December 2016 Events Calendar

Choutte at Lucky Labs on Hawthorne, 1:00-5:00 Saturday December 3rd

We’ll have one board playing for $3 to $5 per point, and if there’s enough interest a second/third/nth board at higher/lower stakes. We’ll have at most 5 players per board. Bring a board or at least your own doubling cube. BE PREPARED TO PAY OUT UP TO 30 TIMES THE POINTS/GAME. We’re a friendly group, but not necessarily friendly enough to take an IOU… 🙂 If you have to cash out early, mid-afternoon settlements are always an option.

The following rules to be in effect:

1. Jacoby rule
2. No consulting before the turn, that is, players other than the captain don’t get any input until after the first double/take/drop decision is over. Redoubles, you can talk about why you’d want to or not. EXCEPTION: to speed up play, players are free to share the pip count at any point.
3. No minority hold-outs (if 3 of the 4 (or 2 of the 3) playing drop a double, the last player has to take the drop as well). EXCEPTION: if there are only two players on the team, one person dropping is not a majority – if the captain drops or gets dropped, the #2 moves up to the captain mid-game.

3-point Tournament at Circa 33 on Belmont, 3:30 PM Sunday December 11th

Play 3-point matches, double elimination tournament. The stakes are optional – there will be a $5 side pool running.

Crawford rule will be in effect for all matches.

This event will repeat on the second Sunday of each month through the spring.

November 13, 2016 Tournament Results

Modest turn-out tonight, just 5 of us again. Rob was the host, and decided a round-robin structure would make more sense – guarantees everyone at least 4 games, top two point takers going to play for the prize. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans… Couple of people ended up needing or wanting to leave before we’d gotten all the way around. As such, we ended up with only 7 games played between the 5 players.

No new players at today’s tournament, and so everyone entered with an established Elo score. Here’s how that changed based on today’s play:

Player Initial Elo Rating Matches Played Matches Won Final Elo Rating
Mark 1578.2 3 3 1608.40
Rob 1487.6 3 2 1501.31
Robert 1486.8 3 2 1501.13
Paul 1488.1 2 0 1460.85
Ken 1446.2 3 0 1415.07

Next month we’ll do the same – that is, a 3-point tournament on the second Sunday of the month. Come on out, and bring a friend – we need to build the community!

Mark

November 5, 2016 Chouette Results

We had five people turn out and play this time (a 67% increase over last month!) – Mark F, Nick, Rob, Paul, and myself. Rob had initially said he wanted to run a cheapskate’s board at $0.50/point, but we all agreed to play on one at $3/point, same as last time. Mark F tried his best to convince us to go up to $5, which would have worked out nicely for him, as he was the big winner of the day. But I think he still had no reason to complain…

Play started by about 1:15 or so, Nick showed up in the middle of the second game and got added in. By that point, I was down a few games already, part of what was to be a long slide. Mark F showed me the easy and professional way to keep track of who was the box and the captain as we went, which made scorekeeping a lot easier, so thanks to him for that. We cycled through the rotation about twice with the box losing each game, before Rob took a stretch of 2 or 3 games holding it, which put him well up. Then Mark F took the box from him, and held it until he’d cycled through the whole field once. We had another rotation through the whole field, then Mark F took and held the box again for quite a few games.

Pro tip: taking and holding the box for more than a game or two puts you well up.

Anyway – about 4:30 Rob had to bug out, and so Nick zeroed out to pay him off. The rest of us went through another 4-5 games in the next half hour, at the end of which everyone owed Mark F some money – me most of all.

Overall, it was quite a good time and a very social game – Mark F and Nick kept us all entertained with stories of some of the big tournaments they’ve done over the years. We’ll do it again the first Saturday in December too, and figure out how to ramp it up in 2017.

-Mark