Saturday, October 19, 2013

A Postponed Bingo

Asian English Olympic 2013
18-21 February 2013
Round 4 between Fadlan Satria and Christian O.B

This game was in same competition with “the real open board”. The difference is this game was made in first day of the competition, and was a great example that sometimes, you need to think twice even you obviously got a bingo…

Fadlan started with low-scoring but high turnover tile move TAUNT for 12, and replied with YOUNG for 21 points. Nothing much special in 3 next moves, until O.B decided to “high turnover” move, LABOUR with tile LABOUR+I (no bingo available) for 23 points. At this point, the game just “started”, with score 77-91 for Fadlan after 4th move

Fadlan made a phoney bingo ADEPTERS*, for 62, which escaped from challenge. He could play a legal bingo, scoring 105 points to triple ADEPTEST/ZOOS. No one know the true meaning of ADEPT, which only adjective. The high turnover leaving only I to getting good tile was unsuccessful from OB, instead of getting blank and other goodie, he ended up holding DEIIOOR, and only replied with OORIE for 18, which become crucial word later

Fadlan also got some dreck issue after several move ahead, KUTU for 18, blocked the bingo spotted by O.B DENARII, but quickly realized that he can also play bingo, even larger score, DEAIRING in triple for 83, and regain the lead with 193-222, but Fadlan has another bingo right after that, INSHORE for 77. OB tried to keep his score level to Fadlan by HEFT for 42 points, which replied by CABA for 33. Then the most interesting part begin.



Knowing that score 303-264 for Fadlan, or 39 points behind with 14 letters left in sack, and EGLNRSW, OB decided to gambling to maximize his bingo chance (knowing 2 blanks still unseen) by setting bingo spot which easily used with 7-letters word ended with S, AWL for 14, gave Fadlan chance to play his 3rd bingo, LINTIES, for 70+5 points, and lead by exactly 100 points, leave only 5 tiles in the sack.
OB obviously got a bingo, with tile GONERS?, but with 100 points behind, an immediate counter with bingo will most likely not enough to make a turn-point, knowing he had to take all 5 remained tiles after bingo. With the remained tile, which tracked correctly ACDDEILOQRVW, he had to think some serious strategy to win the game.
And what happened next:




OB postponing his bingo, ERG/OORIER, for 10+5, leave ONES? enable double crossing TWL with ERGO, resulting close to 100 points bingo (still, this strategy require luck since there are still 1 O unseen, Fadlan could have got it, but cannot find any better strategy to get some serious fight back). Fadlan know exactly what happened here, and start to panic even 85 points ahead, knowing he didn’t have the right tile to block that spot effectively with ACDDLVQ. Fadlan still decided to block, even know it was ineffective and destroy his rack balance, DEAD for 9, which allowed OB to regain the lead with DOWNIEST for 101+5 (yup, over 100) points bingo. Fadlan decided to challenge since he know his QAID for 27 wasn’t enough to give him victory, as OB take the last letter in sack R for UR (4 pts) and got enormous 20 points additional by Fadlan unplayed tiles CLOVED. Final score 423-414.

Could Fadlan win the game?? Definitely. The key is “you don’t always have to block”. Fadlan let himself slacked by ineffective block with DEAD, leave DLCVQ, ignored his best move QAID for 27 points. Even QAID let O.B to higher bingo (SNOWIER) for 107, the combined score of his last 2 moves was able to keep him  10-20 points ahead (QAID for 27, then 20-ish move), that make about 50 points in 2 move, compared to 36 points he got with DEAD and QAID for try to block that deadly bingo spot, he also get a chance to use his C and V in his last move, minimize the additional points for OB, as the last letter he get, R only give him 4 points

The final picture:
























Partially annotated about this game can be found here http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=13681#0


Thanks for reading

Created by Christian Oktavius

No comments:

Post a Comment