains really flow well. And something as simple as making quest rewards have a chance to upgrade themselves is really interesting. Sure, you probably don't need that green item... But it could be purple! And you won't find out until you do the quest!

Garrisons are everything I'd hoped they'd be, and maybe even more. Getting followers as quest rewards out in the world is really cool. You do some quests for someone, help them out in some way, and they decide you're awesome and head to your town to help you out in return. And those followers follow the same loot upgrade system so random people will end up being purple for me when they're just green for you.

I did some dungeons with random groups of people. Queueing as DPS was a 40 minute way so I went and tanked instead for the instant pop. I haven't tanked in two years, and a lot of the buttons have changed, and my gear is entirely DPS focused. Didn't matter. Maybe it's just really easy. Maybe I'm awesome. Who knows? I had fun and one of the healers complimented me after the run so that was nice.

Anyway, after one day of playing I can heartily endorse picking this expansion up. It's tons of fun. And it would be even more fun with more people playing!

Bridge Match 3 - Board 28

Board 28 - Dealer West - NS Vul

Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ A 7 6 ♥ 7 6 5 3 ♦ J T 8 ♣ A J 7

East opens 1 diamond in 3rd seat. My hand may have 10 points but it's terrible. I pass. West bids 1 spade, East goes to 3 spades and West goes the rest of the way to game.

Partner leads the 9 of clubs.

	NORTH ♣ 9
		EAST ♠ K Q 3 2 ♥ T ♦ A K 7 6 2 ♣ K 6 4
	SOUTH ♠ A 7 6 ♥ 7 6 5 3 ♦ J T 8 ♣ A J 7

West	North	East	South
Pass	Pass	1♦	Pass
1♠	Pass	3♠	Pass
4♠	Pass	Pass	Pass

If my memory serves, leading the 9 shows the T so I don't need to insert the J. I want to keep my A to cover the K later, so I guess I need to float this around to declarer's Q. 9-4-7-Q. Declarer decides to play on diamonds. 5-3-K-8. And now a heart. T-5-A-4. Back to diamonds. Q-4-2-J. And now ruff a heart to board. 2-8-2 of spades-3. Cash the A of diamonds, pitching a club. Finally, draw some trump. 3-6-8-4. Partner shows out on the second round of spades so I now know declarer started with 5 of them. So he still has 2 round cards in his hand, but at best we're only taking those 2 as tricks. And my A of trump. I guess my best play is to win this spade and then throw him on board with a trump to keep him from ruffing another heart? Sure. Oh, it turns out the diamonds are up... Oops. He makes 6.

	NORTH ♠ 4 ♥ K J 9 8 4 ♦ 9 4 3 ♣ T 9 8 3
WEST ♠ J T 9 8 5 ♥ A Q 2 ♦ Q 5 ♣ Q 5 2		EAST ♠ K Q 3 2 ♥ T ♦ A K 7 6 2 ♣ K 6 4
	SOUTH ♠ A 7 6 ♥ 7 6 5 3 ♦ J T 8 ♣ A J 7

On the plus side, 4 other tables let the opponents make 6. The other 3 tables held them to 5. So if I just hop with the A of clubs on the first trick or when I win the A of spades I get a (tied for) top board. As it is we get 4 MPs.


Jack disagrees with my play on the opening trick. He wants me to play 'third hand high' and insert the J. Does he forget that we're playing Rusinow leads? He then dislikes my signal in hearts. He wants me to play high to show an even number. I thought I was, by playing 5 instead of 3 but he wants it to be more clear. I guess the 7 isn't any different from my side of things but could be for partner. Finally, when I win the A of trump Jack doesn't like me putting dummy in with the two high diamonds. Ok, fair, that was me being tired/sick/disoriented and not thinking through the hand. My bad.

Ranking after board 28/60: 6/16 with 52.55%

World of Warcraft: Boost to 90

Ian posted a status update on Facebook last week about the free boost to level 90 that comes with the purchase of the upcoming expansion. Basically asking about why bother playing a leveling game at all if you're going to skip most of the levels. Some other people chimed in against the concept as well, with arguments along the lines of you should need to put in the time and earn level 90, or how it's just a money grab from Blizzard and indicates the game is a sinking ship. I disagree with all those sentiments, but I wanted to really figure out why I disagree with them.

First off, I think getting to start at the current maximum level is a fantastic idea. It lets lapsed players and new players all do the expansion stuff immediately with any friends who did play through the last expansion. I got Sceadeau playing, and I'm pretty sure if he had to spend several weeks playing without me before he could play with me that he just wouldn't bother. Last expansion I convinced Robb to start playing because challenge mode dungeons sounded really cool. (It's timed 5 player content with a gear cap so you can't just farm raids to trivialize them.) But after we played for three days straight and he wasn't even level 60 (nowhere near the 85 that the rest of us were at) he gave up. If Blizzard had had a 'boost to 85' option with that expansion I feel like Robb would have stomached the 5 levels of questing to hit max level and would have done challenge modes with us. And having one extra person working on them likely would have kept the rest of us actually interested and playing much longer than we all did. So in a sense it would have been a cash grab (they would have sold an extra copy of the expansion and earned several months worth of subscription fees) but it really feels like it's just win-win for everyone involved.

But what about fairness? If we set some record times with Robb who didn't play through Northrend is it really fair? Shouldn't he have to put in 'the time'? I've never really been one who understood the whole 'keeping up with the Joneses' thing, but even if I ignore that there's the (often ignored) fact that 'the time' actually can't be put in anymore. What do I mean by that? Take The Burning Crusade expansion, which let you level from 60-70. When that expansion first came out the zones were designed with the pace of leveling and ability sets of 2007. The story was designed to make sense with the world as it existed at that time. The stuff you could loot and gather was relevant. You couldn't fly, and leveling towards getting a flying mount was a big deal. Zones were populated and you could reasonably expect to find people to run dungeons and do world PvP if that was your thing. None of those things are true now.

Basically, leveling from 60 to 70 in 2007 was a grand time and I would recommend anyone buy that expansion. In 2007. Leveling from 60 to 70 in 2014 is a real chore. They've gotten a lot better at building quests in the last 7 years for one thing, so the difference when you get to 60 and head to Outlands is pretty stark. And then there's all the issues with pacing and irrelevancy of the items and no one being around.

I don't think anyone could say with a straight face that 60-70 in 2014 is a better game than 60-70 in 2007 was. I also don't think anyone can say that 60-70 in 2014 was a better game than 90-100 will be. So the idea that you would force someone to play through 60-70 in 2014 just because you played 60-70 in 2007 as a fair thing boggles my mind. Games are supposed to be fun; let people get to the new, fun stuff!

I also don't think World of Warcraft is a sinking ship. The user base may well have eroded from the peak, but it's still stupidly strong compared to any 'competitor', if there even are such things. Even if it was a sinking ship I don't see a boost to 90 as being an indicator of that fact. I see it as showing that Blizzard understands what people want to do. Each previous expansion came with nerfs to the previous leveling time, but those just served to make the leveling game not make much sense. You level too fast for the zones now, and it's jarring. Blizzard has always understood that when an expansion comes out people want to play the new stuff. They don't want to play the old stuff, even sped up. And now they've finally taken the logical step and are just letting people start at the new stuff no matter where they were before. And without screwing the old leveling game up even more.

Boosts to 90 aren't just for new players, either. It's a way to change servers, or to change factions, or to change classes. I have no plan for my boost but maybe at some point I'll want to go play on a new server for some reason and I'll have it in my pocket.

Bridge Match 3 - Board 27

Board 27 - Dealer South - None Vul

Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ Q J 8 6 ♥ T 3 ♦ Q 3 2 ♣ J 7 6 3

West opens 1 diamond in second seat and partner bids 2 diamonds, Michaels. Well, I sure have a 4 card major and not a lot of points... Is a jump bid here stronger or weaker than a regular bid? I'd think it should be weaker, with 3 diamonds as the way to show a good hand? I for one am a law abiding citizen so I like 3 spades here. Let's find out if Jack does too... West bids 4 diamonds over my 3 spades and partner goes right to 4 spades which gets passed out.

West leads the A of diamonds.

	NORTH ♠ A T 5 4 2 ♥ A Q 6 5 2 ♦ 8 4 ♣ T
WEST ♦ A
	SOUTH ♠ Q J 8 6 ♥ T 3 ♦ Q 3 2 ♣ J 7 6 3

West	North	East	South
			Pass
1♦	2♦1	Pass	3♠
4♦	4♠	Pass	Pass
Pass
1Michaels

Wow, partner's hand is not very good. With 2 diamonds I really don't think he should be the one pulling from 4 diamonds to 4 spades. Oh well. I have a heart loser, a club loser, a spade loser, and two diamond losers. I need to get rid of two of those. Picking up the K of spades in West is one way to get rid of one, and I guess the other is to finesse him for the K of hearts too. But first let's see how many tricks they take off the top... A-4-6-3. 5-8-J-Q. Uh... What? I mean, thanks! Time to draw trump. Q-K-A-3. T-9 of clubs-6-7. 2-4 of clubs-J-9.

Oh, right... Those hearts aren't actually tricks. Maybe I was suppose to ruff them out? Oh well. Too late now! Let's just play them and hope for a 3-3 split I guess. T-4-Q-8. A-7-3-K. Ok, hearts are 4-2. This means I only have 9 tricks. Actually, I can get a 10th in hearts after losing a heart and ruffing a heart. And it doesn't matter what order I do that in, so I might as well ruff the first one in case West is being tricky. He isn't, but I still have 10 tricks so I make 4.

	NORTH ♠ A T 5 4 2 ♥ A Q 6 5 2 ♦ 8 4 ♣ T
WEST ♠ K 9 7 ♥ K 4 ♦ A K T 9 7 5 ♣ K 2		EAST ♠ 3 ♥ J 9 8 7 ♦ J 6 ♣ A Q 9 8 5 4
	SOUTH ♠ Q J 8 6 ♥ T 3 ♦ Q 3 2 ♣ J 7 6 3

There are 8 different results for this board. In addition to our 4 spades making there was a 4 spades down 3. The rest of the contracts were played by EW, with 5 diamonds down 3, 5 diamonds making, 5 diamonds making up 1, 4 diamonds making, 4 diamonds down 1, and 3NT up 1. That's a lot of different diamond results! All of which are worse than 4 spades making, so we get 14 MPs here. But only because West gifted us the diamond trick. Though if we hold it to down 1 we still get 10 MPs, so I guess my 3 spade bid worked out for the best?


Jack disagrees with my 3 spade bid because he thinks it's a limit raise. He wants me to bid 2 spades. This is twice now that the opponents have opened and we end up trying to find constructive ways to get to game. That's not how bridge should work. If the opponents open it's exceedingly unlikely we have a game so we should be trying to find the right partscore or the right level of interference to get them to a bad spot. I really think 3 spades should be weaker than 2 spades on this auction. Jack also disagrees with my play of the hand. He wants me to play on hearts before drawing trump, and when I do play on hearts he wants me to float the T instead of finessing the Q. I think I'm fine with both my plays here.

Ranking after board 27/60: 6/16 with 53.44%

Bridge Match 3 - Board 26

Board 26 - Dealer East - All Vul

Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ 8 ♥ K Q T ♦ 8 7 3 2 ♣ Q J T 9 6

East opens 1 spade, I double. West bids 2 spades and partner bids 3 hearts. East follows up with 3 spades. Now, I'm a little light for my bid, and I don't have a 4th heart, so I'm a little leery about bidding 4 hearts here. I pass, as does West, but then partner decides to bid 3NT and East doubles for penalty. No trump can't be the right spot... Could clubs? Or should I just retreat to 4 hearts? I'm a little worried partner will take a 4 club bid as a cuebid and I'm not sure it's even a good place regardless. If we're playing at the 4 level we might as well be in game. East doubles my 4 hearts bid for penalty too.

East leads the 8 of hearts.

	NORTH ♠ K J 9 ♥ 9 7 5 2 ♦ K Q 4 ♣ K 4 3
		EAST ♥ 8
	SOUTH ♠ 8 ♥ K Q T ♦ 8 7 3 2 ♣ Q J T 9 6

West	North	East	South
		1♠	Double
2♠	3♥	3♠	Pass
Pass	3NT	Double1	4♥
Pass	Pass	Double2	Pass
Pass	Pass
1Penalty
2Penalty

Oh no. Partner's 3 heart bid was based on 4 of them to the 9. And we have no aces. So we're going to lose 4 tricks off the top, and then probably lose a trick to the J of hearts as well. Unless hearts split 3-3 and East led 8 from J8x? That feels super unlikely. Playing West for Jx is probably better. Ok, I'll do that. 8-K-3-2. I need to draw trump and get rid of the A of clubs. I'm worried that if I play clubs they'll ruff some. But I don't really have trump control so maybe that's fine? I should play a club. 6-7-K-2. 3-A-Q-5. East cashes the A of spades. A-8-5-9. And the A of diamonds. A-2-5-4. I now have all the high cards, except for that pesky trump suit. So I draw some trump after winning the diamond East returned. West wins the A of hearts and then cashes the J of hearts. East shows out, so West has another heart. But the best he can do is put me back in hand, so I'm up.

Down 2, doubled.

	NORTH ♠ K J 9 ♥ 9 7 5 2 ♦ K Q 4 ♣ K 4 3
WEST ♠ Q 5 4 ♥ A J 4 3 ♦ J 9 6 5 ♣ 7 5		EAST ♠ A T 7 6 3 2 ♥ 8 6 ♦ A T ♣ A 8 2
	SOUTH ♠ 8 ♥ K Q T ♦ 8 7 3 2 ♣ Q J T 9 6

All of the other tables played spade contracts. 4 spades made 3 times, went down 1 3 times, and 3 spades made just in. This means we actually get 6 MPs. Of course if partner had just passed out 3 spades we get an extra MP. Oh well.


Jack disagrees with my double since it promises 12 points and I only have 8. I knew I was doubling a little light, but I didn't expect it to put Jack on tilt the way it did. He also disagrees with my 4 heart bid and would rather I sit for 3NT doubled. I played that out, and went down 4 doubled. I could have cashed out for down 2 doubled if I wanted to give up, though.

Ranking after board 26/60: 7/16 with 51.65%

Bridge Match 3 - Board 25

Board 25 - Dealer North - EW Vul

Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced

My hand: ♠ A K J 8 ♥ A Q 9 6 4 ♦ T 2 ♣ 5 4

I open 1 heart in 3rd chair. Partner responds 3 clubs which should show 6-9 points and a 4 card fit. It's entirely possible his 6 points are in the majors and we have 4 minor suit losers off the top. And if he actually has a minor suit trick we're probably giving up a major trick to get it. So 3 hearts is likely the right place to end up. East has other ideas and gets in there with 3 spades over my 3 hearts bid. Time to take him for a ride.

I lead the K of spades.

WEST ♠ 7 ♥ K J T 3 ♦ A 9 7 4 ♣ 8 7 3 2
	SOUTH ♠ A K J 8 ♥ A Q 9 6 4 ♦ T 2 ♣ 5 4

West	North	East	South
	Pass	Pass	1♥
Pass	3♣1	Pass	3♥
Pass	Pass	3♠	Double2
Pass	Pass	Pass
1Bergen
2Penalty

K-7-6-4. Well, partner sure didn't have points in hearts! And East has a heart void. I have 2 more spade tricks for sure, maybe even 3 as long as I don't touch them again. I think I probably want to take away the entry to board, so I lead a diamond. 2-4-K-3. Partner then is a real pal and cashes the A of clubs. A-6-5-2. He switches back to diamonds to remove that entry. 5-8-T-A.

Declarer is in, but on dummy, and for likely the last time. He uses this entry to fire out a club. 3-9-K-4. Now in hand, he draws trump. Q-A-3-5. If declarer has both the T and 9 of spades I don't get a 4th spade trick no matter what I do, so in that case playing two spades on my own is probably a good thing to do. It means I never play a heart, and I throw declarer in to lead minors to partner if partner has any tricks there. The other option is to cash the A of hearts, which declarer will ruff. This sets up the K of hearts, but declarer probably doesn't have an entry to board in order to cash it. And I can still exit the 8 of spades when I get back in with the J. Could partner actually have minor tricks? He's shown up with 7 of his max 9 points. But both minor suit Qs are outstanding. And I guess the actual concern is if declarer has 2 more diamonds back he might have an entry to board. Ok, that's reason enough I think. I'm going to play spades.

J-7 of clubs-T-2. Partner has my back in spades. Oh well. I play another. 8-7 of diamonds-2 of hearts-9. Declarer then plays a diamond to board as it turns out partner only had 2 diamonds as well. Guess it could be a good thing I didn't set up those hearts after all? Declarer doesn't run out a heart and instead plays a club to partner's Q. Declarer is then up. Down 2, doubled.

	NORTH ♠ T 6 5 ♥ 8 7 5 2 ♦ K 5 ♣ A Q T 9
WEST ♠ 7 ♥ K J T 3 ♦ A 9 7 4 ♣ 8 7 3 2		EAST ♠ Q 9 4 3 2 ♥ ♦ Q J 8 6 3 ♣ K J 6
	SOUTH ♠ A K J 8 ♥ A Q 9 6 4 ♦ T 2 ♣ 5 4

The other 7 tables all played contracts from my side, and they all went down. 3NT went down 3, 4 hearts went down 2 4 times, and down 3 twice, with one of those being doubled. Stopping in 3 hearts would have been a top board assuming I didn't butcher the play, having them overcall locked it in. 14 MPs to the good!


Jack disagrees with my 3 heart bid. He thinks my hand is good enough for game. I think he's crazy. We have at most 23 points between the two of us and a 9 card fit isn't enough to bump that up to game. Especially when we could easily have only 20 points! He then disagrees with my double. After the enemies offer to give us a top board (in retrospect if I don't lead a spade I have 4 trump tricks guaranteed so I just need 1 trick anywhere else from partner or my heart A) he wants me to bid 4 hearts. He then doesn't want me to draw trump on the opening lead, which I can agree with, but he wants me to try to cash the A of heart which feels sketchy to me. I think leading a minor and daring them to draw trump probably makes sense. It's unlikely they can pitch a stuff heart on a minor trick since I'm short in both of them. He then doesn't like my diamond switch. Well, he likes it, but he wants me to play the T instead of the 2. I think I like keeping the T to force the A on the second round if I need to. He then disagrees with my club signal when partner cashes the A. I played 5 from 54 and he wants me to play 4 to discourage. I wanted to encourage, actually, since I have a doubleton. Oh well. Finally, he disagrees with my play near the end to cash the J of spades. He wants me to give up and cash the A of hearts. Considering declarer does have an entry to board I'm pretty sure this costs us a club trick. It does gain us back the spade trick though, since partner had the T, so it turns out to be a wash but I think the EV is bad.

Ranking after board 25/60: 8/16 with 52%