bob

[cesarsalad]

i started the BOB 7-0, getting Gibsonized in the process, against some pretty tough competition. i felt extremely lucky (my games are on cross-tables so you can see for yourself), and for the final game i had a real shot at top 10 in North America but i feel like i blew it by getting too fancy

Comments

[chaithedog]

Congrats on another great tournament, Cesar!

I seriously think you need to know more words than that to cash. You're talking about knowing half the 8s and 63% of the 7s. Some of those low-prob words are bound to come up in 31 games. Either your opponents will play them on you and you won't know whether to challenge, you'll miss them and it will cost you games and spread, or at best you'll waste time agonizing over low-prob racks looking for bingos that you won't know are there. I recommend studying your ass off.

[cesarsalad]

it's a little more -- i said by alphagram, so it would be ~75% of the 7s (20K 7 alphagrams) and ~60% of the 8s. I think there's gotta be gross diminishing returns to the point where I may mess up ~3 games on word knowledge. the large majority of the mistakes i make are positional/strategical even with my poor word knowledge, i think.

[chaithedog]

Ah, but you don't want to mess up any games. Three games is huge. If I believed I could win three more games by studying more, I'd do it. It's the difference between 16-15, sort of mediocre, and 19-12, which is a cash finish.

[nigelbo]

I consider memorization to be a large part of tournament success, but perhaps at nationals in particular, mental focus and endurance play a larger role than usual because of the high quantity of games and level of competition. Studying won't get you that much of an edge because if you are doing well, you will be playing other top players who study similarly. It seems difficult to get an advantage with word knowledge in that environment.

[cesarsalad]

From looking at my games in general I don't think word knowledge counts for that many of my mistakes. I do have some serious holes, like missing ERRATAS in game 29 of natls last year is inexcusable, and that's what I'm trying to plug, but I have posted so many examples of poor strategy/board vision or random inexplicable moves. I am trying hard to do as well as I can with my word knowledge and I think I would have been able to place if I played like a world-class player even with my word knowledge.

And yes I agree about the endurance and mental focus. I think that's what I've improved most at in the past few years, and I still feel sorely lacking -- any tournament longer than about 2 days is a lost cause for me, and I'd love to improve that.