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Author Topic: Best/Worst Openings discussion  (Read 23844 times)

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Death to Sea Hags

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #25 on: June 18, 2011, 10:39:00 am »
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32   Young Witch / Ambassador   4/3

Ugh.  Try this or Hag / Amb against a top player and get creamed.
It's not one that would have occured to me but I guess part of it might be that the Ambassador makes it harder for opponents to draw their banes.

There's also the fact that unlike other +card termminals, you don't care if you draw Ambassador off the Witch.

This must be a case where the increased win-rate from non-collision swamps the greater loss-rate of risk of collision.

YMMV.  If you like high-risk strats, this is for you.  If your play is geared towards minimizing risk and variance, then this is not for you.
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rrenaud

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #26 on: June 18, 2011, 12:35:07 pm »
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Ambassador cancels/reflects cursing attacks.  I get my deck small.  You give me a curse.  You know where that cuse is going to end up?  In your deck.
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Amaranth

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #27 on: June 18, 2011, 01:27:20 pm »
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Ambassador cancels/reflects cursing attacks.  I get my deck small.  You give me a curse.  You know where that cuse is going to end up?  In your deck.
I think that in general the deck with Young Witch will be drawing and playing both the Ambassador and the Young Witch more frequently than its opponent, unless the other player opened with a better card drawer than Young Witch. So their deck is likely to become small first.
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rrenaud

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #28 on: June 18, 2011, 01:52:46 pm »
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You go amb/YW.  I'll go amb/amb.  My deck is going to shrink faster than yours.
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painted_cow

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #29 on: June 18, 2011, 05:42:26 pm »
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I always love it when players get some Cursing cards when I have Ambassador deck. It saves me the pain to buy to Curse myself to hand it over :-)
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Amaranth

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #30 on: June 19, 2011, 07:29:02 pm »
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You go amb/YW.  I'll go amb/amb.  My deck is going to shrink faster than yours.
That's certainly possible, but I imagine amb/YW will have an easier time buying good cards. Anyway, I got a chance to try it out (versus Ambassador/Caravan) and went on to lose, though the fact that neither of them showed up until turn 5 didn't help matters.
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drg

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #31 on: June 21, 2011, 04:56:49 am »
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Ambassador cancels/reflects cursing attacks.  I get my deck small.  You give me a curse.  You know where that cuse is going to end up?  In your deck.
I think that in general the deck with Young Witch will be drawing and playing both the Ambassador and the Young Witch more frequently than its opponent, unless the other player opened with a better card drawer than Young Witch. So their deck is likely to become small first.

Giving out curses to someone who's going heavy on ambassadors usually isn't a very good plan.

You go amb/YW.  I'll go amb/amb.  My deck is going to shrink faster than yours.
That's certainly possible, but I imagine amb/YW will have an easier time buying good cards. Anyway, I got a chance to try it out (versus Ambassador/Caravan) and went on to lose, though the fact that neither of them showed up until turn 5 didn't help matters.

Getting both your opening cards on T5 vs a competent player is usually a loss, especially when ambassador is in play, regardless of small differences in what you buy other than the ambassador.  I drew both ambassadors on T5 once after my opp played his on T3 and T4... that game was not fun.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #32 on: June 21, 2011, 06:24:45 am »
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I simulated this (players buy only treasure and green cards after the opening):

Young Witch/Ambassador (57%) - Ambassador/Ambassador (40%)


Compare it to this:

Sea Hag/Ambassador (35%) - Ambassador/Ambassador (62%)
 
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rrenaud

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #33 on: June 21, 2011, 09:20:14 am »
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I am especially distrustful of big money simulations for heavy trashing type decks.  Heavy trashing -> small deck -> easy combos.
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Death to Sea Hags

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #34 on: June 21, 2011, 09:55:08 am »
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Getting both your opening cards on T5 vs a competent player is usually a loss, especially when ambassador is in play, regardless of small differences in what you buy other than the ambassador.  I drew both ambassadors on T5 once after my opp played his on T3 and T4... that game was not fun.

I'd be interested to know what the win percentages are on comebacks from this.  Except against very poor play, I find that if I end up with a t5 collision and the other player doesn't, I am going to lose, period.

Especially as player 2....  :(


But I might be wrong! Is there really much hope of a turn around?  Maybe strategy needs to change drastically - no more actions, only Big Money will save the day.

What has to happen subsequent to this for me to win?  There might be a further break-point in the game that has such a high impact on win rates, but I'm not sure what it would be.
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Geronimoo

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #35 on: June 21, 2011, 10:38:55 am »
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I am especially distrustful of big money simulations for heavy trashing type decks.  Heavy trashing -> small deck -> easy combos.

You're right of course. I added these openings to a simulator bot who's going for a Market/Peddler engine (with a few Worker's Villages and Smithies). This results in a reversal of win%:

Young Witch/Ambassador (40%) - Ambassador/Ambassador (58%)

The Witch player always ends up with decks bloated with Curses, Coppers and Estates.
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Toskk

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #36 on: October 04, 2011, 04:27:07 pm »
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Sorry for a slight thread necro, but on the topic of best/worst openings and Ambassador.. I was curious as to why Ambassador / Ambassador ranks in soooo high? The best/worst opening data has essentially always suggested that anytime Ambassador is present, regardless of what you might pair it with you're better off going Ambassador / Ambassador (the only exceptions being Tournament and Caravan). This does not seem intuitive to me, what with the extra early chance of terminal collisions. Further, going over to the win rate by card accumulation, while a 1 Ambassador lead produces a significant increase in win chances, a 2 Ambassador lead produces a significant decrease in win chances. Taken together, this data doesn't really add up.. am I just missing something, or is Ambassador / Ambassador somehow overrated as an opening?
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fencingmonkey

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #37 on: October 04, 2011, 05:18:29 pm »
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I have the same aversion to turn-3 collision, but this thread is making me reconsider it. Remember: if your worst-case scenario is drawing amb/amb/C/C/E turn 3, you are still drawing amb.

As discussed above, there's roughly a 33% chance of a collision with 2 terminals. If that happens, you shrink your deck by 2 and increase your opponent's by 1. If not, you shrink by 4 and increase them by 2. In other words, amb/amb gives you an advantage of (1/3*3 + 2/3*6) = 5 cards. That's incredibly powerful.

Or, if you think better in words than in math (how did you end up here?) the payoff for best-case amb/amb is SO good that it's worth the non-trivial chance of getting an early collision.
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guided

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #38 on: October 04, 2011, 05:36:45 pm »
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One of the big qualitative leaps I made as a Dominion player was in realizing that terminal collisions are not the end of the world. Putting extra terminals in your deck and having them not collide is so strong that going out of your way to avoid even the possibility of collision means you will have weaker draws on average than if you just eat the collisions that do happen with high terminal density. By extension, when building a village-based engine from the ground up you should usually weight your buys significantly toward the terminals rather than the villages when you have a choice, filling in the villages later as needed.

Now, for the specific example of an Ambassador/Ambassador opening, I prefer Ambassador/Silver followed by another Ambassador at turn 3 or 4. Why? Because the double-Ambassador opening will very likely have enough collisions in the first few shuffles (given a steadily decreasing deck size) to completely wipe out the advantage of sometimes getting an Ambassador on both turn 3 and turn 4. Put another way, if I open A/S/A while you open A/A, you may hit twice before turn 5 but it's likely we will both get the same number of hits by turn 10 (or whatever) since you will tend to have more collisions. Meanwhile I start up a Silver which may allow me to buy another helpful card early. Note this reasoning is quite specific to Ambassador!
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DG

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #39 on: October 04, 2011, 06:11:34 pm »
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Ambassador/ambassador is strong if there are village style cards in the kingdom. Ambassador/silver is stronger if there are some laboratory style cards in the kingdom. Ambassadors always depend upon the continuation since there is always a continuation after the ambassadors have resized the decks. Talking about them in a general sense isn't very helpful.
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Fangz

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #40 on: October 04, 2011, 06:22:21 pm »
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I dunno, though. Amb/amb tends to snowball - a heavily ambassadored player will have difficulty playing his ambassador often, and so fall even further behind. Even in the case of a collision it isn't that disastrous: chances are you aren't going to buy anything too awesome in your ambassadoring turn anyway. The risk of collision is equal to the risk of drawing ambassador/silver/?/?/? and a full 70% of the time that means only a $4 hand (and the remainder of the time, that means no trashing on your first turn). You can judge that the reward outweights the risk. It all depends on what other cards are available, obviously - e.g. if there's a hunting party then go for it. If there's fishing village I'd go amb/amb every time.

Personally I've played both ways and I have no idea which is stronger.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 06:27:08 pm by Fangz »
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guided

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #41 on: October 04, 2011, 06:32:22 pm »
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Even in the case of a collision it isn't that disastrous:
It's not disastrous. It's just that if you have one more collision than your opponent over the first few shuffles, you've lost your tempo advantage. And it's quite likely you will have one more collision. The tempo generally evens out before you ever get to worrying about continuations. The Silver opening is slightly more likely to get an early strong card, while the Ambassador opening is slightly more likely to trim faster. In my experience Silver has the more likely upside in most cases.

The difference between these two openings is not large in any case.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2011, 06:36:59 pm by guided »
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #42 on: October 04, 2011, 06:49:07 pm »
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Sorry for a slight thread necro, but on the topic of best/worst openings and Ambassador.. I was curious as to why Ambassador / Ambassador ranks in soooo high? The best/worst opening data has essentially always suggested that anytime Ambassador is present, regardless of what you might pair it with you're better off going Ambassador / Ambassador (the only exceptions being Tournament and Caravan). This does not seem intuitive to me, what with the extra early chance of terminal collisions. Further, going over to the win rate by card accumulation, while a 1 Ambassador lead produces a significant increase in win chances, a 2 Ambassador lead produces a significant decrease in win chances. Taken together, this data doesn't really add up.. am I just missing something, or is Ambassador / Ambassador somehow overrated as an opening?

A few notes about how these numbers work out:
1. Just because one opening is higher than another doesn't mean you should always choose it. The best/worst openings are conditioned on one player actually using that opening. So just because ambassador/ambassador is so high doesn't mean you should always get it.
2. The win rate by difference in number is about the *difference* in number, not the total number. Going ambassador/ambassador doesn't mean you have a 2 ambassador lead. If your opponent gets 1 ambassador, it's a 1 ambassador lead. And if they don't get ambassador as an opening, but get 1 later, it's still a difference of 1. That data is hard to use for thinking about openings.

Regarding amb/amb vs amb/silver, I agree with DG that it depends on what's on the board. For me, there has to be a reason to buy the silver. In a vacuum, if there were no other cards in the kingdom, I'd prefer double ambassador, because you want 2 eventually and the silver doesn't do a whole lot the first time through the deck anyway. As fangz said, drawing silver with ambassador is just as bad as drawing ambassador with ambassador a lot of the time anyway. The real difference occurs when you draw them apart. A second ambassador gives more deck size advantage, while silver can let you get to $5. If there is a $5 worth shooting for early that can help during the ambassador phase of the game, like a lab or treasury or upgrade, I'll go for the amb/silver opening. Otherwise I prefer to stay on top of the ambassadors and just buy the silver on turn 3 or 4.
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guided

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #43 on: October 04, 2011, 11:25:20 pm »
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A second ambassador gives more deck size advantage
I'm trying to point out the thing that most people seem to miss here, which is that even if you don't collide at turn 3 or 4, you're likely to get an extra collision or two compared to an A/S/A opponent in the next few turns, which gives up the tempo advantage. You only realize the tempo upside if you don't get an extra collision early, which is unlikely. The Silver opening's upside is also unlikely, so again, there's not much space between the two openings.

FWIW at one point I did extensive playtesting of A/S/A vs. A/A when neither deck was allowed to buy any other Kingdom cards beyond 2 Ambassadors, and A/S/A had a clear (if not huge) edge. Other Kingdom cards can of course change the equation.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #44 on: October 05, 2011, 03:06:43 am »
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^But like you said, you're not really concerned with collisions. What's more important is how many times you get to play ambassador (and how many cards you return per play). Even if you get an extra collision on turn 6 or something, you got in an extra play by getting the second ambassador sooner. After 4 turns, if you've played 2 ambassadors and he's played one, you're ahead. Yeah you're more likely to get a collisions the next time through the deck, because your deck is smaller, since you're ahead on ambassadoring... Amb/silver does not get ahead because it avoids collisions and shrinks the deck better; it gets ahead because it has more buying power.
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Fangz

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #45 on: October 05, 2011, 09:08:14 am »
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Plus if you get such a thin deck that ambassadors colliding become inevitable, you could just ambassador your ambassador.

Quote
FWIW at one point I did extensive playtesting of A/S/A vs. A/A when neither deck was allowed to buy any other Kingdom cards beyond 2 Ambassadors, and A/S/A had a clear (if not huge) edge. Other Kingdom cards can of course change the equation.

Well, that may be so, but BM+ambassador situations might not reflect on the 'average game', whatever that is...
« Last Edit: October 05, 2011, 09:10:20 am by Fangz »
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guided

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #46 on: October 05, 2011, 09:42:36 am »
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^But like you said, you're not really concerned with collisions. What's more important is how many times you get to play ambassador (and how many cards you return per play).
An extra collision will tend to equalize the number of times you get to play Ambassador, if it happens within the first few shuffles. That's my whole point. A/S/A "catches up" if it has fewer collisions. When A/A realizes its turn 3/4 upside of playing one both turns, it becomes highly likely that A/S/A will catch up with fewer collisions. A/A only realizes its true upside if it gets through at least a couple more shuffles maintaining a lead in Ambassador plays, which isn't likely.

I'm not saying something radical here! It's just a small thing that people seem to overlook. They think "ah-ha! I played them at turn 3 and turn 4 so I must be way ahead now!" Because not quite: collisions in the next few turns do matter.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2011, 09:46:41 am by guided »
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rod-

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #47 on: October 05, 2011, 10:31:31 am »
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The collisions after the first two plays are not all that important:  If you've outplayed ambassador 2:1 in the first reshuffle, your deck has reached 10 cards while your opponent's is 14 cards.  Your ambassadors are obviously more likely to collide than theirs, but not by that great of a margin.  1 collision means your deck is 12 cards while your opponent's has reached 14, but you were 1 turn(a full 5 cards) ahead on the 3rd reshuffle and with a 12 card deck are about 60% likely to be playing another ambassador this turn to go back to 11 and push them to 15.  A second collision at this point doesn't really impact you because your deck is still very nearly 1 turn faster per shuffle, and when you reach 0 collisions for a shuffle you've cleared down to ~8-10 cards and will push everything that gets ambassadored to you back faster than it gets sent.
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Empathy

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #48 on: October 05, 2011, 10:50:02 am »
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Question: Should the cards you pass around with ambassador not matter?

Because it seems to me that hitting a double estate with one ambassador can somewhat cancel out the effect of two single-estate ambassadors. Likewise double ambassador has a good chance of hitting an ambassador/copper hand even without a collision (so does amb/silver, but it doesn't matter as much). I have no idea if that would actually help A/S/A versus AA. You could pollute with coppers instead (guaranteeing deck size advantage) but then you probably lose pretty badly on money-tempo.

I like rod's method of analysis, but I do think the choices you make on ambassador, and the event "double estate" might have a bigger impact than the collision event.

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guided

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Re: Best/Worst Openings discussion
« Reply #49 on: October 05, 2011, 11:06:08 am »
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The collisions after the first two plays are not all that important:  If you've outplayed ambassador 2:1 in the first reshuffle, your deck has reached 10 cards while your opponent's is 14 cards.  Your ambassadors are obviously more likely to collide than theirs, but not by that great of a margin.  1 collision means your deck is 12 cards while your opponent's has reached 14, but you were 1 turn(a full 5 cards) ahead on the 3rd reshuffle and with a 12 card deck are about 60% likely to be playing another ambassador this turn to go back to 11 and push them to 15.  A second collision at this point doesn't really impact you because your deck is still very nearly 1 turn faster per shuffle, and when you reach 0 collisions for a shuffle you've cleared down to ~8-10 cards and will push everything that gets ambassadored to you back faster than it gets sent.
You're assuming that every Ambassador sends away 2 cards regardless of deck size, and (even more critically) flat-out assuming you don't collide at turn 3 or 4. Yes, it becomes more likely that you'll hit the upside when you don't collide at the first opportunity, but the point is that even when you don't collide at 3/4 your chances of coming out ahead are not as high as you might think.

The BM+2xAmbassador example is designed to illustrate that no special mid-price (particularly $5) cards are required for A/S/A to realize a small advantage in at least one particular case.

I am rapidly losing my motivation to argue this rather unimportant point (the two openings are extremely close in strength in the general case) just for the sake of convincing others to re-examine their assumptions. I am not trying to tell you A/S/A is a vastly stronger opening in any case at all, only that those who think it's obviously inferior to A/A in most circumstances should reconsider and exercise some critical thinking past turn 4. While I feel rod- has made logical errors in drawing the conclusions he does, it is at least heartening to see somebody engaging with the problem in a thoughtful way.
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