Nationals

How things went:

1.  I slept well.  In my earliest tournaments, this was a huge problem.  Now I'm older, wiser, and I have ambien.  I do think there's an ambien effect that lingers in the mornings, but I tried to push that back with a lot of caffeine, to random effect.

2.  My struggle to get enough calories (at tournaments) continues.  The last two events I've just gone with nutrition drinks.  THIS time I went with nutrition drinks that are for gaining weight, 350 calories a teeny bottle.  (My dietary requirements are funky and I eat very slowly; that plus nerves will starve me.)  I think the super-plus nutrition drinks helped.  Four a day gave me a 1400-calorie base to work from.

3.  Nerves!  I hardly had any.  I will have more to say about this at some point.

4.  I drew reasonably well.  I think I always do.  (I say this even in the current environment, because it's true.)  32 blanks in 30 games (two against Chris Lipe, as usual), but I also had a lot of racks "just at the right time":  FIDDLY for 66, etc.  Very few impossible racks.

5.  I need to calibrate my caution/challenges a little better, but it's improved over the last few events.  Overall I think I had one phony challenged off (WI*, which was not a real attempt at a word), two left on the board.  Obviously this means I chickened out of a few things.  I earned some +5s.  I spent some +5s, but not too many, and left four (I think) of my opponents' phonies on the board -- one of which I was astonished was bad and thought nothing of, one of which I worried about (agarized*), one of which I left on because I could lose if it were GOOD, and the fourth which I completely screwed up, thinking I was being all strategic, and then losing on recount the game I thought I had won against SamK on a play I hadn't noticed he'd underscored.  My own fault.  If I challenge his phony off, I win; if I've been paying better attention to the scoring throughout, I make a different call at the end -- and I just hadn't given myself the correct info to use to make the decision.  Plus, it was a ridiculous three. (There were several misscores in the game, including one of my own.)

6.  Class prizes:  it feels wrong to get a cash prize over someone who actually placed ahead of me.  I'll probably fold most of it back into the game somehow -- put some towards next year's prize fund if possible, etc.  Having said THAT, it felt pretty cool :)  I'm of two minds, obviously.

7.  People were awesome.  The Collins divisions that we usually get to play are small and involve multiple repeats -- and those repeats move from tournament to tournament.  This time I got to play many folks I'd never played before, which was a real treat.

8.  For thirty one-hour sessions, I blocked out the world of bad news and stupid news.  It was marvelous.

Edit to add: edited August 2013, to remove whitewashing.

Charlotte post-mortem, the big picture

You know how if you're really hungry, whatever you eat tastes extra great?  That's what it felt like to play tournament games again.  The losses, of which there were a whole lot, didn't bug me at all during the event.  It was just so enjoyable to PLAY.  I was starved for it.

But now it's the next day, and there are those losses to consider.  There are some obvious errors that I don't think I would make if I were playing tournaments more regularly, and there are some more subtle ones that I need to go over.

Changes I'm making:  

1.  No more void games for me ever.  Unfortunately, the facebook type games are all void (that I know of).  They give me bad habits, and I'm done with them.

2.  John and I have agreed to play by the 10-point challenge for our kitchen games.  I'm a cautious player and don't phony much -- but I don't challenge enough either.  I need to get more practice at making the nuanced decisions that are involved with 10-point challenge.

3.  We re-upped our mosaic account for ISC.  Anybody want to play against the two of us?

4.  More studying.  That's not really a change.  I just need to keep it up.  I wish there were a collins boggle site.  I wish my son and daughter would make me a collins boggle site for my birthday.

5.  John and I play each other a lot, but I think there's a bubble effect that is happening; we get so that we are used to each other's word knowledge and board play.  It might not be a huge effect, but it's an effect.  We are going to play more ISC games at least, so that we keep bringing in other styles to mitigate that bubble effect a little.