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[WanderingWinder]

This is all about endgames and tactics, I'm going to skip the openings and middlegames - I mean, there's probably a lot of meat there, but it's both not what I want to focus on here nor what I understand the greatest in these.

http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130915/log.50b20dc3e4b0c9ce0cf27eb3.1379274752025.txt
We pick this one up on my thirteenth turn. We have each used Merchant Guild to split between Vineyards and Provinces. He's managed five vineyards to my three and has a small lead. I have to maneouvre between taking the lead and being able to end the game at the right time.
Basically, we end up going back and forth a lot with this - if we would have had developed engines, it would be a lot different, but the green splits -particularly vineyards - were too critical to waste so much time. So keep in mind here, we are both accumulating lots of tokens and worthless actions, and we get it down to 2 provinces, but our decks aren't really good enough to double, and we don't want to break a lot of tokens on a province, with some weird kind of PPR considerations with very close scores - actually I only had a feel of this, having forgotten that he put #vpon in the title of the table (and not realizing there was a version of the PCE that doesn't display itself in chat...) - but regardless, the principle holds.
Turn 17 I end up trading in 4 tokens for a duchy (with only 3 vineyards, duchy is the right play for points-now). I am feeling the pressure, because duchies are getting sort of low, vineyards are gone, ruins are very low, and vagrants are pretty low too. So, not knowing the score on turn 19, I 'go for it' with a province, knowing that he has 8 tokens and can end it - this confuses him, and ends poorly.
What did this come down to? The vineyard split is what I want to point to. First turn is what I really *want* to point to, but there were definitely lots of places I could have made other choices, and I am not sure - but probably something I could have done better (certainly the last turn). And we have to give Stef a lot of credit for staying on top of this and covering up all my options at just the right time. As first player, one of your tasks is to prosecute your advantage well, and he certainly did that here, smothering my chances to come back on all sides.



http://dom.retrobox.eu/?/20130915/log.50b20dc3e4b0c9ce0cf27eb3.1379276165379.txt
Turn 13 is the first key moment I want to look at. I have an extra royal seal, an extra smugglers, fewer nobles, no oracle to his one, and extra villages. The key thing here is that I pick up the last two nobles to equalize, and I DON'T SMUGGLE LAB even though I could have. Caravans are gone, Nobles are now gone, and there were only two Labs left. Smugglers are the only gain in the kingdom, and by leaving two, there's now no way to end the game in a single turn (if I grab one, all he needs is smugglers and $2 to win the game). I pick up a strategic Great Hall instead. This gives me a little lead, it doesn't help his deck at all (actually, with the fewer villages plus the oracle, it hurts it if anything), and he can smuggle them - but I will at least potentially be able to smuggle back. Most of all, GH plays to my trump - the Royal Seal, which actually lets me buy a province if I can ever draw my deck together (and I am close).
So he double smuggles back and picks up a gold, to neutralize this advantage.
Turn 14, and plan draw-the-deck comes together. Now, he CAN indeed get a province, so this is something to be mindful of. He has two smugglers, and this is critical to know. I smuggle TWO great halls - a critical number - and a gold. Now, at first, I was thinking just one GH, because this would leave 4 and stop him from being able to pile them out (which would end the game). But then, I realized that because I knew I was buying province, he would have to use both smugglers and his buy to end the game, and of course my points protected me from this. However, getting the third would have been less good, because then two smuggles empty the pile, and buying a province would let him then tie.
The gold was nice, particularly because I had a little trick. I have a village left after drawing my deck, so I can smuggle all three things and then village to draw one - 2/3 chance I have gold the next turn, and basically I had figured the only way I was losing would be to whiff on province at the wrong moment.
Now, Stef miscalculates on the next turn (I am not sure what was up, but he knew very soon after it happened; maybe he had expected me to get GH on the third smugglers too, and with the animations not being helpful...?), getting GH down to 1 and only getting himself a 1 point lead. I only need smugglers and $2 to win (actually I make it up to 9).
So this one was also probably a good bit of first turn, along with random lucky smugglers.

Luck a good bit in both, but you also have to have skill in how you press that luck.

Oh, and good ole penultimate Lab rule.

[flies]

Very interesting.

[-Stef-]

In game #1 Wandering Winder breaks PPR with a 2 point lead. Essentially he hopes I don't hit $8, but I have 8 coin tokens.
In game #2, I take everything but 1 great hall, because he can at most get the great hall and a province, resulting in a tie on points. I would win because I was P2. Shortly after I realized the brain fart because his 2 provinces do not equal my 1 province.

The morale? Even pretty good players can make pretty dumb endgame moves from time to time.

Not taking a lab that results in a 3-pile when you're behind... sorry but any player above 3000 ranking gets that one right.
I'm more impressed by WW's midgame #2; my estimation was that a 3rd smugglers would make the deck too unreliable, but he proved me wrong. That is what actually won him the game.

[WanderingWinder]

In game #1 Wandering Winder breaks PPR with a 2 point lead. Essentially he hopes I don't hit $8, but I have 8 coin tokens.

As I said both in the game when you '?'ed me AND in the description above, I knew you had 8 tokens but didn't know it was a 2 point gap. The 'bad plays' there were either early (letting you get 5 vineyards), not keeping track of how many actions precisely each of our decks had, or not ensuring VP-counter-parity. Actually the latter was the biggest blunder by me - I should have remembered that you had it in your game title, but thought that all versions of it put up a message about it in the chat, which I checked. Apparently they don't.

Not taking a lab that results in a 3-pile when you're behind... sorry but any player above 3000 ranking gets that one right.

I've got to disagree, and wonder how many 3000ish guys you've played. *I* have played very few, but lots of 4k+ and some 5kers have made worse plays. And well, you make the same mistake on great halls a few turns later. I mean, it's obvious once you think about it, my only real point here is to tell people to think about it. The thing here is that it's smugglers; if it were just buying it, sure people are *usually* pretty good about that (though there are lots of exceptions), but I feel like people don't think so much about playing an action like smugglers. They just do it.

[WanderingWinder]

I would also point out that in neither game did either of us have substantial chances of winning, even without these apparently egregious blunders.
Game 1, I can't really buy anything there, as you're on the verge of three piling and have a lead/can buy province anyway.
Game 2, ok what are you going to do? You can't take any great halls or I end the game; I am in a position to smuggle anything else cheap, I have better fuel for my bishops, I have a points lead, it's even further enhanced if you knock out the great halls you got there, I have fewer coppers... there's just no real plan but hope I randomly get a dud hand at the wrong time, and you don't, and you can then end it, all of which is quite unlikely.

[Eevee]

Oh I just love quality rivalries like this!

[dondon151]

In game 2, should Stef have bought Lab instead of Nobles on turn 12? That leaves only 1 Lab for WW to smuggle (and he knows that WW's Smugglers are coming up), if WW even want to smuggle it in the first place, and it puts Stef's deck in a more reliable drawing state than WW's deck. If WW gets another Nobles, Stef can end the game with a win. If WW doesn't get another Nobles, he has to prolong the game on Provinces and rely on winning the Great Hall split, but Stef can fish for a chance where WW's deck chokes.

[-Stef-]

... and dondon saves the day by saying something about the game that makes a lot of sense.

Oh I just love quality rivalries like this!

Hmmm. And there I was, hoping to have learned something about life. Such a joke

I don't like it when I play bad, I like it less when people start to analyze those games in detail, and then I get into this mood where I'll find just about anything to disagree upon. In theory I know I should just let it go if I can't reflect upon it on a higher level, but in the reality of the day I still sometimes fail. But even that is something I try to accept, and off course I can try to make amends when I realize it.

So - WW: I'm sorry for responding in an offensive way. I don't want to be like that.

P.S. the point counter is just broken at the moment. Sometimes it displays 8 messages, sometimes 0, most of the times just 1. Since it has auto-update, there shouldn't be too many different versions around.