Hearthstone runs a ranked constructed ladder each month. I had no chance at all of getting to the top of the ladder in previous months because I simply don't own very many cards. Hearthstone is a game that put a lot of power into the really rare cards. You rarely want to fill a deck up with legendaries since they tend to be higher up on the curve but if you don't have any at all you basically have no late game. It's certainly possible to play a deck that tries to win early and then gives up if it gets stopped but enough people are playing decks that beat those kinds of decks that it's not likely to work to get up to the very top of the ladder. Even if it was, those decks still require a bunch of specific cards and chances are pretty good that I don't have them!
Part of the problem is I didn't really play the game until recently and the packs awarded in draft prizes are exclusively the new set. So I actually have almost a complete set of Goblins vs Gnomes commons, most of the rares, a few of the epics, and I even have 3 of the legendaries. But for the classic set I have 44 commons total and would need 188 to have a complete set of commons. The more rare stuff is really out of reach!
There are three potential solutions to the problem. The first is to pay a bunch of money to buy packs. It's pretty clear this is what Blizzard is hoping I'll do! The second is to get even better at drafting since you can spend the same currency you use to join a draft to buy packs of the classic set. But I'd probably need to pay 40 drafts worth of gold just to come close to having the commons! The third option is to use the crafting system to selectively acquire specific cards that I need. I earn a non-negligible amount of dust by drafting since I have no use for any of the GvG commons other than blowing them up. You can also win 'foil' cards when you do really well in a draft and those blow up for lots of dust! (I imagine many people want the foil cards because they're cool but with a limited collection I'd rather keep 2 copies of a normal version and blow up the foils.)
I've been browsing around decklist sites recently and I've watched a few people who stream constructed and have tried to keep an eye for decks that seem competitive, based mostly on GvG cards, and cheap to fill out the stuff I don't have. I finally found a deck that seemed pretty reasonable. It only runs a single legendary and I've picked up enough dust to be able to buy exactly one legendary. It uses almost exclusively GvG cards because it's a tribal deck based on the new tribe (mechs) introduced in that expansion. It's also a pretty fast beatdown deck trying to win quickly before people with real decks can take control of the game. The one legendary adds in some substantial reach to finish off a game and is pretty crucial to the deck. What he does is gives you a fireball spell card each time you cast any spell with him in play. A lot of the mechs give you 1 casting cost spells when they die and he only costs 7 mana so in the late game it's entirely plausible to play him and immediately pick up 3 new fireball spells. That's 18 points of direct damage to throw out over the next couple turns... If you're close to winning that should seal the deal!
Will this deck be good enough to get to legend rank on the ladder? I have my doubts, but it's worth a shot. I suspect a key to getting to legend is actually having a variety of decks so you can swap up to beat the people who happen to be online at any given time, but that's sure not an option for me at this point in time.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2015
Tons of Drafts
I haven't actually recorded the gameplay for any Hearthstone drafts recently but I have finished 27 drafts now via the HearthArena website. I guess that means I've managed to 'go infinite', at least in the short term, especially since I have enough gold left to draft 6 more times. In that span I haven't hit a 0 win, 7 win, or 9 win draft. I have had 2 10s, an 11, and 2 12s. Overall I've won a little over 66% of my games, which is way better than I thought I'd do but still worse than the really good people.
I feel like I really should stream some drafts so I can replay my losses. Unfortunately my desktop appears to be dead and I doubt my old laptop can handle streaming. I suspect the issue is catastrophic hard drive failure so I probably need to get a new hard drive before I can get it running again. Possibly all I need to do is reinstall Windows? Either way I'll need to find my Windows disk in storage before I can do much of anything.
One thing I find interesting from my stats is success rates against the different classes. More than a quarter of all my opponents have been mages, and I beat them at about the same rate as my average. Against priests on the other hand I'm under a 40% win rate. I wonder why I'm having such trouble beating priests... Are they just secretly really good? Or are priest decks just well suited to fight the decks I tend to draft? (Which would be aggressive decks full of 2 drops...) My most recent reasonably successful deck was a 10 win deck from yesterday where I went in the other direction and played a ton of expensive things. Including 4 things that cost 8! 3 of them were 8/8 taunters and the other was Kel'Thuzad. The number of times people conceded to Kel'Thuzad was pretty silly. If you don't immediately have a hex or polymorph he pretty much wins the game on the spot. Especially if you've got a big taunter keeping them from just attacking him down! The best part of that deck was actually the 2 innervates which let me start the game with a turn 1 yeti several times. I only drafted druid that one time out of all 27 drafts... I should try to pick druid again soon because it was such an interesting and fun change of pace.
I feel like I really should stream some drafts so I can replay my losses. Unfortunately my desktop appears to be dead and I doubt my old laptop can handle streaming. I suspect the issue is catastrophic hard drive failure so I probably need to get a new hard drive before I can get it running again. Possibly all I need to do is reinstall Windows? Either way I'll need to find my Windows disk in storage before I can do much of anything.
One thing I find interesting from my stats is success rates against the different classes. More than a quarter of all my opponents have been mages, and I beat them at about the same rate as my average. Against priests on the other hand I'm under a 40% win rate. I wonder why I'm having such trouble beating priests... Are they just secretly really good? Or are priest decks just well suited to fight the decks I tend to draft? (Which would be aggressive decks full of 2 drops...) My most recent reasonably successful deck was a 10 win deck from yesterday where I went in the other direction and played a ton of expensive things. Including 4 things that cost 8! 3 of them were 8/8 taunters and the other was Kel'Thuzad. The number of times people conceded to Kel'Thuzad was pretty silly. If you don't immediately have a hex or polymorph he pretty much wins the game on the spot. Especially if you've got a big taunter keeping them from just attacking him down! The best part of that deck was actually the 2 innervates which let me start the game with a turn 1 yeti several times. I only drafted druid that one time out of all 27 drafts... I should try to pick druid again soon because it was such an interesting and fun change of pace.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Hospital Adventure
Earlier this week I went out to my brother's place to play board games on his birthday. We were starting in on a 3 player game of Dominant Species (hoping that it wouldn't be as painfully long as the 6 player game I'd played previously) when we got some bad news about my dad's health. He needed to go to the hospital so off we went to corral him into a car and drive him over. Now, I'd just switched antidepressants because of the side effects of the first one I tried and the new one had been causing me to not have much energy and to get light headed if I stood up for too long. So while standing in the stairs at my dad's place I felt like I was going to faint. I ended up going back to my brother's couch and took a little nap/passed out.
This isn't such a strange occurrence for me. I've fainted sporadically for my whole life. Mostly when seeing my own blood or when having blood drawn or getting needles... But I know when the fainty feeling is coming on and I now know how to deal with it. In grade 2 I didn't know how to deal with it and ended up cutting my head on a rock when I collapsed but since then I've always been able to protect myself as I go down.
Anyway, by the time I was back on my feet they were off to the hospital. Not too long after that my mother came by and told me I really should go to the hospital too for support. I wasn't feeling faint anymore so I couldn't see any reason to disagree, so off we went. I showed up, talked a bit about my coat zipper being broken, and started to feel light headed again. There weren't any chairs in the emergency room but there was a stool so I tried sitting on that. It didn't help. During this time a nurse came by and told us we were really only supposed to have one visitor at a time. My brother and his fiancee wanted to go eat anyway and I figured a food court would have a bench I could collapse on so we left my sister with my dad and went to find food. Unfortunately I didn't make it...
As we were getting to the door out of the emergency room I realized I'd passed the point of no return and was definitely about to faint. So I said as much and then went to lie down on the floor. I didn't make myself clear (unsurprisingly) and Monica tried to catch me to stop me from lying down. Certainly a good idea if I was falling out of control! But since I was still somewhat in control and was just trying to get down safely it meant I ended up fighting her help. The end result was I ended up falling through the emergency room door instead of lying down nicely before it. Right beside a group of nurses/medics. Who were a little alarmed to see someone who was unnaturally pale collapse onto the floor through a door! I tried to fend them off but by that point I was pretty much out cold.
I woke up to find myself on a stretcher with a bunch of people yelling questions at me and trying to take off my clothes. DO YOU KNOW YOUR NAME? WHAT DAY IS IT? WE'RE GIVING YOUR WALLET TO YOUR SISTER! I pieced together what had happened but it didn't much matter. They weren't going to let me go without doing their best to figure out what went wrong with me.
On the one hand this is something I've always done, my doctor has never been concerned about it, and I felt like I was being a bother having them run tests on me likely wasting their time, my time, and my family's time. (Especially since they should have been focusing on my father who was actually hurt!) On the other hand maybe there was something bad about my health and one of these tests would clue me into something serious that might be dealt with by catching it now. So while I felt silly I let them do what they wanted. And they sure wanted to do a lot... Cardiogram, chest x-rays, blood tests, urine tests, more blood pressure tests than I can count, reflex tests, strength tests... Even an IV!
Annoyingly my father managed to get himself checked out and ran off in the middle of his tests. Possibly because everyone else was stretched between the two of us instead of just being with him. So not only was I not any help at all, I was probably actively detrimental by showing up. Boo!
Anyway, all my tests came back clear. The doctor said she'd normally want to keep someone who fainted overnight for observation but she couldn't actually see anything wrong with me and was willing to accept my story that I've just always been someone who faints. New medication, stressful situation, historical precedence... Whatever it was, it didn't seem like anything was actually wrong with me so she let me go. The one thing they did find that was a little out of the ordinary was that I was a little dehydrated so they pumped me full of water from an IV before letting me go. Dehydration is a typical side effect of my new drug and I hadn't been able to drink much while being poked and prodded so not much surprise there, really.
Even though nothing came up I am still happy they went through the effort. They might have caught something serious, and all it really cost me was 5 hours of my time and some extra travel/worrying for my mother. And who knows what for my father since he ran away from his own tests...
This isn't such a strange occurrence for me. I've fainted sporadically for my whole life. Mostly when seeing my own blood or when having blood drawn or getting needles... But I know when the fainty feeling is coming on and I now know how to deal with it. In grade 2 I didn't know how to deal with it and ended up cutting my head on a rock when I collapsed but since then I've always been able to protect myself as I go down.
Anyway, by the time I was back on my feet they were off to the hospital. Not too long after that my mother came by and told me I really should go to the hospital too for support. I wasn't feeling faint anymore so I couldn't see any reason to disagree, so off we went. I showed up, talked a bit about my coat zipper being broken, and started to feel light headed again. There weren't any chairs in the emergency room but there was a stool so I tried sitting on that. It didn't help. During this time a nurse came by and told us we were really only supposed to have one visitor at a time. My brother and his fiancee wanted to go eat anyway and I figured a food court would have a bench I could collapse on so we left my sister with my dad and went to find food. Unfortunately I didn't make it...
As we were getting to the door out of the emergency room I realized I'd passed the point of no return and was definitely about to faint. So I said as much and then went to lie down on the floor. I didn't make myself clear (unsurprisingly) and Monica tried to catch me to stop me from lying down. Certainly a good idea if I was falling out of control! But since I was still somewhat in control and was just trying to get down safely it meant I ended up fighting her help. The end result was I ended up falling through the emergency room door instead of lying down nicely before it. Right beside a group of nurses/medics. Who were a little alarmed to see someone who was unnaturally pale collapse onto the floor through a door! I tried to fend them off but by that point I was pretty much out cold.
I woke up to find myself on a stretcher with a bunch of people yelling questions at me and trying to take off my clothes. DO YOU KNOW YOUR NAME? WHAT DAY IS IT? WE'RE GIVING YOUR WALLET TO YOUR SISTER! I pieced together what had happened but it didn't much matter. They weren't going to let me go without doing their best to figure out what went wrong with me.
On the one hand this is something I've always done, my doctor has never been concerned about it, and I felt like I was being a bother having them run tests on me likely wasting their time, my time, and my family's time. (Especially since they should have been focusing on my father who was actually hurt!) On the other hand maybe there was something bad about my health and one of these tests would clue me into something serious that might be dealt with by catching it now. So while I felt silly I let them do what they wanted. And they sure wanted to do a lot... Cardiogram, chest x-rays, blood tests, urine tests, more blood pressure tests than I can count, reflex tests, strength tests... Even an IV!
Annoyingly my father managed to get himself checked out and ran off in the middle of his tests. Possibly because everyone else was stretched between the two of us instead of just being with him. So not only was I not any help at all, I was probably actively detrimental by showing up. Boo!
Anyway, all my tests came back clear. The doctor said she'd normally want to keep someone who fainted overnight for observation but she couldn't actually see anything wrong with me and was willing to accept my story that I've just always been someone who faints. New medication, stressful situation, historical precedence... Whatever it was, it didn't seem like anything was actually wrong with me so she let me go. The one thing they did find that was a little out of the ordinary was that I was a little dehydrated so they pumped me full of water from an IV before letting me go. Dehydration is a typical side effect of my new drug and I hadn't been able to drink much while being poked and prodded so not much surprise there, really.
Even though nothing came up I am still happy they went through the effort. They might have caught something serious, and all it really cost me was 5 hours of my time and some extra travel/worrying for my mother. And who knows what for my father since he ran away from his own tests...
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Bridge Match 3 - Board 54
Board 54 - Dealer East - EW Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Good
My hand: ♠ 8 6 4 ♥ 9 7 2 ♦ A 3 ♣ K T 9 6 5
West opens 1 club in 3rd seat. Partner bids 1 diamond. East bids 1 spade. With no real red suit to speak of I can't really bid here, so I pass. West bids 1NT which gets passed around to me. I wonder if 2 clubs would make sense as a bid here... They're not playing doubleton club so probably not? Sure, let's play 1NT.
Partner leads the T of diamonds.
T-J-A-7. Partner should have at least 5 diamonds for his overcall which means I should really return a diamond and hope he has an entry somewhere else. 3-4-K-6. 9-Q-2 of hearts-2. Declarer shifts to hearts. 4-7-A-6. And then to spades. 9-2-3-4. I don't like when the 9 wins a trick... And another. T-Q-K-6. Declarer then cashes a heart and 3 spades. Partner didn't keep a 5th diamond so he has to give them the A of clubs at the end. Making 3.
There are a wide variety of results this time around. EW played all the contracts with 3 people making 4 spades, 1 person going down 1 in 4 spades, 1 person is 2 spades making 4, 2 people in 1NT making 4, and us in 1NT making 3. This means we get 12 MPs! Mostly because declarer screwed up and gave us an extra trick for no reason, but I'll take it.
Jack agrees with me all the way!
Ranking after board 54/60: 8/16 with 51.06%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Good
My hand: ♠ 8 6 4 ♥ 9 7 2 ♦ A 3 ♣ K T 9 6 5
West opens 1 club in 3rd seat. Partner bids 1 diamond. East bids 1 spade. With no real red suit to speak of I can't really bid here, so I pass. West bids 1NT which gets passed around to me. I wonder if 2 clubs would make sense as a bid here... They're not playing doubleton club so probably not? Sure, let's play 1NT.
Partner leads the T of diamonds.
| NORTH ♦ T | ||
| EAST ♠ A K 7 5 3 ♥ 8 5 4 ♦ Q J 6 ♣ 7 2 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ 8 6 4 ♥ 9 7 2 ♦ A 3 ♣ K T 9 6 5 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | ||
| 1♣ | 1♦ | 1♠ | Pass |
| 1NT | Pass | Pass | Pass |
T-J-A-7. Partner should have at least 5 diamonds for his overcall which means I should really return a diamond and hope he has an entry somewhere else. 3-4-K-6. 9-Q-2 of hearts-2. Declarer shifts to hearts. 4-7-A-6. And then to spades. 9-2-3-4. I don't like when the 9 wins a trick... And another. T-Q-K-6. Declarer then cashes a heart and 3 spades. Partner didn't keep a 5th diamond so he has to give them the A of clubs at the end. Making 3.
| NORTH ♠ Q 2 ♥ Q J 6 ♦ K T 9 8 5 ♣ J 8 4 | ||
| WEST ♠ J T 9 ♥ A K T 3 ♦ 7 4 2 ♣ A Q 3 | EAST ♠ A K 7 5 3 ♥ 8 5 4 ♦ Q J 6 ♣ 7 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ 8 6 4 ♥ 9 7 2 ♦ A 3 ♣ K T 9 6 5 |
Jack agrees with me all the way!
Ranking after board 54/60: 8/16 with 51.06%
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Bridge Match 3 - Board 53
Board 53 - Dealer North - NS Vul
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Good
My hand: ♠ 2 ♥ 9 8 7 2 ♦ 7 6 3 ♣ A 9 7 6 4
West opens 1 spade in 4th seat. Partner doubles and East bids 2NT which is alerted as a constructive raise. My hand is not great, but we probably have a double fit. And I do want partner to know what suit to lead. So I bid 3 clubs. West bids 4 clubs showing a control in clubs for spades. East retreats to 4 spades and that's where they stay.
Partner leads the Q of clubs.
This shouldn't be a Rusinov lead since I bid the suit, but I bet Jack thinks it is. I'm pretty sure West has a void here, but I guess it could be stiff king? If it is then popping the ace sets up the jack on dummy anyway, so I play low. Q-2-7-7 of spades. Then they start taking tricks and never stop. Making 7.
Every table had 13 tricks taken in spades. 2 tables bid up to a small slam, 3 stopped in 5 spades, and 3 stopped in 4 spades. So we get 9 MPs here.
Jack doesn't like my 3 club bid and wants me to pass. He then wanted me to win the A of clubs on the first trick. Which makes no sense, since he had the KQ. Either he should lead the Q and be happy with my duck or he should lead the K to remove the ambiguity. Leading the Q and yelling at me for ducking is stupid.
Ranking after board 53/60: 9/16 with 50.4%
Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Good
My hand: ♠ 2 ♥ 9 8 7 2 ♦ 7 6 3 ♣ A 9 7 6 4
West opens 1 spade in 4th seat. Partner doubles and East bids 2NT which is alerted as a constructive raise. My hand is not great, but we probably have a double fit. And I do want partner to know what suit to lead. So I bid 3 clubs. West bids 4 clubs showing a control in clubs for spades. East retreats to 4 spades and that's where they stay.
Partner leads the Q of clubs.
| NORTH ♣ Q | ||
| EAST ♠ A 8 6 4 ♥ K 4 3 ♦ K T ♣ J 8 3 2 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ 2 ♥ 9 8 7 2 ♦ 7 6 3 ♣ A 9 7 6 4 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | Pass | Pass | |
| 1♠ | Double | 2NT1 | 3♣ |
| 4♣2 | Pass | 4♠ | Pass |
| Pass | Pass | ||
| 1Constructive raise | |||
| 2Control in clubs for spades | |||
This shouldn't be a Rusinov lead since I bid the suit, but I bet Jack thinks it is. I'm pretty sure West has a void here, but I guess it could be stiff king? If it is then popping the ace sets up the jack on dummy anyway, so I play low. Q-2-7-7 of spades. Then they start taking tricks and never stop. Making 7.
| NORTH ♠ K T ♥ Q J T 6 ♦ 9 5 4 ♣ K Q T 5 | ||
| WEST ♠ Q J 9 7 5 3 ♥ A 5 ♦ A Q J 8 2 ♣ | EAST ♠ A 8 6 4 ♥ K 4 3 ♦ K T ♣ J 8 3 2 | |
| SOUTH ♠ 2 ♥ 9 8 7 2 ♦ 7 6 3 ♣ A 9 7 6 4 |
Jack doesn't like my 3 club bid and wants me to pass. He then wanted me to win the A of clubs on the first trick. Which makes no sense, since he had the KQ. Either he should lead the Q and be happy with my duck or he should lead the K to remove the ambiguity. Leading the Q and yelling at me for ducking is stupid.
Ranking after board 53/60: 9/16 with 50.4%
Monday, January 26, 2015
Bridge Match 3 - Board 52
Board 52 - Dealer West - All Vul
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ A Q J 8 ♥ 7 2 ♦ A K 8 ♣ K 7 4 2
Partner opens 3 hearts in 2nd chair. Unfortunately it looks like I'm the one he preempted. I have a 17 count and stoppers in all the other suits. If partner has any outside entry, or a solid heart suit, then 3NT should be a good place. 4 hearts is probably a good place too, especially if partner doesn't have an outside entry. Would he know to pull out of 3NT if he has noentry? I hope so. I bid 3NT, he pulls to 4 hearts, and everyone passes.
East leads the J of diamonds.
Well, it turns out Qx of diamonds was an entry but he couldn't have known that. I have 2 club losers, 1 spade loser, and 1 heart loser. I can pitch one of those on my 3rd diamond though, so we're all good. Actually, I can possibly take lots of extra spade tricks too? And it's actually safe to finesse into West's hand since he has to lead up to my club K. At least, it will be safe after I draw trump. So my plan here is to win this trick with the Q, draw trump, and see what happens. If they take 2 club tricks then I'll just pitch my second spade on diamonds.
Hmm. East actually shows out of hearts on the first trick. So West has AT93. Which means I have another trump loser. West then cashes the A of clubs, setting up my K. Then he throws me back into my hand with a diamond. Which actually means I can cash out. Pitch a spade on the next diamond, then draw trump, lose one more heart, and be up.
Making 4.
Everyone played 4 hearts. 3 of us made, 3 went down 1, and 2 went up 1. So we get 8MPs on this hand.
Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. He says it isn't bad, but that we should play 4 hearts because we have a fit. That's fair, but I do think starting with 3NT opens up the chance of getting a top board (with +10 points for playing in NT) as long as partner's on the same wavelength.
Ranking after board 52/60: 9/16 with 50.14%
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ A Q J 8 ♥ 7 2 ♦ A K 8 ♣ K 7 4 2
Partner opens 3 hearts in 2nd chair. Unfortunately it looks like I'm the one he preempted. I have a 17 count and stoppers in all the other suits. If partner has any outside entry, or a solid heart suit, then 3NT should be a good place. 4 hearts is probably a good place too, especially if partner doesn't have an outside entry. Would he know to pull out of 3NT if he has noentry? I hope so. I bid 3NT, he pulls to 4 hearts, and everyone passes.
East leads the J of diamonds.
| NORTH ♠ T 3 ♥ K Q J 8 6 5 4 ♦ Q 6 ♣ 9 8 | ||
| EAST ♦ J | ||
| SOUTH ♠ A Q J 8 ♥ 7 2 ♦ A K 8 ♣ K 7 4 2 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | 3♥ | Pass | 3NT |
| Pass | 4♥ | Pass | Pass |
| Pass |
Well, it turns out Qx of diamonds was an entry but he couldn't have known that. I have 2 club losers, 1 spade loser, and 1 heart loser. I can pitch one of those on my 3rd diamond though, so we're all good. Actually, I can possibly take lots of extra spade tricks too? And it's actually safe to finesse into West's hand since he has to lead up to my club K. At least, it will be safe after I draw trump. So my plan here is to win this trick with the Q, draw trump, and see what happens. If they take 2 club tricks then I'll just pitch my second spade on diamonds.
Hmm. East actually shows out of hearts on the first trick. So West has AT93. Which means I have another trump loser. West then cashes the A of clubs, setting up my K. Then he throws me back into my hand with a diamond. Which actually means I can cash out. Pitch a spade on the next diamond, then draw trump, lose one more heart, and be up.
Making 4.
| NORTH ♠ T 3 ♥ K Q J 8 6 5 4 ♦ Q 6 ♣ 9 8 | ||
| WEST ♠ 6 2 ♥ A T 9 3 ♦ 7 3 2 ♣ A T 6 5 | EAST ♠ K 9 7 5 4 ♥ ♦ J T 9 5 4 ♣ Q J 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ A Q J 8 ♥ 7 2 ♦ A K 8 ♣ K 7 4 2 |
Jack disagrees with my 3NT bid. He says it isn't bad, but that we should play 4 hearts because we have a fit. That's fair, but I do think starting with 3NT opens up the chance of getting a top board (with +10 points for playing in NT) as long as partner's on the same wavelength.
Ranking after board 52/60: 9/16 with 50.14%
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Bridge Match 3 - Board 51
Board 51 - Dealer South - EW Vul
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ T 8 4 ♥ 9 3 ♦ J 7 6 ♣ A Q T 9 7
West opens 1 diamond in second seat, partner doubles, and East bids 1 spade. I've got something worth telling partner about so I bid 2 clubs. It gets passed back around to East who bids 2 diamonds. Which gets passed out.
Partner leads the 4 of clubs.
4-3-A-2. I can play more clubs and try to run dummy out of trump but that feels wrong. I can draw trump first? Or I can hope from the bidding that partner has good hearts and wants me to return them through declarer. That sounds like a plan. 9-5-K-7. Partner cashes another heart. A-8-3-2. And then he hooks me up with a ruff. T-J-6 of diamonds-4.
Ok, it feels like declarer should have the Q of hearts still, so I want to get into partner's hand for him to pound through another heart for me to ruff. (Or at least force dummy to ruff high and maybe get a trump promotion for partner.) Clubs is really the best bet for having that happen, and I want to make sure partner takes the trick, so I lead low. 7-K-8-6. Oh well. Declarer draws two rounds of trump and then plays a spade to partner's ace. And then declarer is up. Making 2.
One NS pair made 3 clubs. 1 EW pair went down 1 in 3 diamonds. 5 made 2 diamonds, and 1 made 2 diamonds up 1. So we get 6 MPs for being in the big tie in the middle. I wish Jack followed the law since he really should have raised my 2 club bid to 3 which was the winning play on this board.
Jack disagrees with my pass over 2 diamonds. He wants me to bid 3 clubs on my own. I don't think it's my position to be making that bid. There's no reason to assume his double of 1 diamond actually shows 4 clubs. It's much safer for me to bid clubs once and then let him take over if he likes clubs.
Ranking after board 51/60: 9/16 with 50%
Opponents convention card: Majeure cinquième
Opponents playing strength: Advanced
My hand: ♠ T 8 4 ♥ 9 3 ♦ J 7 6 ♣ A Q T 9 7
West opens 1 diamond in second seat, partner doubles, and East bids 1 spade. I've got something worth telling partner about so I bid 2 clubs. It gets passed back around to East who bids 2 diamonds. Which gets passed out.
Partner leads the 4 of clubs.
| NORTH ♣ 4 | ||
| EAST ♠ K Q 8 7 2 ♥ J 8 7 ♦ K 9 5 ♣ 6 3 | ||
| SOUTH ♠ T 8 4 ♥ 9 3 ♦ J 7 6 ♣ A Q T 9 7 |
| West | North | East | South |
| Pass | |||
| 1♦ | Pass | 1♠ | 2♣ |
| Pass | Pass | 2♦ | Pass |
| Pass | Pass |
4-3-A-2. I can play more clubs and try to run dummy out of trump but that feels wrong. I can draw trump first? Or I can hope from the bidding that partner has good hearts and wants me to return them through declarer. That sounds like a plan. 9-5-K-7. Partner cashes another heart. A-8-3-2. And then he hooks me up with a ruff. T-J-6 of diamonds-4.
Ok, it feels like declarer should have the Q of hearts still, so I want to get into partner's hand for him to pound through another heart for me to ruff. (Or at least force dummy to ruff high and maybe get a trump promotion for partner.) Clubs is really the best bet for having that happen, and I want to make sure partner takes the trick, so I lead low. 7-K-8-6. Oh well. Declarer draws two rounds of trump and then plays a spade to partner's ace. And then declarer is up. Making 2.
| NORTH ♠ A J 3 ♥ A K T 6 ♦ 8 4 ♣ J 8 5 4 | ||
| WEST ♠ 6 5 ♥ Q 5 4 2 ♦ A Q T 3 2 ♣ K 2 | EAST ♠ K Q 8 7 2 ♥ J 8 7 ♦ K 9 5 ♣ 6 3 | |
| SOUTH ♠ T 8 4 ♥ 9 3 ♦ J 7 6 ♣ A Q T 9 7 |
Jack disagrees with my pass over 2 diamonds. He wants me to bid 3 clubs on my own. I don't think it's my position to be making that bid. There's no reason to assume his double of 1 diamond actually shows 4 clubs. It's much safer for me to bid clubs once and then let him take over if he likes clubs.
Ranking after board 51/60: 9/16 with 50%
Friday, January 23, 2015
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Tomorrow will feature the second race in the series of three being put on by the speedrun racing site SpeedRunsLive. The whole thing is flying under the banner of 'get yourself speedrunning' and I was really hoping these races would exist to help bootstrap people into speedrunning, but it turns out that isn't really the case. Anyone can create a race in SRL for pretty much any game as long as they have an opponent lined up so the only things that actually seem special about these races are that they have a scheduled start time and there's a stream running with commentary on the top players.
What I was hoping would happen would be that there'd be a lot of information easily available to let people know what sorts of things they should be doing in these games. A 'cheat sheet' if you will of the core tricks to the game and a sample route to follow. The Mario 3 one eventually had a route put up in a pastebin document. It was a good start, but there was no mention that such a thing existed on the website or in the main IRC channel. Or if there was I sure didn't see it. I only found out it existed when I joined the race specific channel an hour before it started and the link was in the topic. I didn't set aside any time to practice but part of that was not knowing what I should even be practicing. If I'd had that document in advance I'd have been more encouraged to at least do a trial run.
I have done some research and practice for the Zelda race. It's much shorter than the Mario 3 race (it only covers the very start of the game up until you get the Master Sword which is right after the 3 pendant dungeons) which is nice. But I wasn't sure what I could or should be doing. The rules for the race are rather cryptic to the uninitiated:
Rules: S&Q allowed. Glitches banned: EG, YBA, OoB.
Ok... What is S&Q? What is EG? YBA? OoB? What run should I watch to model my game after? Are they abiding by those rules?
S&Q it turns out is the 'Save & Quit' option in the game. This lets you essentially teleport to any of the starting locations in the game which is rather convenient once you've finished a dungeon. Instead of walking to the next dungeon you warp back to your house and take the shorter route. It's not clear to me why people would run without using this option but apparently people do.
OoB stands for Out of Bounds. EG stands for Exploration Glitch. YBA stands for Yuzuhara's Bottle Adventure. All three are ways to skip past large chunks of the game. OoB is clipping through walls to take shortcuts. EG is an extreme form of OoB where you end up getting onto another layer entirely. This lets you walk anywhere on the map. Different dungeons and stuff are all actually just on one big map in memory (or two?) so with this glitch you can pretty much walk to anywhere you want as long as the destination has a way to end the glitch (a cliff of some sort to jump down I think). YBA is a crazy glitch where you use a potion in a bottle on a screen transition to rewrite stuff in memory to do all kinds of crazy things. Like getting the flute well before you should have it, which lets you warp to places you shouldn't be able to reach.
So basically they're banning all the things that let you skip parts of the game. Sort of like how in Mario 3 they banned the warp whistle but still let you use p-wings and clouds to skip/cheat your way through individual levels. With a whistle you skip entire worlds in one action and that's not good for a nostalgia run. In Zelda they ban all the weird glitches but they let you warp back to your starting point. That only cuts out some boring running around on the world map.
I couldn't find any routes for this category anywhere so what I did was watched a bunch of different videos people had posted for categories that sounded like they could be this one. They had enough similarities that I got a pretty good idea of what I'd need to do. Because you aren't using any crazy glitches you need to do the dungeons in order. You need the running boots from dungeon one to knock down the book to enter dungeon two. You need the gloves from dungeon two to pick up a rock on the way to dungeon three. Then the only thing left to do is run into the forest and pick up the sword. I saw one guy who went and got an optional ice rod to help kill the bosses but most people skipped that. It seemed like the only optional thing most people did was pick up the heart from a chest in the sanctuary you take Zelda to at the start of the game.
There are still all sorts of tricks to cut frames out by walking on some diagonals and people plan out specific arrow usages so they know how many pots they need to pick up. I'm a bad aim so I need to pick up all the arrows I can find!
I did a test run this morning and got done in a little over an hour. Real people finish in 23 minutes (or maybe less now... who knows how good the people I watched actually are) so this was already a better ratio than my Mario 3 run. And I got lost lots, and got knocked out of the third boss fight several times. I expect to do much better in the actual race.
And maybe they're intentionally making it hard to find this stuff. That's what speedrunning is... Find different tricks and glitches from a wide variety of sources and watch the people who claim to be good to see what they do. Try to copy it. When you're good enough to do what they do then you can tinker with ways to make it faster by doing different things. Which you either find yourself through insane amounts of trial and error or you find by watching other people in the hopes they stumble across something new.
I'm definitely going to get up in time for the Zelda race tomorrow. But after how much effort it took this week to find what I needed to do in a game I understand I feel like trying for the Sonic one next week is probably crazy. Maybe I could show up and expect to come last? I don't want to show up and end up forfeiting though, so that may well come down to if I think I'll be awake for 6+ hours after it starts.
I may even practice more in the morning... I didn't get any ranking points for coming 91st in Mario 3, but I feel like I could probably do well enough in Zelda to get some ranking points. Assuming as many random new players show up as last time, anyway! I don't think ranking points really do anything but they're a number that I could make get bigger, so I must make it bigger!
What I was hoping would happen would be that there'd be a lot of information easily available to let people know what sorts of things they should be doing in these games. A 'cheat sheet' if you will of the core tricks to the game and a sample route to follow. The Mario 3 one eventually had a route put up in a pastebin document. It was a good start, but there was no mention that such a thing existed on the website or in the main IRC channel. Or if there was I sure didn't see it. I only found out it existed when I joined the race specific channel an hour before it started and the link was in the topic. I didn't set aside any time to practice but part of that was not knowing what I should even be practicing. If I'd had that document in advance I'd have been more encouraged to at least do a trial run.
I have done some research and practice for the Zelda race. It's much shorter than the Mario 3 race (it only covers the very start of the game up until you get the Master Sword which is right after the 3 pendant dungeons) which is nice. But I wasn't sure what I could or should be doing. The rules for the race are rather cryptic to the uninitiated:
Rules: S&Q allowed. Glitches banned: EG, YBA, OoB.
Ok... What is S&Q? What is EG? YBA? OoB? What run should I watch to model my game after? Are they abiding by those rules?
S&Q it turns out is the 'Save & Quit' option in the game. This lets you essentially teleport to any of the starting locations in the game which is rather convenient once you've finished a dungeon. Instead of walking to the next dungeon you warp back to your house and take the shorter route. It's not clear to me why people would run without using this option but apparently people do.
OoB stands for Out of Bounds. EG stands for Exploration Glitch. YBA stands for Yuzuhara's Bottle Adventure. All three are ways to skip past large chunks of the game. OoB is clipping through walls to take shortcuts. EG is an extreme form of OoB where you end up getting onto another layer entirely. This lets you walk anywhere on the map. Different dungeons and stuff are all actually just on one big map in memory (or two?) so with this glitch you can pretty much walk to anywhere you want as long as the destination has a way to end the glitch (a cliff of some sort to jump down I think). YBA is a crazy glitch where you use a potion in a bottle on a screen transition to rewrite stuff in memory to do all kinds of crazy things. Like getting the flute well before you should have it, which lets you warp to places you shouldn't be able to reach.
So basically they're banning all the things that let you skip parts of the game. Sort of like how in Mario 3 they banned the warp whistle but still let you use p-wings and clouds to skip/cheat your way through individual levels. With a whistle you skip entire worlds in one action and that's not good for a nostalgia run. In Zelda they ban all the weird glitches but they let you warp back to your starting point. That only cuts out some boring running around on the world map.
I couldn't find any routes for this category anywhere so what I did was watched a bunch of different videos people had posted for categories that sounded like they could be this one. They had enough similarities that I got a pretty good idea of what I'd need to do. Because you aren't using any crazy glitches you need to do the dungeons in order. You need the running boots from dungeon one to knock down the book to enter dungeon two. You need the gloves from dungeon two to pick up a rock on the way to dungeon three. Then the only thing left to do is run into the forest and pick up the sword. I saw one guy who went and got an optional ice rod to help kill the bosses but most people skipped that. It seemed like the only optional thing most people did was pick up the heart from a chest in the sanctuary you take Zelda to at the start of the game.
There are still all sorts of tricks to cut frames out by walking on some diagonals and people plan out specific arrow usages so they know how many pots they need to pick up. I'm a bad aim so I need to pick up all the arrows I can find!
I did a test run this morning and got done in a little over an hour. Real people finish in 23 minutes (or maybe less now... who knows how good the people I watched actually are) so this was already a better ratio than my Mario 3 run. And I got lost lots, and got knocked out of the third boss fight several times. I expect to do much better in the actual race.
And maybe they're intentionally making it hard to find this stuff. That's what speedrunning is... Find different tricks and glitches from a wide variety of sources and watch the people who claim to be good to see what they do. Try to copy it. When you're good enough to do what they do then you can tinker with ways to make it faster by doing different things. Which you either find yourself through insane amounts of trial and error or you find by watching other people in the hopes they stumble across something new.
I'm definitely going to get up in time for the Zelda race tomorrow. But after how much effort it took this week to find what I needed to do in a game I understand I feel like trying for the Sonic one next week is probably crazy. Maybe I could show up and expect to come last? I don't want to show up and end up forfeiting though, so that may well come down to if I think I'll be awake for 6+ hours after it starts.
I may even practice more in the morning... I didn't get any ranking points for coming 91st in Mario 3, but I feel like I could probably do well enough in Zelda to get some ranking points. Assuming as many random new players show up as last time, anyway! I don't think ranking points really do anything but they're a number that I could make get bigger, so I must make it bigger!
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