Subject: Masters-

It was a tough start. I think I played five games before I won one.  Kenwa's amazing speed and completion success was definitely pushing me. 

thanks vishna and GoAdoptADog  - I didn't fade in the last hour like I often do - but the good Dr. (who is a FAR better solver) was close behind and it could have come down to just one false path taking the Dr. longer than me in one game . It sounds like we all had a lead given by FGN anyway so had a bit of luck there also

That’s right I did see Doc Bombay in there too! Y’all are speedy speedy. 

Whats FGN?

FGN is abbreviation for "ForGotteNNapKiN"

He had won the previous nine (9!) Masters in-a-row:

https://www.freecell.net/f/c/toursummary.html?theme=1

Oh duh, yes I def have noticed his many masters wins! 

Aargh!  That’s easily the best I’ve played in a very long time and still 50 seconds short.  I’m sure I wasted 30 seconds of that looking at the leaderboard when I had the 33-32 lead instead of jumping into that 8x2.

Doc, I’m sure that’s frustrating to get so close but that’s still amazing!  I’d take 2nd place any day-esp by less than a minute! 

I played pretty awful again, 12 is actually better than I deserve. Just couldn’t get my head into it. 

&I’m not great w timed tasks bc I get panicky. Hoped comps might help w that but y'all are so fast during tourneys, my blood pressure could prob power the site server  (I’ll ask if that’s a possibility..if my nerves are going to be present, they should at least contribute something.)

That was another fast lead by y’all- Congrats to you both! Always impressive! 👏👏👏

Congrats to FGN and Dr. Bombay! 

Congratulations FGN once again and unlucky Dr. B- 

Congrats to FGN for top place again! Also Doc and Ken for top 3! :) 

Ps- second def isn’t unlucky, Doc. And anyway you’ve won before. Congrats to all! 

Ps- were all of the zero sums winnables? Those are usually my fave but many I gave up on and moved on. A few seemed impossible but that’s happened before where I missed something. Lmk pls

Only one of today's zero sums was winnable. A tip I can give for Masters' is that if you quit out of the game and then click on the win percentage of that game, it will open a new tab showing the ELO of said game. If the ELO is near 5000 than the game is unwinnable. I use this to make sure that I do not waste lots of time on unwinnables. I do this for Zero and Freakout tournies as well. This does not work if the tournament mode is Deadly or Blind however.

This only works if the game is above climate 5 though, any of the 1-4 climates do not show ELO and can only be verified if winnable or not in cellmates tournament viewer.

Also the tournament game stats after a tourny is over will show 5000 ELO for unwinnables as well.

mabb was the only Masters player I knew who used the term "tourny"! Guess she didn't have a mortgage on it!

Hey thanks for the tip FGN, that’s rlly kind of you to share. And a very smart idea, which I suspect is why you’re such a pro. Congrats again! 🎉

Congrats FGN! And to others who did well.

That one felt tough to me.

I started off playing zeros and thought it was a relatively breezy tourney, then I moved on to some of the more standard variants and a lot of them felt tricky to me. A few I was able to get after several minutes, but I had to give up on trying to be speedy. Y’all blew through them with ease- Good job ! :)

I just checked the tournament review for the Masters. Winner FN played that last 6x4 an incredible 37 times before nailing it and ElGuapo got it after 10 tries to grab second place.

37 times?! Wut!! That means they both finished the others loooong before I can imagine. If he played that 37 x and still won with time to spare, that’s crazy. So is el guap playing 10 times and coming in second. These guys! 

I noticed that too, and when I've seen it in the past I've always wondered 'Are they pounding away at the game because they know it's winnable, or because they have a hunch it's winnable?' But FN has cleared up that 'mystery' with that little trick to check the ELO they mentioned in a previous post. 

Yeah, and while I appreciated the tip from FN, I’m not sure it’d work as well for those like myself who aren’t working with the speed you guys have, (yourself included, Uber- you’re v fast.) 

While I’m grateful for the advice FN, I wonder if my score wouldn’t be even lower if I closed every game pre-play. Maybe not tho—I do often spend several precious minutes on an unwinnable before moving on. And you may have meant to do it mostly for those not quickly won, or when you hit a snag. 

Still, 37 x! That’s incredible!! Sometimes I try to fathom how it’s possible y’all do that. It boggles the mind. 

If the fate of the world ever depends on the victory of a freecell game in mere seconds, some of you would be the first ones they’d call, ha

I never quit preplay, I always try the game first. Also I do not have to check all variants since most games are winnable. And like I said, it does not work on Blind tournies since those winrates are hidden, or Deadly tournies since those are one shots only.

As for that one game, the reason I had so many plays on it is because it has a tricky opening that I did not figure out until about the 30th game. Even after having the opening, it was still hard to figure out the correct moves without putting myself into a corner. Also some tries were just moving the wrong card near the beginning that is just an insta-concede on a variant like 6x4.

Gotcha. That makes sense. I keep forgetting to do it but when I hit a snag or it takes over a minute and a half with no clear way forward, I should close & check stats to gage how long I should invest/ if I should play others before return to it.  

Def wasn’t criticizing the 37x, I’ve for sure played tricky ones many more times than that.

A tourney last week I played one game w stats 2/18 at least 15x. Yet oddly in the same tourn I won a 16/113 on my first shot and a 11/130 on my second. Sometimes easy ones I spend several minutes on simply bc I’m hurrying so fast I miss some clearly key move. It depends on the variant and also what I’ve been playing most recently. Yet still flub those a lot. (Ydays daily I didn’t get to spend a lot of time on, but I’m used to playing that variant at high levels for elo, sometimes for several hours, so thought I’d do ok w a few hours to play, but couldn’t streak past 14 even on many much lower levels bc I was rushing and flubbed many.) 

Anyway all I meant is, to replay a tricky one so much takes a lot of time, which clearly you had, having finished all the others with still time to play it 37x! And also, you won it! The tricky one! AND the tournament! Even in a rush. Nice!

FN definitely deserved the win. I tripped over the finish line on that last 6x4 on one of my earlier attempts, then on replay I just couldn't remember how I'd gotten there. Same with the quartets games. I played the toughest one first and beat it, then couldn't solve the same game with an added freecell!

Yow!  I had a 2-game advantage when I looked at the standings at the 71-minute mark but was already starting to run out of brain power.  Took me way too long to solve those last two games.  I would have guessed that I took 30 attempts on that 6x4 (I kept going after the bell) but when I looked, I saw I only had 17.  The tough things is that there were lots of options that got you well along by clearing some clubs first, but I stuck with that opening for too many attempts that were taking too much time.  Kudos to FGN and ElGuapo for getting all of the solvable deals before the bell.

You nailed it this week Dr.Bombay and from a talented field! Congratulations.

Thanks roo.  It’s actually been quite some time since I’ve finished first and I’m a bit shocked that it happened again today.  I was sure most of the field had been confused by the switch in time from DST here in the US but only calicokid seemed to start late - way late with just 40+ minutes remaining.

Game 36 from the Masters. The 3D and 2S had to be kept to enable col 2 to be cleared. Then the K and Q from Col 4 could be moved to the empty column and it all fell to pieces!