| Player 1 |
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#player1 Matt_Canik Matt Canik
#player2 Joshua_Sokol Joshua Sokol
>Matt_Canik: ELOPU H4 LOUPE +16 16
>Joshua_Sokol: EJKSTWY 5G J.KEY +38 38
>Matt_Canik: BCEI 4K BICE +23 39
>Joshua_Sokol: AEISTVW 9C WAVIEST +77 115
>Matt_Canik: Q F8 Q. +11 50
>Joshua_Sokol: DEHHINT 6J HETH +39 154
#note I missed D8 H(A)DITH here. I definitely like that play. Matt took a while to drop the Q, so he probably has a do-or-die bingo leave or something. Probably hits something around 1/3 times. HADITH gives him new lines through an I T and H, and increases his chances in a vacuum, but playing QI was very specific and his range may very well be more suitable for the letters already on the board. But in that sense, I should probably still play HETH because it blocks the C and the E in BICE, as well as the P in LOUPE.
>Matt_Canik: CEFILSS D8 F.SCILES +86 136
#note I was ready to challenge this until I saw that it gave me a bingo. I'm still better off if I challenge this, but I got greedy. Definitely a huge mistake not to challenge.
>Joshua_Sokol: ADEIINR 11C A.RIDINE +72 226
>Matt_Canik: AADFR 12H FARAD +39 175
>Joshua_Sokol: AANOSXZ O4 SAXON +49 275
#note I started to completely freak out here. The P is still lingering for (BICE)P plays that score really well, the 3x3 is still open and there are two blanks out, I'm just not comfortable with anything anymore. I realize that SAXON* shouldn't be a word, as it would be a hook on AXON and it's only ever been T(AXON), but my paranoia overcame my logic here. For the same reason that I didn't challenge his FASCILES* (there was maybe a 10% chance it was the plural of FASCILIS* or something), he did not challenge SAXON*. He was not 100% sure, but he definitely said "that's not a word" out loud before playing his otherwise homeless bingo. Still, I had a better play here. N2 ZO(E)AS, which I missed, sets up my X brilliantly and also gets rid of most of the scariness of BICE-P
>Matt_Canik: AEENNOT N7 NEONATE +63 238
>Joshua_Sokol: ?AAGMTZ O11 MATZA +60 335
#note What an incredible draw! I was still completely out of my mind paranoid here, so I grabbed my head and covered myself. I said "I'm tanking here" out loud a few times, and finally ended up making this play. I intuitively knew how close this was with 15A ZAG(S) in terms of winning chances. I really wanted to block the 3x3 lane here, but there was also a risk that he would have a bingo ending in a blank S.
I figure that it's more likely that he'll have a bingo ending in S than a 3x3 through the S, but that I'm much more likely to lose if I block the 3x3 and he hits the S bingo. But how does that compare with my spread gain when he doesn't have a 3x3? If I play MATZA and he doesn't have a 3x3, I'm in far better shape than if I play ZAG(S) and he doesn't have a bingo ending in S this turn. Upon analysis, 2509 words are in the pool that end in S. In contrast, only 856 words play with the S in 4th position. So maybe 5% of the time I would estimate, he has a 3x3 which puts him slightly to moderately ahead. In contrast, around 15% of the time after ZAGS, he has a bingo ending in S that leaves me slightly ahead.
This is not accurate at all. His chances of having a bingo are around 13% after MATZA. I can only imagine only around 10% of those are 3x3s. He can open another 3x3 I guess, but still his chances are tiny. His chances of a bingo after ZAG(S) are only 5%, and probably 80% or more of those are bingos ending in S (or, as I failed to mention previously, bingos with the S in 2nd-to-last position, of which there are 300.
Goes to show that I completely overestimated the chances of anything like this happening based on the ridiculousness of what has already happened this game. ZAG(S) probably wins a few more games, but by much less than MATZA does.
>Matt_Canik: BIMRT M1 BRI.T. +26 264
>Matt_Canik: BIMRT -- -26 238
#note To my surprise, Matt did not have the blank, or seemingly so, and pretty quickly played this to open another 3x3. I don't think he played it upside-down, but he still misspelled BRITCH!
2 things made this seemingly easy challenge possible.
1) I had already seen that the C_H on the board didn't work quite how one would want; i.e no NCH or TCH words played
2) I knew almost certainly that BRITCH itself wasn't even a word!!!
Many times I have checked BRITCHES and seen if it could lose its plural form. It cannot. So without much hesitation I challenged and said "I don't even think it's good anyway!"
>Joshua_Sokol: ?GGOUWY 15D .OGGY +30 365
#note This game had gone from ridiculous to hilarious very quickly. From fear of him opening another 3x3 and hitting a miracle, I decided to get rid of the first 3x3 now in preparation for this worst case scenario. And who knows, with the way things were going, maybe Matt had just missed BLA(S)TIER and was trying to set up a 3x3 ending in A(B)LE!
I also tauntingly showed him my partial leave of WU, being very careful not to show him the 3rd tile...
>Matt_Canik: BIM M13 MIB +24 262
>Joshua_Sokol: ?IILRUW -WIILUR +0 365
#note I figured I'd just go for maximum turnover here, to imply that I didn't have a blank. Maybe he would think both blanks were out. Maybe he had one and thought the other one was out. Maybe I would draw the other one.
>Matt_Canik: ELRTV 12B LE. +5 267
#note This was a very weird play from my perspective
>Joshua_Sokol: ??EORRU L10 UR. +4 369
#note What is he setting up? A phony hook? I looked at LEI, and years of TWL06 play reinforced my thought that it didn't take any front hooks. I figured that this was just a weird giving up play that was fishing for a huge bingo hooking ACRIDINES.
Oh, have I not mentioned yet that I still thought there was an S left? In reality I held the two case S's with my blanks here. So not only did I not block anything at all, but I also spaced out. Now let's see if Matt hit what he was going for. I for one had two playable bingos on this turn, but they were not REBURRO(W)* or UNDERRO(W)* at C2! Can you find them?
>Matt_Canik: NRTVW N2 WR.N +16 283
#note this has now gotten absurd. What is he up to?
>Joshua_Sokol: ??EOORT 8A ROO. +26 395
#note This time I saw no possibilities ending in W. There are none, so why not just go for maximum spread? If he bingoes ending in R, kudos to him. I probably bingo back.
>Matt_Canik: AITV A12 VITA +44 327
#note And then he hooked LEI, and I heard him announce the score before I saw his play. 44? How do you score 44 on this board?
"Oh..." "Oh my..." "Holy shit"
were my words, I believe.
He had just used a new 4 to set up 100+-point bingos that would bring him back into the game! That's something straight out of my playbook, which, I guess is basically a ripoff of Matt Canik's playbook. Life is circular like that...
>Joshua_Sokol: ??EORTU A1 gROUTiE. +71 466
#note those long, painfully soft hand claps in front of my face once I finally laid this word down were undoubtedly exactly what I deserved at this point.
>Matt_Canik: DDILNPU 4A .NDID +14 341
#note 10I UP. Matt surely missed (T)U(NA). We were both positively braindead at this point in the game. Well, maybe I should speak for myself. I'm surprised he even managed to find an out in two.
>Joshua_Sokol: EGIO 3C EGO +20 486
>Matt_Canik: LPU 14J PUL. +12 353
#note UP is better again, and 2E PUL is 1 more.
>Matt_Canik: (I) +2 355
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