Yesterday I bought a new game on Steam (DMC, which was on sale) and this morning I wanted to play it, but it hadn't downloaded. I looked at my list of Steam games and decided to give FTL another kick at the can. I played a game with the Engi ship in an attempt to unlock some achievements. There's an achievement for stunning 4 of the enemy systems at once (the Engi ship starts with a weapon that can stun a system, but it can only keep two systems stunned at a time) and the first store I went to had another copy of my starting weapon for sale. Do it up! I played for a bit after that and sunk pretty much all my experience into weapon power in order to get them both running at once. Eventually I had enough power to use them both and got the achievement pretty easily. Woo!
I kept playing, of course, and it turns out having two copies of that weapon is actually pretty awesome. It let me stun down the shields of an enemy pretty much no matter how many shields it had, letting my other weapons start doing damage and shutting down real systems like guns. It worked so well I actually took no damage at all during a particularly hard fight near the end of the game! And then I won! Woo!
I don't know if it was winning that did it, or the achievement, but now I have a couple more ship types I can play. On the one hand I've beaten the game so maybe I'm done with it? But the game is fun, and now I can play a slightly different variant by having a new starting ship. And there are more crazy achievements to earn. DMC is downloaded now, but I think I'm going to start a new FTL game instead.
In an odd coincidence Jeff sent me a message this afternoon asking about FTL. It turns out FTL is also on sale this weekend and he wanted to know if I'd played it and what I thought about it. Looking at the store now it's only $5 this weekend and I think it's definitely worth that much. I've played it for about 12 hours so far, and am going to keep playing. Robb has almost topped the 100 hour mark! I'd say 5 cents an hour is a pretty good price to pay for a game. If you like leveling up, tactical combat, crazy achievements, and space you should give this one a try.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
More Badminton!
Three weeks ago I went out and played badminton for the first time in an awfully long time. I ended up with the entire right side of my body being stiff and sore for almost a week. My knees were bruised and scabbed for about two and a half weeks. And my sleep schedule was shifted such that I was asleep on Thursday nights, so I hadn't been back.
Then yesterday Matt emailed me and asked if I wanted to go again today. I woke up at 8am today like a normal person so I was set to be awake in the evening. And my body was all healed up from last time, so it seemed like a good idea.
It was a fun time once again. I didn't win any of my games, but I did make some good shots and worked up a good sweat again. I didn't reach the point where I felt like I was in real danger of fainting, which is good! I also made a point to drink less water this time since I may have gotten water poisoning last time. I can already feel my right arm seizing up. My right knee is bloody and bruised in the same spot as before. It's almost like I keep diving for birdies the same way! But fun.
The gym was really hot this time thanks to it apparently being summer in Toronto. I hate being sweaty. And yet I realized today I like getting sweaty. Actually moving around and getting tired is great. Sitting around in a drenched shirt and pants, not so much, but I guess it's the price you have to pay. Maybe I should try to play DDR again where I can jump in the tub when I finish to get the sweating part and not the sweaty part. It is also nice to get invited out to do things. Makes me less hermity!
Then yesterday Matt emailed me and asked if I wanted to go again today. I woke up at 8am today like a normal person so I was set to be awake in the evening. And my body was all healed up from last time, so it seemed like a good idea.
It was a fun time once again. I didn't win any of my games, but I did make some good shots and worked up a good sweat again. I didn't reach the point where I felt like I was in real danger of fainting, which is good! I also made a point to drink less water this time since I may have gotten water poisoning last time. I can already feel my right arm seizing up. My right knee is bloody and bruised in the same spot as before. It's almost like I keep diving for birdies the same way! But fun.
The gym was really hot this time thanks to it apparently being summer in Toronto. I hate being sweaty. And yet I realized today I like getting sweaty. Actually moving around and getting tired is great. Sitting around in a drenched shirt and pants, not so much, but I guess it's the price you have to pay. Maybe I should try to play DDR again where I can jump in the tub when I finish to get the sweating part and not the sweaty part. It is also nice to get invited out to do things. Makes me less hermity!
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
League of Legends: Blue Ezreal
A new and strange build has cropped up recently in League of Legends. It's termed the 'blue' build for Ezreal as all the items in the build are blue coloured. Most of the items are atypical items for an AD carry champion, but the ADC from Taiwan who won the world championship last year has been using it which immediately gives it credibility in the eyes of the gaming masses. When someone good does something it opens the door for other people to try it without automatically getting yelled at by their teammates. Now, Ezreal is probably my favourite champion. I used to use a similar build on the old 3s map and liked it (maxing cooldown reduction first being the key, though I was AP at the time). And this build uses my favourite item, Manamune! So I had to try this build out.
I've played it a few times, and it was pretty neat. It plays very differently than a normal ADC build. Typically people try to end up with lots of damage with the idea of hitting people with their auto attacks. So you build attack speed, and crit chance, and you try to find a safe spot to attack in fights. Having a team that can help you out and pull people off of you or get great engages helps a lot. If the enemy team gets to jump on you instead it's bad news. That's something with which I've always struggled. This build, however, is all about casting Q. Hitting an enemy with Q lowers the cooldown on all your abilities by one second. If you have max cooldown reduction the base cooldown on Q is 2.5 seconds. Knock one off of that and you can cast the spell every second and a half as long as you keep hitting things. Ezreal's Q also applies on hit effects, so buying items that do things when you auto attack helps him out. Attack speed and crit not so much, but life steal and other on hit items work well.
Possibly the best part is you don't lose much, if anything, by running around like a maniac. The goal isn't to stand in one spot and pound out the damage. Instead it's to stay very mobile and spam abilities. One of the items you buy makes it so your auto attacks leave a big slowing patch after you cast a spell. Q counts as a spell and an auto attack, so hitting someone with your Q leaves a slow patch behind. Couple this with Ezreal's blink ability (and the low cooldown it has thanks to spamming Q) and kiting is something blue Ezreal does better than anyone else.
I really like it. Maybe it just fits my style of play more than a standard build. I think the fact it can stand on its own and defend itself with lots of kiting when I don't have sufficient support from my team really pushes it over the top. But is it actually better? Does it do more damage? Less damage, but enough added control to make up the difference? I'm not sure how to quantify it. Should I be building out a damage simulator spreadsheet like I used to in World of Warcraft? Preliminary testing has me really liking it, so now it's about quantifying it.
I've played it a few times, and it was pretty neat. It plays very differently than a normal ADC build. Typically people try to end up with lots of damage with the idea of hitting people with their auto attacks. So you build attack speed, and crit chance, and you try to find a safe spot to attack in fights. Having a team that can help you out and pull people off of you or get great engages helps a lot. If the enemy team gets to jump on you instead it's bad news. That's something with which I've always struggled. This build, however, is all about casting Q. Hitting an enemy with Q lowers the cooldown on all your abilities by one second. If you have max cooldown reduction the base cooldown on Q is 2.5 seconds. Knock one off of that and you can cast the spell every second and a half as long as you keep hitting things. Ezreal's Q also applies on hit effects, so buying items that do things when you auto attack helps him out. Attack speed and crit not so much, but life steal and other on hit items work well.
Possibly the best part is you don't lose much, if anything, by running around like a maniac. The goal isn't to stand in one spot and pound out the damage. Instead it's to stay very mobile and spam abilities. One of the items you buy makes it so your auto attacks leave a big slowing patch after you cast a spell. Q counts as a spell and an auto attack, so hitting someone with your Q leaves a slow patch behind. Couple this with Ezreal's blink ability (and the low cooldown it has thanks to spamming Q) and kiting is something blue Ezreal does better than anyone else.
I really like it. Maybe it just fits my style of play more than a standard build. I think the fact it can stand on its own and defend itself with lots of kiting when I don't have sufficient support from my team really pushes it over the top. But is it actually better? Does it do more damage? Less damage, but enough added control to make up the difference? I'm not sure how to quantify it. Should I be building out a damage simulator spreadsheet like I used to in World of Warcraft? Preliminary testing has me really liking it, so now it's about quantifying it.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Double Shootout?
On Sunday I was screwing around on PokerStars trying super cheap things out. (I apparently had ~$60 on my account, probably from when I tried to get a free backgammon set by playing on an affiliated backgammon site?) I was playing 2 tables of 1cent/2cent Omaha to get a feel for what sorts of hands were winning pots. It kept spamming me with messages saying tournaments were starting up so I went to check those out. There was one starting up with a whole bunch of stuff I don't understand in the title but that only cost 33 cents to join. The smart thing to do would have been to do a search for some of the weird terms, but the tournament was about to start and I had to act in an Omaha game so I impulsively joined.
I promptly got confused and made questionable plays in the Omaha games. On the plus side each mistake cost me 4 cents, so it's not like anything actually bad happened. And as long as I take a lesson away it's all good, right? The big one here is that mixing games when I don't really know what's going on is a bad idea. It may well always be a bad idea, I donno. Also, find out what I'm signing up for!
I lost that event, which turned out to be a satellite for another tournament later that day. An $11 tournament which had a ton of different types of satellites going on. I looked into what the most common one was and it turned out to be something they call a double shootout tournament. The basic idea was 36 people pay $1.02 and get split into 6 tables of 6 people. These ones were hyper turbo speed, which meant the blinds started high and got bigger really fast. They didn't reseat people when tables got low, though. Instead each 6 person table played until only one person was standing. Then those 6 winners started over from the start against each other. Top 3 won entry to the $11 tournament, 4th place got $3, everyone else got nothing at all.
Sounded interesting, so I played a few. When blinds and antes cost you 60% of your starting stack in one orbit around the table you have to make a move early. At least it seemed like everyone thought so, with people going all in right away. But even doubling up early didn't seem to be good enough. Now when your only options were all-in or fold. I played around a bit, and started trying raising the minimum to steal blinds instead of just going all-in. And other than the first couple hands of each tournament it seemed to work reasonably well.
Even then, winning the table isn't enough. I then need to finish top 3. With no difference between 1st and 3rd the strategy for the second table seemed to be different. It still opened the same way, with a couple people going all-in with whatever they had. But after that people were a lot more timid. But the hyper-turbo speed was still in play, so winning the blinds was really important. Min-raising to try to steal the blinds worked here too, and better than on the opening table.
I played around 20 of these and ended up winning 3 of them. It turned out after winning the $11 entry you could just go unregister from that tournament and get credited $11 in 'tournament cash' to your account. And then play more satellites to win the entry right back.
So I was up a bit, and learned a little about some of the tournament formats, and had some fun. I feel like I don't have a terribly good handle on how to properly play a double shootout, but I feel like a lot of the other people playing them had no handle at all. Given how fast these things were spawning I think someone who knew what they were doing would probably be making a lot of tournament cash playing them over and over. Tournament cash can only be used to enter tournaments so I'm not sure if that's even a good thing? I guess it wouldn't be that hard to spend it on something that pays actual cash. You'd need to be good at both this weird format and a more standard format, though.
I looked again on Monday but didn't see any tournaments of this type. Maybe it's an extra Sunday thing? Maybe I'll think to look this weekend!
I promptly got confused and made questionable plays in the Omaha games. On the plus side each mistake cost me 4 cents, so it's not like anything actually bad happened. And as long as I take a lesson away it's all good, right? The big one here is that mixing games when I don't really know what's going on is a bad idea. It may well always be a bad idea, I donno. Also, find out what I'm signing up for!
I lost that event, which turned out to be a satellite for another tournament later that day. An $11 tournament which had a ton of different types of satellites going on. I looked into what the most common one was and it turned out to be something they call a double shootout tournament. The basic idea was 36 people pay $1.02 and get split into 6 tables of 6 people. These ones were hyper turbo speed, which meant the blinds started high and got bigger really fast. They didn't reseat people when tables got low, though. Instead each 6 person table played until only one person was standing. Then those 6 winners started over from the start against each other. Top 3 won entry to the $11 tournament, 4th place got $3, everyone else got nothing at all.
Sounded interesting, so I played a few. When blinds and antes cost you 60% of your starting stack in one orbit around the table you have to make a move early. At least it seemed like everyone thought so, with people going all in right away. But even doubling up early didn't seem to be good enough. Now when your only options were all-in or fold. I played around a bit, and started trying raising the minimum to steal blinds instead of just going all-in. And other than the first couple hands of each tournament it seemed to work reasonably well.
Even then, winning the table isn't enough. I then need to finish top 3. With no difference between 1st and 3rd the strategy for the second table seemed to be different. It still opened the same way, with a couple people going all-in with whatever they had. But after that people were a lot more timid. But the hyper-turbo speed was still in play, so winning the blinds was really important. Min-raising to try to steal the blinds worked here too, and better than on the opening table.
I played around 20 of these and ended up winning 3 of them. It turned out after winning the $11 entry you could just go unregister from that tournament and get credited $11 in 'tournament cash' to your account. And then play more satellites to win the entry right back.
So I was up a bit, and learned a little about some of the tournament formats, and had some fun. I feel like I don't have a terribly good handle on how to properly play a double shootout, but I feel like a lot of the other people playing them had no handle at all. Given how fast these things were spawning I think someone who knew what they were doing would probably be making a lot of tournament cash playing them over and over. Tournament cash can only be used to enter tournaments so I'm not sure if that's even a good thing? I guess it wouldn't be that hard to spend it on something that pays actual cash. You'd need to be good at both this weird format and a more standard format, though.
I looked again on Monday but didn't see any tournaments of this type. Maybe it's an extra Sunday thing? Maybe I'll think to look this weekend!
Monday, May 27, 2013
Playing Poker?
If you go all the way back to my very first post on here more than 7 years ago one of the things I mention as a goal is to use the blog as a way to track stats on playing poker to see if it was feasible for me to do it to make money. But it pretty much never comes up after that. Why? What went wrong, and do those issues persist today?
Well, it isn't that I tried and failed. I didn't lose tons of money playing poker, or anything of the sort. Really, I didn't even try at all. Looking back, I think there were two primary reasons that kept that little experiment from even getting off the ground: World of Warcraft and bankroll concerns.
World of Warcraft was a big time sink for me back in 2006. I was probably logged in 16 hours a day, though not actually playing a good chunk of that time. I would be logged in while working on a second computer, but just to run an auction house mod or chat with Byung. Beyond that I was raiding 6 nights a week, and running dungeons with my roommates, and watching them raid, and PvPing. There was so much stuff to do, and I wanted to do it all. Part of me actually misses that now... But the idea that I would be able to work, and play World of Warcraft as much as I wanted, and learn to play poker at the same time? Not enough time in a day. Something had to give, and that something wasn't going to be WoW and it couldn't be work for the second reason.
That second reason is that, frankly, I was fairly poor. I had enough money to pay rent and eat. I had internet access. I could pay a WoW subscription. Don't get me wrong, I was happy. I had enough money to do what I wanted, assuming what I wanted was to barely pay my bills and play WoW. I still had ~$20k in student loan debt floating around that needed to be dealt with. I couldn't have just quit my job to try something else for a while as doing so would have meant I couldn't eat. And probably I would have just spent that time playing WoW anyway! But even if I'd wanted to play poker for reasonable stakes I couldn't have found the money to get started.
Do those two problems persist now? Not really. I'm not playing WoW or any similar game right now. I'm playing plenty of games, but they all need smaller chunks of time. Two hours for a Blood Bowl game, 45 minutes for a League of Legends game. I could sit down and play a ton of a Final Fantasy game, but even if I did that for two or three days straight it would end in short order. Time is really not a problem. Money isn't really, either. I have no debt right now, and I have enough money saved up to pay living expenses for a while.
It certainly feels like a fine time to do some more reading and research at the very least. Experiment a bit at super low levels and see what's going on. Because when it comes right down to it, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at games, and at working out the right play in a similar situation, and at spending a lot of time doing the same thing over and over. I don't think I have the sort of tilt issues that cause the big problems. Not to say I don't flip out sometimes, but that I think I know when it happens. I just want to run away when I get into that sort of state, and that's actually a fine thing to do. You can't lose money when you're huddled in a corner!
Well, it isn't that I tried and failed. I didn't lose tons of money playing poker, or anything of the sort. Really, I didn't even try at all. Looking back, I think there were two primary reasons that kept that little experiment from even getting off the ground: World of Warcraft and bankroll concerns.
World of Warcraft was a big time sink for me back in 2006. I was probably logged in 16 hours a day, though not actually playing a good chunk of that time. I would be logged in while working on a second computer, but just to run an auction house mod or chat with Byung. Beyond that I was raiding 6 nights a week, and running dungeons with my roommates, and watching them raid, and PvPing. There was so much stuff to do, and I wanted to do it all. Part of me actually misses that now... But the idea that I would be able to work, and play World of Warcraft as much as I wanted, and learn to play poker at the same time? Not enough time in a day. Something had to give, and that something wasn't going to be WoW and it couldn't be work for the second reason.
That second reason is that, frankly, I was fairly poor. I had enough money to pay rent and eat. I had internet access. I could pay a WoW subscription. Don't get me wrong, I was happy. I had enough money to do what I wanted, assuming what I wanted was to barely pay my bills and play WoW. I still had ~$20k in student loan debt floating around that needed to be dealt with. I couldn't have just quit my job to try something else for a while as doing so would have meant I couldn't eat. And probably I would have just spent that time playing WoW anyway! But even if I'd wanted to play poker for reasonable stakes I couldn't have found the money to get started.
Do those two problems persist now? Not really. I'm not playing WoW or any similar game right now. I'm playing plenty of games, but they all need smaller chunks of time. Two hours for a Blood Bowl game, 45 minutes for a League of Legends game. I could sit down and play a ton of a Final Fantasy game, but even if I did that for two or three days straight it would end in short order. Time is really not a problem. Money isn't really, either. I have no debt right now, and I have enough money saved up to pay living expenses for a while.
It certainly feels like a fine time to do some more reading and research at the very least. Experiment a bit at super low levels and see what's going on. Because when it comes right down to it, I'd like to think I'm pretty good at games, and at working out the right play in a similar situation, and at spending a lot of time doing the same thing over and over. I don't think I have the sort of tilt issues that cause the big problems. Not to say I don't flip out sometimes, but that I think I know when it happens. I just want to run away when I get into that sort of state, and that's actually a fine thing to do. You can't lose money when you're huddled in a corner!
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Bridge Match 2 - Board 2
Board 2 – Dealer East – NS Vul
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième.
Opponents playing strength: Adequate.
My hand: ♠ K 8 6 5 3 ♥ J 9 7 6 ♦ 8 7 6 ♣ 3
East and I pass. West opens 2 clubs, strong. Partner passes. East bids 2 diamonds showing 0-7 points. West bids 2NT, East goes to 3NT which gets passed out.
Partner leads the 7 of clubs.
7-5-3-K. Declarer likes clubs so much he keeps playing them. 2-8-T-6 of diamonds. Now he leads a spade off of board. 2-3-A-J. And now diamonds. 5-4-J-8. Back to clubs. A-7 of diamonds-3 of hearts-4. Back to spades. 4-5-T-2 of diamonds. 7-3 of diamonds-9-K. I'm in! I doubt we can cash any hearts off the top. But setting up a spade doesn't help unless I have a heart entry, which is really only true if we have all the hearts anyway. I also don't know that I want to be the one breaking hearts here. Eh, toss him in with a spade then. 8-Q-4 of hearts-5 of hearts.
Declarer cashes a diamond. Q-T-9-6 of hearts. And another. K-9 of clubs-6 of clubs-6 of spades. And another. A-Q of hearts-8 of hearts-7 of hearts. Then the A of hearts. Finally I get a heart at the end. Making 5.
Professor Jack agrees with me all the way. We could have taken more tricks if partner had lead a heart I guess?
4 of the pairs held 3NT to just in. 1 held it to +1. 3 of us were +2. So I get 2 of 14 MPs.
Ranking after board 2/60: 16/16 with 7.14%
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième.
Opponents playing strength: Adequate.
My hand: ♠ K 8 6 5 3 ♥ J 9 7 6 ♦ 8 7 6 ♣ 3
East and I pass. West opens 2 clubs, strong. Partner passes. East bids 2 diamonds showing 0-7 points. West bids 2NT, East goes to 3NT which gets passed out.
Partner leads the 7 of clubs.
| NORTH ♣ 7 | ||
| EAST ♠ 9 4 2 ♥ T 8 5 ♦ J 9 ♣ A J T 6 5 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ K 8 6 5 3 ♥ J 9 7 6 ♦ 8 7 6 ♣ 3 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | ||
| 2♣1 | Pass | 2♦2 | Pass |
| 2NT | Pass | 3NT | All Pass |
| 1Strong | |||
| 20-7 Points | |||
7-5-3-K. Declarer likes clubs so much he keeps playing them. 2-8-T-6 of diamonds. Now he leads a spade off of board. 2-3-A-J. And now diamonds. 5-4-J-8. Back to clubs. A-7 of diamonds-3 of hearts-4. Back to spades. 4-5-T-2 of diamonds. 7-3 of diamonds-9-K. I'm in! I doubt we can cash any hearts off the top. But setting up a spade doesn't help unless I have a heart entry, which is really only true if we have all the hearts anyway. I also don't know that I want to be the one breaking hearts here. Eh, toss him in with a spade then. 8-Q-4 of hearts-5 of hearts.
Declarer cashes a diamond. Q-T-9-6 of hearts. And another. K-9 of clubs-6 of clubs-6 of spades. And another. A-Q of hearts-8 of hearts-7 of hearts. Then the A of hearts. Finally I get a heart at the end. Making 5.
| NORTH ♠ J ♥ K Q 4 ♦ T 4 3 2 ♣ Q 9 8 7 4 | ||
| WEST ♠ A Q T 7 ♥ A 3 2 ♦ A K Q 5 ♣ K 2 | EAST ♠ 9 4 2 ♥ T 8 5 ♦ J 9 ♣ A J T 6 5 | |
| SOUTH ♠ K 8 6 5 3 ♥ J 9 7 6 ♦ 8 7 6 ♣ 3 |
Professor Jack agrees with me all the way. We could have taken more tricks if partner had lead a heart I guess?
4 of the pairs held 3NT to just in. 1 held it to +1. 3 of us were +2. So I get 2 of 14 MPs.
Ranking after board 2/60: 16/16 with 7.14%
Friday, May 24, 2013
Trying Too Hard
I am confused. Not as badly as last night, where I was confused, overwhelmed, and stressed out, but still confused. It's the sort of feeling that has lead to my current lack of employment. At least here I was able to walk around at 2 in the morning and then take a hot bath to try to unwind instead of having to pretend everything was fine while trying to work for another 5 hours or whatever.
It all boils down to one statement. "I don't get why you're trying so hard." It confuses me. To me if something is worth doing at all, it's worth doing at full speed. I don't understand how trying hard at something became an insultable state. I don't understand berating someone who is trying. I don't understand letting up, or giving up.
Maybe it just boils down to a lack of empathy? Or of understanding empathy? I just don't understand why I should feel bad about getting ahead, or of winning, or of leveling my guys. It reminds me of the loot drama Sky went through in World of Warcraft. Lots of stuff dropped that only he could use, and it was bad that he asked for it all. In my case it was a Blood Bowl game where pretty much everything was going my way. I was up 3-0 on the scoreboard and 11-5 in players with 5 turns still to go. As far as experience earned went it was something like 17-0. I wanted more. My opponent didn't like that I wanted more. With 5 turns and 6 more guys I should likely be able to score again, or get a couple more casualties. Or get a pass. There's a good chance of hurting some more of his guys. I had 2 crucial guys 1 experience from leveling, a fresh guy who was 3 experience from leveling, and a rough match coming up in the finals with Robb's human team.
To me it made a lot of sense to pin in my opponent's 5 guys, punch them, and try to score with my fresh guy. To my opponent this decision was trying too hard, was unsporting, and was worth badgering me about. I guess he would have been happy if I stood back and let him get 5 passing experience. That would be fairer for sure. He'd suffer no more injuries, and he'd get some experience, and I'd still win the game. Does that make sense? If everyone always played that way I guess it might? But the game is called Blood Bowl. And in my experience most people don't pull up and let their opponent farm experience uncontested. I consider that to be pretty unsporting in a league sense, actually. I'd hate it if I was about to play against a team that got a bunch of unearned experience. So if my opponent had run away from the ball I don't know that I necessarily chase after him to kill his guys (and from past experience with my Dwarf team when someone had obviously given up and run away, I wouldn't have). Instead I just try to score twice to level up. But to stand back and let the opposition farm experience themselves? That just feels wrong.
In the moment I didn't really have a chance to think these things through. Getting yelled at for doing the only thing that makes sense to me shuts my brain down. I just wanted to get out of there. Part of me was strongly considering conceding myself and quitting the game entirely. Even now I'm still confused and debating if I want to join future leagues. Two of my last three games haven't been fun, and it feels like my opponents in those games didn't like playing against me the way I play. So maybe it would be for the best to just fade away and find something else to do? Something I can try hard at without feeling bad, since I don't have the ability to do something without trying.
It all boils down to one statement. "I don't get why you're trying so hard." It confuses me. To me if something is worth doing at all, it's worth doing at full speed. I don't understand how trying hard at something became an insultable state. I don't understand berating someone who is trying. I don't understand letting up, or giving up.
Maybe it just boils down to a lack of empathy? Or of understanding empathy? I just don't understand why I should feel bad about getting ahead, or of winning, or of leveling my guys. It reminds me of the loot drama Sky went through in World of Warcraft. Lots of stuff dropped that only he could use, and it was bad that he asked for it all. In my case it was a Blood Bowl game where pretty much everything was going my way. I was up 3-0 on the scoreboard and 11-5 in players with 5 turns still to go. As far as experience earned went it was something like 17-0. I wanted more. My opponent didn't like that I wanted more. With 5 turns and 6 more guys I should likely be able to score again, or get a couple more casualties. Or get a pass. There's a good chance of hurting some more of his guys. I had 2 crucial guys 1 experience from leveling, a fresh guy who was 3 experience from leveling, and a rough match coming up in the finals with Robb's human team.
To me it made a lot of sense to pin in my opponent's 5 guys, punch them, and try to score with my fresh guy. To my opponent this decision was trying too hard, was unsporting, and was worth badgering me about. I guess he would have been happy if I stood back and let him get 5 passing experience. That would be fairer for sure. He'd suffer no more injuries, and he'd get some experience, and I'd still win the game. Does that make sense? If everyone always played that way I guess it might? But the game is called Blood Bowl. And in my experience most people don't pull up and let their opponent farm experience uncontested. I consider that to be pretty unsporting in a league sense, actually. I'd hate it if I was about to play against a team that got a bunch of unearned experience. So if my opponent had run away from the ball I don't know that I necessarily chase after him to kill his guys (and from past experience with my Dwarf team when someone had obviously given up and run away, I wouldn't have). Instead I just try to score twice to level up. But to stand back and let the opposition farm experience themselves? That just feels wrong.
In the moment I didn't really have a chance to think these things through. Getting yelled at for doing the only thing that makes sense to me shuts my brain down. I just wanted to get out of there. Part of me was strongly considering conceding myself and quitting the game entirely. Even now I'm still confused and debating if I want to join future leagues. Two of my last three games haven't been fun, and it feels like my opponents in those games didn't like playing against me the way I play. So maybe it would be for the best to just fade away and find something else to do? Something I can try hard at without feeling bad, since I don't have the ability to do something without trying.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Revisiting Poker HUDs
Last year I posted about a new (to me) type of poker software, the 'HUD' or Heads Up Display. Were these things legit? Were they useful? My brother left a comment asking me to let him know if I found a free one so he could give it a try. Off and on since then I've tried to do more research and find a good free one for him and have come to the following conclusions...
In general these things are actually legit. Poker Stars has a list of 118 allowed pieces of software. But there are also lists of illegal ones as well, and apparently the Poker Stars client does some scans to check if you're running any of the bad ones. (Reminds me of Final Fantasy XI running scans for fishing bots!) The keys to being a banned program seem to be things that share private information (folded hands between players) or things that gather information from outside sources. It's fine if you've played thousands of hands against a given opponent and can glean stats from those games since that's something you could have done with your own brain. It's not fine to download a file containing information on everyone. That last part was one of the biggest things making this stuff seem sketchy to me so I'm happy to see at least one site has come out to say it's not kosher.
In general these things seem to be quite profitable. It sounds like they really help you play multiple tables at once without missing as much. There are some that monitor your historical play compared to your current play and guess when you're on tilt. Then the software locks you out from playing to give you a chance to cool down. This seems like it could save some people an awful lot of money if it actually works. There are scripts which show you your outs, or which give you quick bet options so you don't need to think or drag sliders or whatever to always raise the same amount every time. That'll presumably let you squeeze in more hands or remove bet sizing tells or both which has to help.
How about being free? Well, it turns out in an environment where people understand how to critically look at the value of certain actions that something that makes you money is worth spending money for. And the sort of people who will make good use of this sort of program is exactly that sort of person. So the companies making these things rightly understand they can charge a reasonable amount of money for them and get paid off. It reminds me of the trading bot situation on Magic Online many years ago. And just like back then, there are a few free solutions available, but it sounds like these tend to be poorly supported and are basically just things people who were screwing around put together. There's an entire forum on the two plus two boards dedicated to them. I'm sure there's bound to be some good stuff in there, but also likely lots of buggy junk too.
There's also a way to get the commercial stuff for 'free', in a sense. Poker sites are big into affiliate recruiting it would seem. This is similar to the way Riot gave me some free IP for recruiting Sceadeau to play League of Legends, or how Blizzard gave me a free month for convincing Robb to play World of Warcraft. A poker site will give the software developer a bunch of money for getting you to sign up and play a ton of poker. In return the software developer will give you their software for free. Everybody wins!
Well, in a sense. The poker site and the software developer certainly win. If you win remains to be seen. The thing is there are tons of different affiliates kicking around and it's entirely possible that you could sign up through someone else who will pay you enough cash to buy the software with some left over. There doesn't seem to be a single spot listing what all the different options are, so it's hard to tell. I guess it's the sort of thing you'd need to research if you were really into it.
In general these things are actually legit. Poker Stars has a list of 118 allowed pieces of software. But there are also lists of illegal ones as well, and apparently the Poker Stars client does some scans to check if you're running any of the bad ones. (Reminds me of Final Fantasy XI running scans for fishing bots!) The keys to being a banned program seem to be things that share private information (folded hands between players) or things that gather information from outside sources. It's fine if you've played thousands of hands against a given opponent and can glean stats from those games since that's something you could have done with your own brain. It's not fine to download a file containing information on everyone. That last part was one of the biggest things making this stuff seem sketchy to me so I'm happy to see at least one site has come out to say it's not kosher.
In general these things seem to be quite profitable. It sounds like they really help you play multiple tables at once without missing as much. There are some that monitor your historical play compared to your current play and guess when you're on tilt. Then the software locks you out from playing to give you a chance to cool down. This seems like it could save some people an awful lot of money if it actually works. There are scripts which show you your outs, or which give you quick bet options so you don't need to think or drag sliders or whatever to always raise the same amount every time. That'll presumably let you squeeze in more hands or remove bet sizing tells or both which has to help.
How about being free? Well, it turns out in an environment where people understand how to critically look at the value of certain actions that something that makes you money is worth spending money for. And the sort of people who will make good use of this sort of program is exactly that sort of person. So the companies making these things rightly understand they can charge a reasonable amount of money for them and get paid off. It reminds me of the trading bot situation on Magic Online many years ago. And just like back then, there are a few free solutions available, but it sounds like these tend to be poorly supported and are basically just things people who were screwing around put together. There's an entire forum on the two plus two boards dedicated to them. I'm sure there's bound to be some good stuff in there, but also likely lots of buggy junk too.
There's also a way to get the commercial stuff for 'free', in a sense. Poker sites are big into affiliate recruiting it would seem. This is similar to the way Riot gave me some free IP for recruiting Sceadeau to play League of Legends, or how Blizzard gave me a free month for convincing Robb to play World of Warcraft. A poker site will give the software developer a bunch of money for getting you to sign up and play a ton of poker. In return the software developer will give you their software for free. Everybody wins!
Well, in a sense. The poker site and the software developer certainly win. If you win remains to be seen. The thing is there are tons of different affiliates kicking around and it's entirely possible that you could sign up through someone else who will pay you enough cash to buy the software with some left over. There doesn't seem to be a single spot listing what all the different options are, so it's hard to tell. I guess it's the sort of thing you'd need to research if you were really into it.
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