Game 3 Move 22

Why?

WSC Monitor

I found monitoring the WSC rather tiresome and so I decided to do some simple codes (well, some not so simple, but I learn from Google searches) to make things easier for myself, and here's what I came up with (the things to run are WSC Monitor.htm and WSC Monitor.exe). What it did for me (though I did it a little too late):
- Combined the Games page and Standings page into one page that auto-refreshes every 120 seconds.
- Allowed me to change the game number that is refreshed on the Standings page (provided the AutoHotkey program is running) with Ctrl + `. Displays the changed HTML code after the game number is typed.
- Allowed me to monitor the performance of the Singaporean team easily (all on one page) by clicking on each of the links shown on the Navigator.

Some things to note when using it:
- Only 2 digit numbers work for the round number changing program. See below under the drawbacks.
- The .vbs script must be edited (using Notepad or another word editor) on a different system - the address of the .htm file must be changed depending on where the folder resides.

Of course, this only worked for one tournament - I'll have to change all the links for Causeway and the future WSCs, which is not very practical. Other drawbacks include:
- Shabby .vbs script that only can accept 2 digit numbers in the input (other ones would screw the code up).
- Target folder for the .vbs script needs to be changed whenever the folder is changed.
- Auto-refresh every 120 seconds means the page would refresh back to the games and standings page, which would affect any browsing that's going on in those frames. This means any important browsing (e.g. watching live annotated games) should be done in another frame or window.
- Ugly colour for the WSC Navigator - but who cares, it was only for my own usage!

Well, if this thing isn't practical for every major tourney (maybe someone could improve on it for Causeway, which will have many more annotated games and another division altogether), I think it's a design which tourney webmasters should consider - I always find navigating between the standings and the games quite a hassle especially when they have no auto-refresh script in them.

Solution to Pre-Endgame Quiz + more on that game

Here's the simulation result for this quiz:


(click to enlarge)

MIB simulates the best, but why? Let's see...

1) COIF does not tell us much about Tony's rack except that he kept decent tiles. So maybe we can expect a bingo.
2) Any bingo to the F (FREMITus, FoRETIMe, FoRMIaTE, FEMITeRs) would lose to FRENZIED, CONFEREE or DEFROZEN. If Tony plays CONFIDER we have a draw. That's 4 racks - DEEFINR, EEEFNOR, DEEFNOR and DEFINOR.
3) MIB is quite obviously the strongest fish, but it loses to O8 FOREWIND, FOREFEND or FIREWEED. That's 3 racks - DEINORW, DEEFNOR and DEEEIRW.
4) MInIsTER loses to any counter bingo which are DEFROZEN, FOREFEND, REOFFEND, NIFFERED, OFFENDER, EFFEIRED, REDEFINE and NEEDFIRE. That's 3 racks - DEEFNOR, DEEFINR and DEEEFIR.

So let's see - both MIB and MInIsTER lose to 3 racks, so why does MIB simulate best? This is probably because there are 3 Es in the bag which makes DEEFINR more probable than DEINORW. DEEEIRW and DEEEFIR have the same probability, and DEEFNOR is a repeat.

What actually happened? I played FREMITus, because we had overscored JOLL by 2 and I thought I'd win even with CONFIDER. I did not spot the possibilities of FRENZIED or DEFROZEN. Tony then tried EDGER/OVERBEARER*/SET/RAWN for a massive 42 points which I had to challenge - off the board it went.

The game link with some commentary is here. It is quite a good game with 7 bingos played, though I did miss simple bingos on one turn... I have a huge problem with double blanks :)

And by the way... here's how to play Scrabble.

Interesting Facts about WSC (Too many!)

Might post more as time goes on!

- 3 Thais in the top 10. Extremely strong performance from the Thai team. (expected Pakorn to be in the top 5, he's been working hard) Hmm.. with the inclusion of Charnrit and the exclusion of Pichai from the team though.. their team performance pales in comparison to Nigeria and England.
- In the top 10, number 4, 8, 9 and 10 all escaped annotation!
- Besides the (important) wildcard, the top few "teams" were all individuals
- US will gain a spot - that will bring them to the quota of 15! (Maybe I should give a prize to anyone who can name all 14 members of the US team without referring to any material)
- Many of the WSC players will be playing in Causeway Open
- Notable missing names from the player list: Ganesh, Logan, Chris May, Odette, Martus (probably a few more but I hesitate)
- Our World Youth Champion finished 93rd. Is this where Youth Scrabble is headed?
- 2 years ago, Nigel first attained the top position at the 9th game. This year, he only managed to do so on the 23rd game.
- This is the second time a WSC winner has reached the finals the very next WSC. Joel Wapnick achieved this feat in 1999/2001. Joel Sherman did the exact opposite by finishing 2nd/ 1st in 1995/1997.
- If Nigel won, he would be a two-time world champion, and Pakorn would be a 3-time runner up. Pretty numbers (but that would be boring!) On the other hand, Pakorn's win means that there are 10 unique world champions - 6 of them are playing in Causeway Premier Division.
- Strangely enough the logo for the WSC Champion wildcard shows 2005 London and not 2007 Mumbai!
- This is Dave Wiegand's highest finish ever. Before this, he finished 8th in WSC 2005. Congratulations to him for a good tournament - this surely couples well with his NSC victory earlier this year.
- Not sure if it's the first time it's happened - the winners take the board and the losers take the tiles. I wouldn't mind getting the tiles as my own tiles are faded!
- Pakorn's game 2 score and spread (670, spread +367) against Nigel was both the highest ever achieved in the history of WSC. Previously, in 1999, Joel Wapnick scored 624 against Mark Nyman's 307. Both Wapnick and Pakorn managed to seal the title within 4 games.
- Pakorn's 14-game winning streak is a new record in the history of WSC. Perhaps someone will start compiling such statistics for the Causeway too.
- Marut Siriwangso, with an initial international rating of 1867, managed to finish 4th, while Sam Kantimathi with an initial international rating of 2010 only managed to finish 86th.
- The former world champions Mark Nyman, David Boys, Joel Wapnick, Panupol Sujjayakorn and Nigel Richards finished 19th, 6th, 9th, 25th and 2nd respectively. Looks like it's hard to fluke a WSC.
- Phillip Edwin-Mugisha, our "world champion" was only placed above 50 in round 3 and 5 (44th and 33rd respectively). He lost his last 5 games to finish 101st though.
- The first maiden WSC performance this time round is by Craig Beevers who finished 8th.
- In terms of W-L, the median is 12-12 and the mode is 11-13 with 16 players who finished there.

I do have a few blurry pictures of the WSC (didn't want to use flash and didn't think of any way to improve the photo quality, I wish I'd thought of doing that), so I might be looking out on the Facebook albums open to public viewing!

Yew Tee Day 2 and WSC Day 1

Quite a bad tourney overall but I don't think I lost due to bad strategical play (except for one of the games) - it was more of not knowing some important words that affected the outcome of the game (important words meaning my 4s and 7s which I've never properly studied, mainly). Obviously I was rather disappointed that I wasn't sure of those words but I guess it just reflects a lack of properly scheduled word study. Otherwise, some personal highlights of the tourney: I played a high-probability nine letter word which was nevertheless shameful as it was done with ?AEINRT to AL (there are 2, I played the C one and missed the P one); I played Adrian for the first time and lost (don't know if its due to bad tiles but I'll know after I analyse it); I played Mihai twice and Robert Linn once, and should have won all 3 but lost 2 of the 3 instead; I got a 600 pointer game; I am actually now ranked 10th in the country despite losing rating!

Some other interesting facts - 8 of the top 9 finishers are all WSC qualifiers (the notable exception being JP, who certainly walloped me in both games); there was
one round with 3 600 scores (it's round 7 not 6); there was another round on day 2 where I heard at least 4 players say they threw their games away (probably round 11)..

I should probably sim my games now since I'm out of camp - but meanwhile the WSC games are looking terrible; people seem to be making far worse mistakes than I do! Of course I'm hoping things will change tomorrow when perhaps better annotated games appear - and this should happen, with the top few players being rather respectable and many more good players hanging around midfield. Hopefully Singapore will do better tomorrow (and I think we will). I believe all of our players are well-poised to do better (esp. Marlon, who seems to have had a bad draw), or at least repeat today's results.

If all goes well, I will be visiting the WSC on Saturday...

Yew Tee Day 1

Did not play too badly - a bit better than normal though I did miss a few bingos which points towards my lack of word study. Good thing is that I'm playing (in some games) relatively quickly, and also fairly accurately. I've got 5 wins out of 8, with probably one or two more winnable ones (which I lost due to bad mistakes early or mid-game - e.g. missing the E front hook of vICTORS). I got my run of luck in my 5th, 6th and 7th games, where I cruised to (mostly) easy victories. My first ever game against Nigel was rather fun at the start when I led but that was quickly destroyed by his nine timer OUTPLAnS. I did get my own nine timer though against Marlon - RET(I)NITE, though I did miss one against Tony. Hopefully I will get to play Nigel again, or the other foreigners - only got to play Dianne and Nigel today. My aims are to get a rating gain (to get back into the top 10), or to win some money :).

SPDY

Taking over the internets

Pre-Endgame Quiz

Shown here is quite an eventful game, though there aren't (from my perspective) many strategically significant moves, except for this move.


(click to enlarge)

Task is as usual - find the winning-est move. I'll talk more about this game in a later post, but this position is more interesting and deserves prior attention.