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#player1 Jim_Burlant Jim Burlant
#player2 Kevin_Fraley Kevin Fraley
>Jim_Burlant: ABEIMNY 8D BEAMY +30 30
#note Right letters, wrong choice? Q prefers 8H EMBAY by a smidge. I saw it and didn't like potential EMBAYING extensions. Q feels I should just take the extra 2 scoreboard points.
>Kevin_Fraley: RUV E8 .RUV +14 14
>Jim_Burlant: BIIMNRY 9C MI.Y +21 51
#note Best play.
>Kevin_Fraley: AHJ 7G HAJ +41 55
>Jim_Burlant: BEINRRU J4 BURIN +23 74
#note Blocked. Prior to his play of HAJ, I was going to play RUB 7F, but no more. Now that he's floated the I hook I have to blow up more of the rack than I had wanted. I chose this over BRUIN because I thought the U was less prone to 2x2's than the R. Q agrees - this wins roughly 3/4% more often than BRUIN in the same location and it's best. Just shy of 54% to win.
>Kevin_Fraley: DHO K3 DOH +28 83
>Jim_Burlant: AEEFGRU L1 FRAG +39 113
#note I had expected to play FUGUE 5G when DOH blocked it. Seeing nothing else, I resigned myself to taking 39, holding my nose, and expecting to exchange on the next turn. All that said, this was the last game of the morning session and the blood sugar levels must have been dropping because I suffered from major board vision failure: FUGUE 10B scores 37 and handles the rack problems nicely. A sim confirms that if you whiff on FUGUE, this was the play. The consolation: my next draw was so bad that it wouldn't have mattered; best case I'd have been fishing for 5 or 6 points.
>Kevin_Fraley: IRT 1L .RIT +21 104
>Jim_Burlant: EEEEILU -EEEIU +0 113
#note And if I'm sitting on AEEEILR, what would I be doing here? EVE for 6? Anyway - as to what I do have, it's this or exchange 6, keeping an E. Fortunately I haven't really hurt myself.
>Kevin_Fraley: IQ 10B QI +35 139
#note But what is Kevin doing with this if I find FUGUE a few turns ago?
>Jim_Burlant: EEIILRW 11E .IEWIER +26 139
#note Not much else to do with this. This is best- 39% to win in a short sim.
>Kevin_Fraley: ACKPS 12A PACKS +40 179
>Jim_Burlant: AELOOSU B10 .U.LE +28 167
#note Statically this is mid-pack. I also considered POLO/POOL. Ultimately, everything else gave up too many scoreboard points to the 28 I got for this play. Quackle agrees - it takes a few hundred two-ply iterations to sort out, but QUALE percolates to the top of a sim and stays there. 10H ALOE is also a good choice since it sets up the S hook.
>Kevin_Fraley: AOVW 6E AVOW +35 214
#note Uh oh...
>Jim_Burlant: AEIOOSS H11 .OO +7 174
#note Outside of NOOSES 8J (which never occurred to me, as it burns all the ammo), the only thing to do here is open up a hook for my S's while I unload the duplicated O's. This is best. 22.5% to win.
>Kevin_Fraley: ELZ 5C LEZ +46 260
>Jim_Burlant: ADEIISS 14E DAISIES +69 243
#note Ok, by how much must I trail in order to risk playing this at 14H for 9 more points? With the juicy S and Y hooks it creates with an S and both blanks unseen, never mind the worst cases - just the probable cases are bad enough. If he's got a pile of crap with an S (e.g.: PROFS, FLOGS, etc.) it gives him an easy 66 back. I realize I trail by 86 points, but even the 69-point placement gets me back within 17 and it's much harder for him to get 60+ back if he defends O15 as I expect him to. The duck thinks I need to man up and take the extra 9 points. Maybe for 20 more points, but not 9 more. Or maybe if my deficit were 130 instead of 86. I just don't see the need.
>Kevin_Fraley: X 13H .X +34 294
>Jim_Burlant: AENPRTT G13 P.T +23 266
#note Then again, Quackle just knew I would draw a 7 out of the bag and it would play down the N column if I'd played at 14H on the previous turn. :-) I expected him to cover O15 on the next play which would hopefully give me somewhere to bingo. That's why I kept the rack together with this play. This, A12 PANT, 10J PATEN, 10J PAT are the 4 standouts atop a sim - any is as good as any of the other.
>Kevin_Fraley: CENOT 15K ONCET +26 320
#note As expected. And he didn't get anything more than a routine play.
>Jim_Burlant: AAENORT D1 ATON. +12 278
#note I did this to create another threat so he couldn't shut the board down in two turns. This isn't one of the original options, but it works its way towards the top of a sim w/in a few hundred iterations. This wins more than everything else except the star play, which I never saw: TEARAWAY H1 wins just shy of 24%; this wins just shy of 14. And given the draw I had after this play, TEARAWAY might have been the difference between a win and a loss.
>Kevin_Fraley: GNU C1 NUG +18 338
>Jim_Burlant: ?ADEEIR O8 READIEs. +77 355
#note I spent minutes looking for the row 1 bingo that Quackle confirms doesn't exist (RENAILED scores 72 but it's not a bingo). This is almost a deuce game; I'm back to 45%. Can I pull off yet another comeback?
>Kevin_Fraley: ?EGLOOT N6 ThEOLOG +75 413
#note Nice find! BOOTLEG is the other one, and it scores 73. Congrats to Kevin on a very well played game.
>Jim_Burlant: ADELNNT 1A LA..TED +24 379
#note It didn't seem this way at the time, but this game may have been winnable. In the game, I drew DEI? after ATON(E). If I find TEARA(WAY), that leaves me with DEINO? and one more tile from that pool. Two things I don't know would dictate whether this was winnable or not: what was his rack when he played NUG? And what would the 5th tile been had I drawn TEARAWAY? Post-mortem analysis shows that LNN were still in the bag. TEARAWAY would have gotten me within 9 points, with a 3 in 13 chance at one of LN which gives me INDOLENT in two different places. And he may not have anything if he plays off something other than GNU. Or maybe he needed the E TEARAWAY would have floated and he'd have bingoed through that? Who knows?
>Kevin_Fraley: EFS 10J FES +29 442
>Kevin_Fraley: (NN) +4 446
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